Farmajo meets house speaker amid ongoing pre-election wrangles

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Somalia's former President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo on Tuesday held a closed-door meeting with outgoing house speaker Mohamed Mursal, in what could be a last-minute trial to save the country from plunging into a deep political crisis.

Also present were two deputy speakers who sit in Parliament and the crisis may have featured prominently in the meeting. President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo and the parliament's term ended recently and there have been questions about legitimacy.

With no clear path to elections, the country is staring at a crisis thus raising the pressure within Somalia, a country that has never held direct elections for over five decades. It's after this meeting that Farmajo announced plans to hold a pre-election conference in Garowe on Feb 15.

But Puntland state which is on record for accusing Farmajo of staging the stalemate said the conference should be held in Mogadishu so that all stakeholders get the opportunity to attend. Puntland and Jubaland had called for the reconstitution of the electoral committee.

Last week, the teams failed to reach an agreement in Dhusamareeb, the regional administrative capital of Galmadug, where a number of stakeholders had gathered. Missing in the conference were a host of opposition leaders who were not invited by Farmajo.

The international community continues to pile pressure on Farmajo to hold dialogue, and this must have informed his latest decision to call for the conference. The European Union and the US have been in the frontline trying to broker a meeting among the stakeholders.

The African Union which is also responsible for the promotion of peace and stability has been pushing for stability in the country. The team, in a tweet, said it's closely monitoring the stalemate in Somalia, where it has close to 22,000 soldiers in a peacekeeping mission.

"AUPSC calls on Somali political class to urgently work together towards credible elections, underscores AMISOM’s contributions to peace and stability in Somalia and requests AUC to expedite deployment of the AU-led assessment team to chart a way forward for multidimensional," it said.

GAROWE ONLINE