Somali-Australian politician dropped from race over payments made by Somali minister

Hassan Moalim Khalif, who serves as Minister of State in the Somali Presidency [Photo: Villa Somalia]

MOGADISHU, Somalia - A Somali-Australian candidate has been dropped from the election race over payment made by her Somali uncle who is serving as a minister in the administration of outgoing President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, effectively ending her pursuit for a political seat.

According to The Age, Sahra Mustaf received an unspecified amount of money from her uncle, forcing the Liberal Party to withdraw her candidacy for a seat in the northeast of Melbourne, Australia. The South East sub-continent has stringent regulations on spending when it comes to elections.

Garowe Online has since learned that the minister in question is Hassan Moalim Khalif, who serves as Minister of State in the Somali Presidency whose financial support led Sahra Mustaf to fail to secure confidence from her party and her name was subsequently removed.

Khalif, who replaced Hussein Baqdadi, a current presidential candidate, is a friend of Fahad Yasin, the head of NISA who is also the right-handed man of the outgoing President Mohamed Farmajo, whose term expired on Feb 8 this year.

In a rebuttal following her removal from the party list, Sahra told Voice of America Somali that the move was "illegal and unconstitutional". Further, she argued that the money was sent to her uncle "because I am a single mother and I adopt the child".

"What happened was wrong. They told me I am not competing. What they should know, my uncle, who became a minister in Somalia six months ago, sent me a gift for my son on Eid because I am a single mother and I have adopted a child," she said.

Zahra Mustaf was set to run for the notionally marginal seat of Jaga Jaga but was disendorsed on Monday night. The party feared her financial arrangement may have breached the nation’s foreign interference laws and foreign donations ban – both designed to guard against foreign governments holding sway over Australian officials, The Age reported.

In her defense in front of the party officials, Zahra maintained by the hand she required the stipend to supplement her income, according to two-party sources speaking anonymously to detail the candidate vetting process.

The party did not believe the Canberra hopeful had any intention of pushing the interests of the Somali government in Parliament if such interests exist. However, Liberal sources told The Age the party was concerned the payments would open Ms. Mustaf up to political attacks from the Labor Party during an election in which the Morrison government would seek to enunciate its strength on national security issues.

According to a Liberal Party official, the decision to remove Ms. Mustaf was not driven by any potential negative perception of the party being associated with the Somali government but was prompted purely by the legal and political risk associated with breaching the foreign laws.

One experienced Liberal official said the episode highlighted the complex set of rules that candidates needed to follow when running for Parliament. The senior Liberal emphasized it was not uncommon for first-generation immigrants to exchange money, in both directions, with relatives that still live overseas.

“It’s sad [she] had to go through this. She would have been a great asset for us,” the official said. “We should be trying to become a more inclusive Parliament for Aussies from different backgrounds.”

She joined the party less than a year ago and therefore required special approval to run for Parliament. A separate official said the disendorsement highlighted the risk of preselecting candidates with little experience in party politics, whose potential disqualifying features may not be known to fellow members.

The Division of Jagajaga is an Australian Electoral Division in the state of Victoria is held by Labor’s Kate Thwaites on a margin of 6.7 percent. ABC election analyst Antony Green projects this margin will be reduced to 5.9 percent due to a boundary change, meaning it falls within the margin deemed to be “marginal”. However, Labor has held the seat for its entire history.

Foreign influence laws, enacted by the Turnbull government, are designed to capture activities of foreign governments or entities to exert influence in Australia. The scheme has been criticized for forcing benign individuals, activists, and think tanks to register as agents of foreign influence rather than capturing genuinely harmful agents.

GAROWE ONLINE