The spat between Somalian President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, commonly known as Farmajo, and Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble escalated further on Thursday as they locked horns over the premier’s dismissal of the security minister, reported France 24.
The feud between Somalia’s top two political leaders has plunged the troubled country into a fresh crisis. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Roble replaced the country’s security minister Hassan Hundubey Jimale with Abdullahi Mohamed Nur, a Farmajo critic, triggering an angry response from the president.
Earlier this week, the Somalian prime minister also suspended the head of the National Intelligence and Security Agency, Fahad Yassin, a close friend of President Farmajo, for failing to investigate the death of Ikran Tahlil Farah, a cybersecurity agent.
Farah disappeared in June and was declared dead by the intelligence agency this month, though the spy agency has yet to disclose any details about her passing.
Farmajo called Roble’s move “illegal and unconstitutional” and overruled him by naming another appointee to the top job and appointing a third man named Yasin Abdullahi Mohamed as the national intelligence chief.
The Somalian president rejected the prime minister’s suspension of the security minister and the sacked minister himself accused Roble of acting to “throw the country into a new conflict”.
Roble, on the other hand, said Farmajo’s actions were harming the probe into Tahlil’s disappearance in the same way justice and rule of law agencies have been previously barred from exercising full investigation. He accused the President of interfering with the investigation of the unsolved murder case of the agent, adding that he was concerned by his move to name a new intelligence chief.
The Somalian prime minister said the president’s move was a dangerous existential threat to the country’s governance system.
The ongoing spat threatens to throw Somalia’s already fragile electoral process into deeper peril. The parliamentary polls are scheduled to kick off between October 1 and November 25 following months of delays.
