The Somaliland Police Commissioner, Brigadier-General Mohamed Adan Sanqadhi ‘Dabagale’, urged Waddani supporters not to heed their leader’s call for a massive demonstration tomorrow, Monday.
The police commander stated that the protest demonstration Waddani Chairman, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi ‘Irro’, asked his followers to come out to in the capital, Hargeisa, and congregate at the national, opposition party’s head office, was not only a threat to security but unconstitutional since permission was neither sought nor granted.
“Somaliland has no record of peacefull demonstrations where the event starts peacefully, ends peacefully. There usually, among the demonstrators, criminal elements mingle turning the occasion to a violent, regrettable confrontation between the law enforcement officers and stone-throwing demonstrators,” he said in a televised statement.
Chairman Irro, in another press conference, Sunday, expressed regret that President Musa Bihi Abdi, went back on an earlier agreement in which the three national parties agreed on the replacement the then incumbent Electoral Commissioners with a fresh lot. The consensus reached a protracted and often caustic lip battle among the parties on the reliability of the commissioners to hold the upcoming parliamentary and municipal councils elections.
President Bihi, at an occasion he spoke at Sunday, challenged the national, opposition parties, especially Waddani, to produce a signed document attesting to the claim that the parties agreed to replace all commissioners.
President Bihi, whose mandate it was to nominate 3 of the 7 commissioners, returned one of the outgoing commissioners, named another who was accused of being an active campaigner of the ruling party. Both of these members were constitutionally challenged by the two opposition parties stating that the President had a propensity for political brawls rather than avoiding potentially contentious issues.
Six out of the 7 new commissioners were approved bt the House of Representative’s las Monday.
