In one of the most dramatic turns of the Somalia Federal State of Southwest, the Federal Parliament House Speaker, Mursal Mohamed Sheikh, has, again, turned his back on Villa Somalia-dictated terms of the election.
President Mohamed ‘Farmajo’ and Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre had been, of recent, wooing the House Speaker to support their hand-picked candidate, which led to a reported agreement on the issue between the President and the House Speaker on end of last week.
No details had been given of the meeting or much of what they have agreed on except that the House Speaker agreed not to support Mukhtar Roobow Ali’s candidacy. The former Al Shabaab founder left the Group in 2013 when he fell out with the then Al-Qaeda nurtured Islamist militias led by the now-deceased Ahmed Godane.
Going against the grain of whatever the two leaders discussed or hammered out, the House Speaker convened a meeting for members of parliament hailing from the federal state to discuss the issue. Among the more prominent participants of the high-profiled meeting were former House Speakers Jawari and Sheikh Adan Madobe.
The meeting decided that (a) the Southwest presidential election must left to run its ‘fair and free’ course; (b) Nobody should be unfairly edged out of the election; and (c) the ‘police forces’ transported from Mogadishu to be deployed during the elections in Baidoa was a ‘mistake.
All three points were a stab on the back on Farmajo and Khayre who are ready to go to any length to muscle out a growingly popular Roobow from running for the highest office in the federal state.
Roobow, who, not surprisingly, also poses a moral dilemma for the international community, appears to have gained from a bumbling interference on the part Villa Somalia which had, among other developments, engineered the resignation of half the State’s electoral body.
Villa Somalia is acting out a similar drama in the Puntland State, too, where it pitted the Vice President, Abdihakim Amey, against his superior – the President, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali Gass – a situation that may prove to be yet another cause for further presidential ‘election’ delays in Garowe.
