In a statement on the end of the Somali President’s term of office without an electoral agreement, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a former President, said that no effort had been made to prepare Somalia for elections.
The assessment of the former Somali President fails to take into account the now-abrogated Electoral Law, and summits held in Dhuusamareeb to prepare Somalia for elections.
Somali politics had come a long way since January 2009, when Sharif was elected President of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia.
Sharif urged MPs to work towards facilitating a deal on the election, not a term extension.
“The Alliance of Presidential Candidates of which Sharif Sheikh Ahmed is a member expected the failure to reach an electoral deal would turn them into stakeholders on par with Federal Member States. Sharif jumped the gun although he knows that the Federal Government had not engineered the deadlock on the electoral agreement” said Abdullahi Ali, a Mogadishu-based political commentator.
Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has urged Somali security forces and the army not to follow the instructions of a government “whose term of office has come to an end.”
This article first appeared in the © Puntland Post, 2021 and is republished with permission