The majority of Somalia’s new parliament members got sworn in on Thursday, following repeated poll delays and an ongoing feud between the president and the prime minister, reported All Africa.
250 of the 275 parliamentarians took their oaths of office alongside 40 of the 54 senators. The swearing-in event was held at the heavily guarded Mogadishu airport compound.
Muse Guelleh Yusuf, the chairperson of the Somali Federal Election Committee, described the swearing-in ceremony as a major breakthrough in the country’s electoral process.
“It was a historic breakthrough ending a long and exhausting electoral process that lasted nearly two years,” Yusuf said.
He said some 290 lawmakers were sworn-in on Thursday and that the rest are expected to be sworn in in the coming days. He added that some 25 seats were missing, which remain unfilled in the Hirshabelle and Jubaland states.
Abdisalan Dabana’ad, who is the oldest member of Somalia’s new parliament, will serve as chairman until a speaker gets officially elected. The legislature will start its preparations for the election of the speaker on Saturday.
The elections to choose the lower and upper house lawmakers were previously scheduled to be completed before Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed’s presidential term expired in February 2021. But the elections continued to be delayed due to political and electoral disputes at both the regional and national levels.
The swearing-in followed months of international pressure to complete the elections and choose a new president.
The United States, which has been one of the major financial aid contributors to Somalia and whose troops support Somali government efforts to fight the militant group al-Shabab, had imposed sanctions and visa restrictions on unnamed Somali officials for disrupting the election timetable.
Once all the lawmakers get sworn in, the new parliament will jointly elect Somalia’s new president. A date for the selection of a new president is yet to be fixed.
