[ad_1]
Somali politicians have launched frantic efforts to defuse tensions after a damaging feud between the president and prime minister plunged the troubled country into yet another crisis, a lawmaker and several officials said on Friday.
The very public feud between President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, better known as Farmajo, and Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble has raised fears for the stability of the Horn of Africa nation as it struggles to organize long delayed elections and keeping an Islamist insurgency at bay.
The two have clashed twice this week over hires and layoffs in Somali security agencies, raising fears of a power struggle at the highest level of government.
But on Friday, a lawmaker told AFP that senior leaders had stepped in to resolve the dispute.
“There are politicians, including heads of member states, who have intervened in the situation (…) and efforts have been made to mediate between the president and the prime minister,” he told the ‘AFP Abdifatah Mohamed, member of the Somali parliament.
“I hope this will end the political conflict,” he said.
The row erupted earlier this week when Roble sacked the Somali intelligence chief for his handling of a high-profile investigation into the disappearance of a young agent.
Map of Somalia locating Mogadishu, where a suicide bomber attacked a military training camp. By (AFP / File) Farmajo quashed the prime minister, appointing the jettisoned intelligence official as his national security adviser.
Roble in turn accused the president of “obstructing” the investigation, and on Wednesday night he sacked the security minister and replaced him with a Farmajo critic.
The feud has sparked fears of violence and prompted senior leaders to intervene in the case, with officials telling AFP that the presidents of the Galmudug region and the southwestern state of Somalia are were trying to break the deadlock.
“Mediation efforts started last night and will continue,” a senior official close to the Farmajo office told AFP, on condition of anonymity.
“The President and the Prime Minister have accepted the negotiations and the talks have already started (…) We hope that the tension will subside very soon”, another official of the state delegation told AFP. from the Southwest.
But a sign of the rising political temperature in Mogadishu, a coalition of opposition presidential candidates on Friday released a statement saying it “supports the Prime Minister (…) and condemns the actions of the outgoing president” .
Electoral stalemate
The dispute threatened to jeopardize an already fragile electoral process.
Farmajo’s four-year term expired in February, but was extended by parliament in April, sparking deadly fighting in Mogadishu, with some rivals seeing it as a blatant takeover.
Roble concocted a new timetable for a vote, but the process was delayed, and this week he accused Farmajo of trying to claim “electoral and security responsibilities” from him.
Analysts say the electoral stalemate has diverted attention from Somalia’s larger issues, including the violent al-Shabaab insurgency.
Al Qaeda allies were driven out of Mogadishu ten years ago, but retain control of entire swathes of the countryside and continue to carry out deadly attacks.
Source link
