Somalia’s parliament voted to change its constitution and extend the term in office for lawmakers \u200band the president, the president and the parliament’s \u200cspeaker said, pushing back planned elections by a year.<\/p>\n
Somalia has endured conflict and clan battles with no strong central government since \u200bthe fall of autocratic ruler Mohamed Siad Barre \u200bin 1991.<\/p>\n
While an African Union peacekeeping mission has \u2060pushed back the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group, \u200bit still controls vast areas of the countryside and \u200bhas the ability to conduct regular strikes on major population centres.<\/p>\n
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud had reached a deal last August with some \u200bopposition leaders stipulating that, while lawmakers would be \u200bdirectly elected in 2026, the president would still be chosen by \u200cparliament. \u2060A 2024 law restored universal suffrage ahead of the vote.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, 222 lawmakers from the parliament and senate out of a total of 329 voted by acclamation \u200bto change the \u200blaw, extending \u2060their term and that of the president to five years, from four years previously.<\/p>\n
“Today \u200bis a historic day for it is \u200bthe \u2060official completion of the constitution which had dragged for a long period,” the president told a press conference on \u2060Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Opposition \u200bparty leaders, including former presidents and \u200bformer prime ministers, rejected the amendment and called for elections in \u200bMay as planned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Somalia’s parliament voted to change its constitution and extend the term in office for lawmakers \u200band the president, the president and the parliament’s \u200cspeaker said, pushing back planned elections by a year. Somalia has endured conflict and clan battles with no strong central government since \u200bthe fall of autocratic ruler Mohamed Siad Barre \u200bin 1991. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":16748,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":26,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,33],"tags":[1179,189],"class_list":["post-20089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-politics","tag-hassan-sheikh-mohamud","tag-somalia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20090,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20089\/revisions\/20090"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}