Somali lawmakers hold indirect elections Somalia News
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The Speaker of Parliament said 140 MPs had backed down on the return of the presidential and parliamentary elections to the indirect September agreement.
Somalia’s lower house of parliament has unanimously voted to restore the agreement reached last year that would allow the country to hold indirect elections.
Last month, parliament voted to extend the tenure of President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed for two years and for the country to hold future elections on a one-vote and one-vote system.
The move, however, was rejected by the senate, the prime minister, opposition leaders and four of the country’s six federal member states, and stopped in the capital Mogadishu.
On Saturday, spokesman Mohamed Mursal said 140 MPs had voted to reinstate the indirect polls based on the September 2020 agreement, without any impediment from lawmakers.
In a speech to parliament before the vote, Mohamed, known as Farmaajo, called on lawmakers to postpone the return of the agreement.
He also said that Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble had directed “key agreements for the security of elections to establish the preparation process and the electoral process to ensure that elections are held in a peaceful and stable environment”.
At the heart of the country’s crisis is Farmaajo’s failure to hold parliamentary and presidential elections before the end of February.
Farmaajo and the federal states agreed in September to hold by-elections before February 8, through which special representatives elected by the former Somali clan are elected to the legislature.
Somalia has not held direct one-vote elections since 1969 and efforts to organize one have been repeated due to security concerns or a lack of political will.
The indirect model has been used before. This time it would go further in terms of inclusivity, doubling the location of the polls and voting almost twice as many delegates in the 2017 election.
But he never got off the ground, as hostilities between Farmaajo and the leaders of Puntland and Jubaland were taken off the planet.
The two key states accused Farmaajo of piling up important state and federal election commissions with the Loyalists. The central government rejected their alternatives, and no party agreed on who would provide security on election day.
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