MOGADISHU— Somalia's long-delayed elections will proceed
"as planned", Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble told visiting UN diplomats
on Sunday, even as a damaging feud between him and the country's president
sparked fresh fears for the troubled Horn of Africa Nation.
اضافة اعلان
The very public spat between Roble
and President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, better known as Farmajo, comes as
Somalia struggles to organise polls that are months behind schedule and keep an
Islamist insurgency at bay.
As senior politicians made frantic
efforts to defuse tensions and end the impasse, Roble told a delegation led by UN Deputy
Secretary General Amina Mohammed that the vote would go ahead as planned.
The increasingly bitter row has
threatened to throw an already fragile electoral process into deeper peril.
Farmajo's four-year mandate
expired in February, but was extended by parliament in April, triggering deadly
gun battles in the capital Mogadishu, with some rivals viewing it as a flagrant
power grab.
Roble cobbled together a new
timetable for polls, but the process fell behind, and on Wednesday he accused
Farmajo of trying to reclaim "election and security responsibilities"
from him.
On Sunday, as Roble sought to
reassure UN diplomats about the vote, his office released a statement saying:
"We are committed to hold the elections as planned, and other existing
matters will not have any effect on the elections."
"The prime minister informed
the delegation about the achievements made towards (holding) the election ...
and how he is committed to (holding) elections that are peaceful and
transparent," the statement said.
Elections in Somalia follow a
complex indirect model, whereby state legislatures and clan delegates pick
lawmakers for the national parliament, who in turn choose the president.
The next phase is scheduled for
between October 1 and November 25.
The row erupted last week when
Roble sacked Somalia's intelligence chief over his handling of a high-profile
probe into the disappearance of a young agent.
Farmajo overruled the prime
minister, appointing the dumped intelligence official as his national security
adviser.
Roble in turn accused the president
of "obstructing" the investigation, and in a late-night move on
Wednesday, fired the security minister and replaced him with a Farmajo critic.
The spat has raised the political
temperature in Mogadishu, with a coalition of opposition presidential candidates
on Friday saying it "supports the prime minister ... and condemns the
actions of the outgoing president".
The UN Assistance Mission in
Somalia last week urged both leaders to stop bickering and focus on the
elections.
Analysts say Somalia's political crises have
distracted from more pressing threats, most notably the violent Al-Shabaab
insurgency.
The Al-Qaeda allies were driven
out of Mogadishu a decade ago but retain control of swathes of countryside and
continue to stage deadly attacks.
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