Constitutional Amendments Portend Term Extension in Somalia

[Deeq A.]

The whole exercise to have provisional constitution amended by MPs and Senators boils a down to a desire to create an electoral advantage for President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud by 2026.

Mogadishu (PP Editorial)  —  At the Villa Somalia Mosque last week President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud claimed that the draft federal constitution contains provisions on how to make constitutional amendments. His claim indicates that he aims to have the federal provisional constitution amended by the MPs and Senators of the bicameral legislature. Within a week, after pressure from some MPs, President Mohamud revised his proposal to change the prime ministerial system to a presidential system (president and a vice president, and two national political partie), His new compromise — to retain the prime ministerial system but grant the incumbent president powers to fire the PM he nominates, and the three political parties — reflects a destabilising attempt at a power grab in a country that still relies upon African peacekeeping forces to keep Al-Shabaab at bay.

The federal dispensation is based on the flawed 4.5 system and federal electoral law whereby MPs and Senators elect a President. Any move to change the existing government system by MPs and Senators selected by traditional leaders will lack legal validity. Puntland State of Somalia rejected the planned constitutional amendments, so did the two former Presidents (Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, both of them honorary MPs) and two former Prime Ministers (Omar A. A. Sharmarke and Hassan A. Khaire).

The whole exercise to have provisional constitution amended by MPs and Senators boils a down to a desire to create an electoral advantage for the imbuement President in 2026, and failing that, to grant him a pretext for staying in power beyond 2026 if a consensus on the new top-down constitutional amendments is not reached nationwide.

In 2021, when the mandate of President Mohamud Abdullahi Farmajo ended, the Parliament extended his mandate by two years. The unwarranted term extension almost sparked a civil war in Mogadishu. During 2020 President Farmajo insisted on conducting one person, on vote elections by 2021. Those preoccupations prevented his government from accepting the impracticality of his electoral plan, but he used it as an opportunity to stay in power for 14 months beyond his mandate. He did not have his way to stay in power for 24 months based on a controversial term extension because his Prime Minister, Mohamad Hussein Roble, opposed President Farmajo’s electoral goals. The deadlock was broken when an agreement on a new electoral model had been concluded by Federal Member States. That President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud wants powers to fire the PM easily shows his intention to appoint a meek Prime Minister whom he can replace at whim.

The Federal Government of Somalia under President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud attained commendable milestones such as the debt relief and lifting of the arms embargo, but those milestones are at risk of being undone by  the lopsided relationship between Villa Somalia and the rubber-stamp bicameral legislature unable to interrogate the government about a litany of agreement such the defence pacts with Ethiopia, Turkey, Uganda, and USA, as a well petroleum agreement withTürkiye President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud used the legitimacy of the Federal Government of Somalia to jeopardise the national interest and to return Somalia to its failed state status. Any amendments to the provisional constitution by the sitting MPs and Senators will have no legal validity. 

© Puntland Post, 2024

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