Day: May 14, 2022

Somalia’s parliament has reelected former President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud following marathon voting in Mogadishu on Sunday.

The voting took place in the heavily guarded Mogadishu airport with African Union forces securing the tent inside a hangar, where the secret balloting took place. In a joint session of the two houses of the parliament, the Upper House and Lower House, 327 lawmakers cast ballots for 36 presidential candidates in three rounds of voting.

Outgoing President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo and his immediate predecessor, Mohamud, competed in the final round of voting, needing a simple majority to win. It was a rematch of the 2017 election when Farmaajo beat Mohamud to become president.

“Out of 327 parliamentarians who voted the final round, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud got 214 (votes), while President Farmaajo got 110, three votes spoiled,” Speaker Adan Mohamed Nur said. “He is the legitimate president from this hour.”

Farmaajo congratulated Mohamud during a live broadcast on national television.

“Thanks to Allah for allowing us to complete our election tonight. I thank those who voted for me and those who voted against me,” Farmaajo said. “I want to welcome my brother, the new president. Congratulations.”

Mohamud was immediately sworn in.

In a brief speech, Mohamud thanked Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble for leading the election process.

Mohamud said he would not be looking to go against Farmaajo supporters. “There will be no revenge,” he said. “If we have differences, we will use the country’s laws to settle it.”

Voting

The voting went into the third round after no candidate won the two-thirds (220) majority required for a candidate to win outright in the first and second rounds.

In the first round, Mohamud finished third, with 52 votes. But he finished on top in the second round with 110 votes. Farmaajo finished second in the first round with 59 votes, and 83 in the second round.

The president of Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region, Said Abdullahi Dani, and former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire finished third and fourth in the race, respectively.

Mohamud was president from September 2012 to February 2017. In his previous administration, he led with a “six pillar policy” plan topped by stability and the rule of law, peace-building, reconciliation, economic recovery and national unity. When he left power in February 2017, the main challenge to Somalia’s stability was the insurgent group al-Shabab. His successor failed to remove the al-Shabab threat, too.

Earlier this month, the militant group attacked an Africa Union military base in the town of El-Baraf, killing at least 30 Burundian peacekeepers.

Mohamud was born in the town of Jalalaqsi in the Hiran region in 1955. He graduated from Somali National University with a bachelor’s degree in technology and received a master’s in technical education from Barkatullah University. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the same school in 2015.

In 1999, he cofounded the Somali Institute of Management and Administration Development (SIMAD) in Mogadishu, which later became one of the biggest universities in Mogadishu.

In 2008, Mohamud was appointed as the CEO of Telecom Somalia.

In 2011, he entered politics and established the independent Peace and Development Party (PDP), which elected him as the party’s chair. In August 2012, Mohamud was selected as a member of parliament. The following month he was elected president of Somalia.

Marathon election process

Mohamud was elected by an indirect election as the country’s leaders could not agree on an election model.

On February 20, 2020, Farmaajo signed a landmark election law that allowed popular voting. But it immediately hit a snag because the government did not control the entire country. Key Somali regional leaders and opposition politicians resisted the initiative, accusing Farmaajo of concentrating power at the center of the country and weakening the role of other regions.

In June 2020, National Independent Election Commission (NIEC) chair Halima Ismail Ibrahim ruled out holding direct elections by Nov. 27, 2020, as scheduled, the date the parliament’s mandate expired. Halima gave the parliament two options: An electionbased on biometric registration that she proposed to take place in August 2021; and a manual-based registration that could have been held in March 2021.

She cited that buying voting machines and election equipment, securing election centers and enacting a mass awareness campaign would take months to complete.

That sparked a long political tussle that forced a return to the indirect election where clans and regional leaders played a role in who is elected to parliament. On Sept. 17, 2020, the sides agreed that elections would take place in two towns in each of the federal member states, and in Mogadishu. They also agreed that 101 electoral delegates would elect each lawmaker.

The September 17 agreement faced a setback on April 12, 2021, when the Somali parliament controversially extended the mandate of the parliament and the president by two years. This led to violence in Mogadishu and condemnations by the international community.

On May 1, the Somali lawmakers retreated from the controversial term extension plan and accepted a return to the Sept. 17 agreement. On that same day, Farmaajo handed over the security and management of the election process to Prime Minister Roble.

On July 29, 2021, the first MP was elected. On May 6, 2022, the last MP was elected.

Allegations of voter irregularities overshadowed the election process. The election results of at least four seats were nullified amid fraud concerns, two were later approved, one was recontested and one remains nullified. Roble himself admitted the election was not taking place as scheduled and fired several members of the election disputes resolution team.

Challenges

The new president faces the same challenges that has impeded the country’s progress. In addition to ongoing droughts and al-Shabab, the country’s federal system is not functioning properly.

Ibrahim, the chair of the National Independent Electoral Committee, says key among the challenges is settling the constitution. “We have a federal system but it’s incomplete, the constitutional is incomplete,” she said.

She also said the new president needs to work on making sure the Somali people directly elect the next president. She said the election model the country is going to adopt must be stated in the constitution.

The other key challenge is tackling the country’s security problems. Al-Shabab has been fighting the Somali government for nearly 15 years.

Jihan Abdullahi Hassan, former director of the Somali Ministry of Defense, said the new president must restore discipline among the military. “The army has mingled in politics,” she said. “The first task is to separate the army from the politics.”

Jihan said the country needs a clear national security policy, better-equipped army and a unified front against al-Shabab.

“Al-Shabab can be defeated,” she said. “The important thing is to have a well-defined overall national security policy between the federal government and the federal member states.”

Source: Voice of America

BAMAKO, MALI — Mali said Sunday it was withdrawing from a west African force fighting jihadists to protest its being rejected as head of the G5 regional group, which also includes Mauritania, Chad, Burkina and Niger.

“The government of Mali is deciding to withdraw from all the organs and bodies of the G5 Sahel, including the joint force” fighting the jihadists, it said in a statement.

The G5 Sahel was created in 2014 and its anti-jihadist force launched in 2017.

A conference of heads of state of the G5 Sahel scheduled for February 2022 in Bamako had been due to mark “the start of the Malian presidency of the G5.”

But nearly four months after the mandate indicated this meeting “has still not taken place,” the statement said.

Bamako “firmly rejects the argument of a G5 member state which advances the internal national political situation to reject Mali’s exercising the G5 Sahel presidency,” the statement said, without naming the country.

The Mali government said “the opposition of some G5 Sahel member states to Mali’s presidency is linked to maneuvers by a state outside the region aiming desperately to isolate Mali,” without naming that country.

Mali has been since January 9 the target of a series of economic and diplomatic sanctions from west African states to punish the military junta’s bid to stay in power for several more years, following coups in August 2020 and May 2021.

The junta has opted for a two-year transition while the Economic Community of West African States has urged Bamako to organize elections in 16 months maximum.

Beyond Mali and Burkina, the G5 Sahel, composed of around 5,000 troops, includes Mauritania, Chad and Niger.

The military coups in Mali and Burkina Faso are undermining the regional force’s opertional capacity, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a report to Security Council on May 11.

“I am deeply concerned by the rapidly deteriorating security situation in the Sahel, as well as by the potentially debilitating effect the uncertain political situation in Mali, Burkina Faso and beyond will have on efforts to further operationalize the G5-Sahel Joint Force,” Guterres’ report said.

Source: Voice of America

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Sunday declared 10 people saints of the Roman Catholic Church, including an anti-Nazi Dutch priest murdered in the Dachau concentration camp and a French hermit monk assassinated in Algeria.

The 85-year-old pope, who has been using a wheelchair due to knee and leg pain, was driven to the altar at the start of the ceremony, which was attended by more than 50,000 people in St Peter’s Square. It was the one of the largest gatherings there since the easing of COVID-19 restrictions earlier this year.

Francis limped to a chair behind the altar but stood to individually greet some participants. He read his homily while seated but stood during other parts of the Mass and read his homily in a strong voice, often going off script, and walked to greet cardinals afterwards.

Francis read the canonization proclamations while seated in front of the altar and 10 cheers went up in the crowd as he officially declared each of 10 saints.

Titus Brandsma, who was a member of the Carmelite religious order and served as president of the Catholic university at Nijmegen, began speaking out against Nazi ideology even before World War II and the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940.

During the Nazi occupation, he spoke out against anti-Jewish laws. He urged Dutch Catholic newspapers not to print Nazi propaganda.

He was arrested in 1942 and held in Dutch jails before being taken to Dachau, near Munich, where he was subjected to biological experimentation and killed by lethal injection the same year at the age of 61. He is considered a martyr, having died because of what the Church calls “in hatred of the faith.”

The other well-known new saint is Charles de Foucauld, a 19th century French nobleman, soldier, explorer, and geographer who later experienced a personal conversion and became a priest, living as a hermit among the poor Berbers in North Africa.

He published the first Tuareg-French dictionary and translated Tuareg poems into French. De Foucauld was killed during a kidnapping attempt by Bedouin tribal raiders in Algeria in 1916.

The other eight who were declared saints on Sunday included Devasahayam Pillai, who was killed for converting to Christianity in 18th century India, and Cesar de Bus, a 16th century French priest who founded a religious order.

The others were two Italian priests, three Italian nuns, and a French nun, all of whom who lived between the 16th and 20th centuries.

“These saints favored the spiritual and social growth of their nations and the whole human family, while sadly in the world today, distances are widening, tensions and wars are increasing,” Francis said after the Mass.

World leaders had to be “protagonists of peace and not of war,” he said in an apparent reference to Ukraine.

Miracles have been attributed to all the new saints.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that only God performs miracles, but that saints, who are believed to be with God in heaven, intercede on behalf of people who pray to them.

Several other Catholics killed in Nazi concentration camps have already been declared saints. They include Polish priest Maximilian Kolbe and Sister Edith Stein, a German nun who converted from Judaism. Both were killed in the Auschwitz camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Source: Voice of America