27″ Dec” 2021″Dheeho
Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble accused Farmajo, calling it a “coup attempt, to stay in power”.
Roble, who recently filmed, said President Farmajo had attacked the offices of the Prime Minister and the cabinet to obstruct their duties.
Roble said the federal government he leads is fully responsible for leading and directing government institutions, and instructed all forces and commanders to report directly to the office of the prime minister.
Roble said Somali forces cannot command President Farmajo, who he says is a candidate like any other candidate for the presidency.
Disputes between the two leaders have escalated in the past 24 hours
Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo has said he has suspended Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble, accusing him of infiltrating corruption and “misappropriating public land” by Somali forces.
The purpose of the illegal actions… is to disrupt the elections and keep him farmaajo in office illegally, said one Somali scholar in Mogadishu.
Roble’s office also called the remarks “outrageous” and said on Twitter that any attempt to “take over the military” from the prime minister’s office was illegal.
This new conflict has caused a great deal of fear and confusion in the country, especially in Mogadishu.
Meanwhile, the United States and the United Kingdom have called for calm in the new crisis between Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo and his prime minister.
Relations between the as Farmajo, and Roble have long been frosty, with the latest development raising fresh fears for Somalia’s stability as it struggles to hold elections.
Assistant Information Minister Abdirahman Yusuf Omar Adala called the president’s decision an “indirect coup.”
“What is going on this morning is [an] indirect coup but it will not win,” Adala said on Facebook, adding that the deployment of security forces around Roble’s office would not prevent the prime minister from carrying out his duties.
Speaking from Nairobi, Matt Bryden, political analyst at Sahan, a think tank focusing on the Horn of Africa, said: “Somalia has been in a constitutional crisis since February when the president’s mandate expired.
“The country has been held together by a political agreement between stakeholders of the federal government, federal member states and stakeholders in the elections,” Bryden told Al Jazeera.
US worried by long series of delays
In April, pro-government and opposition fighters opened fire in the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, after Farmajo extended his term without holding fresh elections.
The constitutional crisis was defused when Farmajo reversed the extension and Roble brokered a timetable to a vote.
But in the months that followed, a bitter rivalry between the men derailed the election again, alarming international observers.
Farmajo and Roble agreed to bury the hatchet in October, and issued a unified call for the glacial election process to accelerate.
Somalia has not held a one-man one-vote election in 50 years and its polls follow a complex indirect model.
Elections for the upper house have concluded in all states and voting for the lower house began in early November.
The appointment of a president still appears to be a long way off, straining ties with Western allies who want to see the process reach a peaceful conclusion.
On Sunday, the United States said it was “deeply concerned by the continuing delays and by the procedural irregularities that have undermined the credibility of the process”.
Roble’s office said in an earlier statement that Farmajo had “spent a lot of time, energy and resources trying to disrupt the national elections”, and that he had misled the electoral process.
