Electoral body chair under pressure to resign as Somalia's polls face fraud

MOGADISHU, Somalia - The leadership of the Federal Indirect Elections Team [FIET] is now under pressure to bolt out, following alleged cases of rigging in the ongoing indirect elections, which have been delayed for months in the Horn of Africa nation.

Mohamed Hassan Irro was tasked to lead indirect polls in the country but delays, voter bribery, and manipulation have surrounded the entire exercise, with Lower House elections being the most affected in this case.

On Sunday, clan elders of the Mudulood clan, the dominant community in Mogadishu and its environs, have called for Mohamed Hassan Irro to resign accusing him of being a tool of outgoing President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo to rig elections and cause bloodshed.

FIET has been accused of colluding with certain state bureaucrats to carefully front Farmaajo's allies in various House of People seats. The long plan, critics argue, is to give Farmaajo an upper hand in upcoming presidential elections which would see MPs and senators participate.

Also, the clan elders also called on Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble to fulfill his pledge of delivering a credible and transparent election, warning him that he will have no future in Somalia’s politics if he reneges on a promise made after opposition forces seized
Mogadishu in April.

Roble, who had fallen out with Farmaajo in August before his Kenya trip, would later reconcile with the president but has failed to address key concerns on electoral rigging. The PM has instead been pushing all states to complete the election exercise as soon as possible.

Sources told Garowe Online that the Union of the presidential Candidates asked PM Roble to suspend the election after being marred with fraud and re-start it to allow each candidate to run for parliamentary seat freely.

The opposition teams led by former Presidents Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Hassan Sheikh Mohamud along with Wadajir party leader Abdirahman Abdishakur held a meeting with PM Roble on Sunday at Villa Somalia over the electoral theft concerns.

The meeting comes after the dispute resolution committee halted the victory of National Intelligence Security Agency [NISA] acting director Yasin Abdullahi Farey, who was declared winner in one of the Lower House seats. Similarly, former Speaker Jawari questioned the transparency of the election in Southwest after he was blocked from the race.

GAROWE ONLINE