Somalian President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed on Saturday relaunched talks over the holding of fresh elections, in a move welcomed by the country’s opposition following Somalia’s worst political crisis in years.
In a speech before the Somalian parliament that was broadcast live, the president, who also goes by the name Farmaajo, effectively abandoned a policy passed by parliament last month that would have extended his term in office by two years.
He asked Somalian Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble to take charge of organizing fresh elections — a key demand of the opposition.
Photo: Reuters
“We have decided to seek a solution through negotiations and to avoid starting violence in the benefit of those who trade on the blood of the public,” Farmaajo said.
Deadly clashes on April 25 broke out between rival factions in the capital, Mogadishu, over Farmaajo’s failure to hold elections before his term ended in February, due to the collapse of a deal between him and state leaders over the terms of the vote.
The city has been on a knife’s edge since the political crisis erupted into gunfire between rival factions of security forces backing Farmaajo and the opposition, leaving three people dead.
The US has repeatedly called for elections to go ahead, threatening sanctions against the nation of about 12 million, which is divided into several semi-autonomous states.
In his speech, Farmaajo returned to the agreement reached with states in September last year to hold indirect elections, whereby special delegates chosen by Somalia’s clan elders would pick lawmakers who in turn would choose the president.
“I want to make clear that Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble will lead in preparing and implementing the election and the security of the election,” he said. “I ask the government to get ready for the huge task.”
The measure was voted through unanimously by the 140 members of parliament present.
“Today is a historic day with particular importance for the Somalia peace process, democracy and governance. We are committed to holding fair, free and inclusive elections without anyone having their rights deprived,” Roble told an evening news briefing. “I will very soon invite all the concerned parties to a meeting.”
A coalition of opposition candidates welcomed the latest developments on Saturday, calling them “a step forward.”
“I applaud the decision of the parliament to get back to the implementation of the September 17 agreement,” said former Somalian president Sharif Sheik Ahmed, who is part of the opposition, adding that the deal was “the only solution we have for elections.”
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to