SPLM Secretary-General Akol Paul Kordit met senior party officials and representatives of other political groups earlier this week to prepare for the resumption of the inter-party dialogue in Juba on Monday, November 9, 2026.
The meeting agreed that the plenary session would discuss and finalise proposed resolutions and a joint communiqué, the SPLM said in a statement. The date of the closing ceremony would be determined in consultation with President Salva Kiir after the resolutions had been adopted.
At the conclusion of the two-week dialogue last month, Senior Presidential Envoy Adut Salva Kiir reiterated the government’s position that elections should proceed as scheduled, saying further extensions were not open to negotiation.
The dialogue, launched by Kiir on September 24, brought together Juba-based political parties and other stakeholders to discuss preparations for South Sudan’s first general elections since independence in 2011.
However, some parties criticised the process, arguing that it was controlled by the government and could not address broader political grievances while former First Vice-President Riek Machar remained in detention and on trial.
At the opening of the dialogue, Kiir warned political parties against using the discussions to renegotiate the electoral timetable.
“This inter-party dialogue is not a place for negotiations and disagreement. It is not a place to shift the direction of the path that we have taken. It is not a place to hold us back,” he said.
His remarks followed the dissolution of the transitional unity government on September 22 and the appointment of a caretaker administration.
Political analyst and government critic Abraham Awolich told Radio Tamazuj on Wednesday that the two-week dialogue had failed to reach a consensus last month because the government insisted on holding elections as scheduled, while other parties called for their postponement and negotiations on a new political arrangement.
Awolich, a former managing director of the Sudd Institute, said the government wanted political parties to endorse decisions already taken by Kiir rather than negotiate the country’s political future.
“We had characterised this inter-party dialogue as a banquet among people who had already agreed to violate the constitution,” he said.
He said some participants had proposed postponing the elections without extending the mandates of the Revitalised Transitional Government of National Unity (RTGoNU) and institutions established under the 2018 peace agreement. Instead, they called for negotiations on an alternative political arrangement.
Government representatives insisted that elections should proceed despite the political and security challenges, he said.
Attempts to prepare final resolutions without the agreement of all participating parties were abandoned after concerns that excluded groups would publicly reject the document, Awolich said.
The inter-party dialogue ended last month without publicly agreed resolutions, he added.
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