An Influential Traditional Leader Warns Somalia President Against Term Extension

Mohamed Hassan Haad: “If President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud ever tries to change his term of office to stay in power longer, Badbaado Qaran is still active.“

Mogadishu (PP News Desk) — Mohamed Hassan Haad, an influential traditional leader in Mogadishu, has warned against any amendments in the presidential and legislature terms. “If President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud ever tries to change his term of office to stay in power longer, Badbaado Qaran is still active. He is now a Villa Somalia occupant because of opposition against the attempted term extension by the former government” said Haad.

The Federal Government of Somalia sponsored two bills to revise the presidential and legislature terms to be discussed by the Lower House and the Upper House. A former Somalia President and two former Prime Ministers criticised Villa Somalia for triggering a constitutional crisis that damaged the legitimacy of the ten-month old dispensation. Haad’s remarks are likely to expose the capture of the bicameral legislature by Villa Somalia.

Constitutional crisis: President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud undermines brittle federal institutions to stay in power beyond his legal tenure.

“We have a lame-duck Upper House and Lower House micromanaged by the incumbent President. Puntland State of Somalia was right to withdraw its confidence in the federal institutions” said a former federal government minister in Mogadishu. Last week, Murursade paramilitaries blocked key roads in central Mogadishu to express dissatisfaction with what a senior politician of the clan termed “government policies that favour relatives of President Hassan Sheikh but marginalise other clans .”

Two days ago, participants of Murursade Convention in Mogadishu issued a declaration in which they called on federal leaders to split the Mayor-Governor position of Banaadir region currently occupied by Abgaal, the clan to which President Mohamud belongs.

© Puntland Post, 2023