SOMALIA’s Prime Minister, MOHAMED HUSSEIN ROBLE told visiting UN diplomats on Sunday that the long-delayed elections will proceed as planned, even as a damaging feud between him and the country’s president sparked fresh fears for the troubled Horn of Africa Nation.
The public spat between ROBLE and President MOHAMED ABDULLAHI MOHAMED, comes as SOMALIA struggles to organize polls that are months behind schedule and keep an Islamist insurgency at bay.
As senior politicians made frantic efforts to defuse tensions and end the impasse, ROBLE told a delegation led by United Nations Deputy Secretary General AMINA MOHAMMED that the vote would go ahead as planned.
The increasingly bitter row has threatened to throw an already fragile electoral process into deeper peril.
FARMAJO’s four-year mandate expired in February, but was extended by parliament in April, triggering deadly gun battles in the capital MOGADISHU, with some rivals viewing it as a flagrant power grab.
