House Speaker Relocates To Hotel Amid Political Crisis

The speaker of Somali house of the people, Mohamed Mursal, has moved out of the official residence in Villa Hargeisa, a member of parliament close to his office has confirmed on Wednesday.

Mohamed Mursal has been at loggerheads with president Farmajo after he accepted a motion of no confidence against the President.

Sources close to the office of the speaker confirmed that speaker Mursal has formally relocated to another residence, hotel Shabelle, near the well-fortified Mogadishu’s Aden Adde international airport.

The move complicates the already tense political crisis looming the horn of African state.

More than ninety members of Somali parliament submitted the motion to impeach the president on the basis of conspiring against the country by breaching the provisional constitution.

The lawmakers blamed president Farmajo for signing treaties with neighboring Ethiopia and Eritrea without consent from cabinet and parliament as a constitutional requirement.

The first and second deputy speakers of the house have since come out terming the move by the speaker and opposition members null and avoid.

On the other the general secretary of the federal parliament, Abdikarim Abdi Buh said the impeachment motion against president Farmajo has failed due to lack of requisite quorum.

According to Buh, the impeachment motion became flop after 14 members of Somalia’s federal parliament denied being part of the signatories of the motion and protested to the clerk through writing that they were illegally added without their consent.

The article 92 (2) of the constitution articulates: “The motion for dismissing the President of the Federal Republic of Somalia may be introduced by no less than one-third (1/3) of the total membership of the House of the People of the Federal Parliament, and may be presented to the Constitutional Court, which shall preside over the case to see whether it has legal grounds.”