Editorial note

This is institutional analysis. The National Elections Act, 2012 (Amendment) Bill, 2026 has been introduced in Parliament but has not become law. Reported provisions are proposals and their final legal effect remains subject to parliamentary action, presidential assent and interpretation within South Sudan's wider constitutional and peace-agreement framework.

South Sudan's transition is approaching a test that is larger than the December election itself. Parliament is considering amendments that, according to parliamentary spokesperson Oliver Mori, would allow the incumbent President to remain in office with constitutional powers during the election period while requiring the First Vice President and other Vice Presidents to leave office three months before polling.

The proposal has completed its first-reading stage and has been referred for legislative scrutiny. It may change. It may be amended. And until the parliamentary process is completed, it should not be described as the law governing the transition.

But the debate already exposes a deeper institutional question: what happens when the continuity of the political system appears to depend more on one office than on a durable set of institutions?

From power without capacity to power without institutions

In an earlier South Sudan Press analysis, Power Without Capacity, we argued that controlling the centre of government is not the same as building a functioning state. Political authority can be concentrated while ministries remain weak, public services fail and administrative systems depend on personal intervention.

The election-law debate adds a second dimension. A state does not become institutional merely because it has offices called Presidency, Parliament, Elections Commission or Cabinet. Institutions become durable when their authority, succession and limits are governed by predictable rules that remain intelligible when officeholders change.

The institutional test is not simply who occupies an office. It is whether the rules governing that office remain clear when the person occupying it changes.

The collective presidency was a transitional arrangement

The presidency created under the 2018 revitalized peace agreement is a power-sharing structure: President, First Vice President and other Vice Presidents were incorporated into a transitional executive intended to manage a negotiated period rather than an ordinary post-election government.

The proposed election amendment therefore confronts a genuine transition problem: how does a power-sharing executive end, and what legal arrangement governs the period between the transitional order and an elected government?

Reporting on the bill says the proposed answer is asymmetrical continuity: the incumbent President remains, while the vice-presidential positions created within the transitional arrangement would end before polling. Whether that approach is consistent with the complete constitutional and peace-agreement framework requires legal analysis of the enacted text—not assumptions based on a first-reading summary.

The danger of legal uncertainty

Political transitions are most stable when the rules are known before the competition begins. Uncertainty over who exercises executive authority, when transitional offices expire, what powers remain in force and how disputes are resolved can create competing interpretations precisely when institutions are under the greatest pressure.

This is why the current debate should not be reduced to personalities. The more important questions are institutional: Which instrument has controlling legal authority? What happens if provisions conflict? What date triggers a change? What parliamentary and constitutional procedures are required? Which institution resolves a dispute over interpretation?

Parliament's role is part of the test

The amendment bill has been referred to the legislature's committee process. That matters because a functioning parliament should do more than transmit executive proposals. Legislative scrutiny provides an opportunity to examine wording, constitutional compatibility, transitional consequences and unintended gaps.

The bill reportedly also proposes a 332-member elected legislature, including geographical constituencies, women's representation and party-list seats. These provisions further demonstrate that South Sudan is not merely scheduling an election; it is attempting to define the institutional architecture that would emerge from it.

The NEC transition adds another layer

The debate is unfolding as the National Elections Commission itself undergoes a leadership transition. President Salva Kiir removed NEC chair Prof. Abednego Akok Kacuol and appointed former secretary-general Gabriel Bol Deng Majok as chair on 15 September. No public reason was given for the change.

A leadership change does not by itself establish institutional weakness. The relevant test is whether the commission's procedures, operational plans and legal authority continue predictably regardless of who chairs it.

Institutions are revealed by succession

Strong institutions are often least visible when everything is stable. Their value becomes obvious during succession, disagreement and crisis.

A professional civil service should continue when a minister changes. A court should apply law regardless of who is politically powerful. An election commission should administer rules consistently when commissioners change. A legislature should scrutinize bills regardless of the political interests affected by them.

Where continuity depends primarily on individuals, succession becomes destabilizing. Where continuity depends on institutions, leadership can change without placing the state itself into uncertainty.

South Sudan's deeper transition is therefore not only from unelected to elected government. It is from political arrangements centred on individuals and negotiated offices toward institutions whose authority survives the people temporarily occupying them.

What should be watched next

The immediate evidence will come from the bill itself and the parliamentary process: committee amendments, the precise wording governing executive continuity, its relationship with the Transitional Constitution and peace agreement, the timing of any commencement provision, and the legal process by which disputes could be resolved.

Those details matter more than political speculation about who benefits. The institutional question is whether the rules are sufficiently clear, lawful and predictable to govern every officeholder under the same framework.

Beyond Juba's offices

The argument of The Illusion of Power is ultimately that possessing authority and building a republic are different projects. The first can be achieved through control of offices. The second requires rules, institutions and public systems capable of functioning beyond individual leaders.

The real measure of transition will not simply be whether one set of officeholders leaves Juba and another enters it. It will be whether political authority can change hands without throwing the institutions of the state into uncertainty.

That is the difference between possessing power and institutionalising it.