South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has, in an executive order, appointed former minister Rebecca Joshua Okwaci as Chief Whip in parliament.
Okwaci, a veteran journalist and member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), bounces back more than two years after leaving government.
She will represent the country’s ruling party in the national assembly.
Okwaci served in various capacities in government, having started as undersecretary in the ministry of labour and public services, later occupying several ministerial portfolios. She also served in the Ministry of information and later became a national Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services.
Her appointment preceded a political function organized by South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir in his capacity as the party chairman and the acting secretary-general of the SPLM, Peter Lam Both. The function brought together all women group in the faction under Kiir’s leadership to attend a leadership meeting on Saturday at which the support for the nomination of the candidate was decided and the announcement made immediately.
Kiir asked all women to work together and prepare for the 2023 elections, saying it was time to coalesce efforts on the flood which he said had affected every corner of the country, including his ancestral home village.
“The issue of floods is becoming a problem. Where I was born is now in water”, he said
The South Sudanese leader was talking at a political function organized by the secretariat of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. Acting secretary Peter Lam thanked him for continuing to assign and place women in leadership positions, saying it is not only a recognition of their roles during the liberation struggle and as members of a political organization but for the important position which they (women) occupy in the society as mothers, wives, sisters, and leaders to be given an opportunity like others.
The Chief Whip is a political office whose task is to administer the whipping system that tries to ensure that members of the party attend and vote as the party leadership desires
