The Somaliland Police Commissioner, Brigadier-General Mohamed Adan
Sanqadhi ‘Dabagale’, urged Waddani supporters not to heed their leader’s call
for a massive demonstration tomorrow, Monday.
The police commander stated that the protest demonstration Waddani
Chairman, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi ‘Irro’, asked his followers to come out
to in the capital, Hargeisa, and congregate at the national, opposition party’s
head office, was not only a threat to security but unconstitutional since
permission was neither sought nor granted.
“Somaliland has no record of peaceful demonstrations where the
event starts peacefully, ends peacefully. There usually, among the
demonstrators, criminal elements mingle turning the occasion to a violent,
regrettable confrontation between the law enforcement officers and
stone-throwing demonstrators,” he said in a televised statement.
Chairman Irro, in another press conference, Sunday, expressed
regret that President Musa Bihi Abdi, went back on an earlier agreement in
which the three national parties agreed on the replacement the then incumbent
Electoral Commissioners with a fresh lot. The consensus reached a protracted
and often caustic lip battle among the parties on the reliability of the
commissioners to hold the upcoming parliamentary and municipal councils’
elections.
President Bihi, at an occasion he spoke at Sunday, challenged the
national, opposition parties, especially Waddani, to produce a signed document
attesting to the claim that the parties agreed to replace all commissioners.
President Bihi, whose mandate it was to nominate 3 of the 7 commissioners,
returned one of the outgoing commissioners, named another who was accused of
being an active campaigner of the ruling party. Both of these members were
constitutionally challenged by the two opposition parties stating that the
President had a propensity for political brawls rather than avoiding
potentially contentious issues.
Six out of the 7 new commissioners were approved bt the House of Representative’s
las Monday.
