Somali President Suspends Prime Minister Amid Corruption Probe

(Bloomberg) -- President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed of Somalia on Monday suspended the powers of the prime minister and sent troops to his office, the latest fracas in a long-running dispute between the two men.

Mohamed, widely known as Farmajo, accused the prime minister, his one-time ally, Hussein Roble, of corruption in a land deal with the national army. 

The move was called an “indirect coup” by Deputy Minister of Information Abdirahman Yusuf Omar Adala, and Mohamed Ibrahim Moallimow, a spokesman for the government, said Roble’s suspension was “unconstitutional” and undermined the ability of the country to facilitate free and fair elections.

Rising political tensions in the Horn of Africa nation may allow terror group Al-Shabaab, which wants to impose its version of Islamic law and has waged an insurgency since 2006, to take advantage of a power vacuum in an already volatile region. The U.S. on Sunday asked Somali authorities to form a National Consultative Council to expedite elections.

“The deployment of troops at the prime minister’s offices is against the law,” Adala said.

Tensions between Farmajo and Roble have been escalating for months. Earlier this year Farmajo moved to strip the prime minister of his powers during a standoff over the president’s handling of the killing of 24-year-old Ikran Tahlil, a cyber-security expert at Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency. Roble accused Farmajo of obstructing a probe into Tahlil’s disappearance in June, and a five-member panel established to seek justice in the case found no one guilty of her death.

The African Union has deployed almost 20,000 troops to try and shore up the government and maintain stability, and a failure to hold credible elections will make their task substantially more difficult, analysts say.

“The United States is deeply concerned by the continuing delays and by the procedural irregularities that have undermined the credibility of the process,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement on Sunday. 

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