Blog

1. Dr A. S. Abbas, a Senior Citizen of Somalia and the UK, is a former Director General at the Ministry of Health, former Vice Minister of Health, international public health specialist, a long-time civic leader and peace activist.

1. Aweys Omar Mohamoud was born and bred in Aden Yabal, a district of Middle Shabelle region (ex regione di Benaadir) in 1960.  He has completed his primary education there and, as things used to be in those days, moved to Mogadishu to undertake his post-primary education. After school, he trained as a health worker in one of the finest institutions of health-care training in Mogadishu at the time - The Health Personnel Training Institute (HPTI) near Ospedale Martini, and opposite the then British Embassy.

Several months ago, a not-so-complicated secret plan was afoot to have the lower house of parliament announce provisions to extend their term of office and that of the President. Supporters of President Farmaajo were saying so in private. At a public event, the current care-taker PM (a position not provided for in the constitution), Mr. Mahdi Guuleed (then a deputy PM), harangued MPs not to leave office unless a parliament elected by a one-person-one-vote (OPOV) election model was there to replace them, and to set that position by statute.

In response to each big question of politics, one must surely reply ''It depends.'' Valid answers depend on the context in which the political processes under study occur. They also depend on the context in terms of understandings built into the questions, the evidence available for answering the questions, and the actual operation of the political processes themselves.

In a game of 'who blinks first!' in Duusamareeb, the regional capital of Galmudug State, all five FMS leaders' faces were set in determination for two weeks on one thing only: to tell President Farmaajo to get off his high horse and accept that indirect elections are the only game in town to meet the deadline for holding the 2020/2021 elections which are baked into the country's constitutional framework.