DHUSAMAREB, SOMALIA – Galmudug President Liibaan Ahmed Hassan answered an appeal from President Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe at his own inauguration in Dhusamareb on Thursday 5 November, saying “the people of Galmudug” were ready to help defend South West State against an offensive both men blamed on terrorists and foreign backers, while President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told the same gathering that “Somalis will not be ruled by someone they did not elect.” In Mogadishu that day the Supreme Court ruled that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s term had ended on 15 May, confined his government to caretaker business and voided his removal of the chief justice, and security forces were reported inside the court building by the afternoon. The new Galmudug president owes his office to a rerun that court ordered and the president’s party won.
A Galmudug President Pledges Help to Baidoa
President Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe used his turn at the podium to say that terrorists had launched an offensive in South West State, and he asked the federal government and the other member states to stand with his administration against the forces of former President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen. President Liibaan Ahmed Hassan replied from the same stage that his administration stood with South West against al-Shabaab, and his answer was recorded on video: “We, the people of Galmudug, are ready to take part in defending the country.” He blamed the fighting on “terrorism and foreign hands pushing from behind” and urged Somalis to rally to the state.
President Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe reached Baidoa by the route Villa Somalia has used across the federation. Federal forces entered the city on 30 March, former President Laftagareen resigned within hours, an assembly vote on 10 May preceded the new president’s election on 10 June, and on 30 August his cabinet listed his predecessor and his forces as terrorists who had merged with al-Shabaab, citing an interview in which former President Laftagareen said his men and al-Shabaab coexisted.
By Saturday 17 October the Darawish loyal to former President Laftagareen held every district of Bay except Baidoa, among them Qansaxdheere, Buurhakaba, Bardaale, Diinsoor and Awdiinle. The federal army’s push toward Buurhakaba ended at Jameeco on Monday 26 October, where al-Shabaab ambushed a federal column; soldiers who were in the battle said dozens of their comrades were killed and more than a hundred wounded, while the defence ministry published casualty figures for al-Shabaab alone.
Galmudug President Liibaan Ahmed Hassan made a parallel promise about his own state in the same speech, saying his administration would work with neighbouring member states and the federal government to clear al-Shabaab from the areas it still holds in Galmudug “in a short time” and then help drive it from the rest of the country. Brigadier General Sahal Abdullahi Omar, commander of the army’s land forces, spent the days before the ceremony in Dhusamareb in meetings on operations against al-Shabaab and on troop readiness. Guards from the offices of the president and the prime minister arrived on 3 November, and the city barred armed men outside the administration’s own detail and searched vehicles on its streets.
The Speech in Dhusamareb and the Ruling in Mogadishu
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud spoke after the new Galmudug president was sworn in, and his remarks were addressed to rivals he said had made “a hasty decision.” “Come back! The country is still yours, the government is still yours,” he said, adding that “there is no solution in siding with the enemy” and “no solution in shedding blood.” Mistakes by the government could be corrected, he said, “but it will not be corrected with artillery,” and he warned that those who had gone abroad for support in the past had ended up humiliated.
Direct elections would continue to replace the clan-based indirect system, he said, adding that more than two million Somalis had already voted without bloodshed and that “Somalis will not be ruled by someone they did not elect.” He called that principle non-negotiable and said he was ready to meet his opponents wherever an agreement could be reached. None of the published accounts of the speech has him referring to the Supreme Court.
Hours earlier the court’s Constitutional Division had ruled on Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s petition that the March amendments did not extend the terms of the institutions already sitting, so President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s term ended on 15 May and both houses of Parliament and the federal government expired on 14 April. The court limited the government to routine caretaker business, gave the parties 30 days to agree an electoral framework and ordered elections within 90 days. The court also declared void the decree of Wednesday night that had removed Chief Justice Bashe Yusuf Ahmed, saying it was designed to obstruct the administration of justice in that case.
Security forces were reported entering the court building on Thursday afternoon and ordering the chief justice to leave, and the judges were reported to have taken refuge at Sheikh Sharif’s home. Former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire said the president had “launched an assault on the Supreme Court and deployed troops to its premises,” a claim international agencies could not verify. The warning against “siding with the enemy” was delivered at the swearing-in of a Galmudug president, in a city guarded by the president’s own detachment, on the day his opponents accused him of turning soldiers on the bench.
A Galmudug President Chosen in a Court-Ordered Rerun
On 24 August the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Bashe Yusuf Ahmed annulled the 30 July Galmudug vote in a case brought by Towfiiq, finding violations of constitutional and electoral procedure, and ordered a new poll. Towfiiq was then excluded from the rerun after the electoral commission said it had missed the deadline for candidate lists, and on 30 September the Justice and Solidarity Party took 67 of the assembly’s 89 seats.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud had endorsed the future Galmudug president in May, the party handed him its nomination certificate at its Mogadishu headquarters on 28 June, and the outgoing president, Ahmed Abdi Kariye Qoorqoor, announced at the end of June that he would step aside. On 22 October the assembly elected the JSP candidate with 72 votes, Abdulkadir Abdullahi Diriye of Sincad took 14, and three ballots were declared invalid. Qoorqoor, who had led the state since February 2020, handed over on Wednesday 4 November, the same day the presidency issued its decree against the chief justice whose court had ordered the rerun.
Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre arrived with the leaders of Hirshabelle, South West and the North Eastern State, and delegations from foreign missions attended. The electoral commission that registered both presidential tickets on 20 October is a federal body, and Thursday’s ruling holds that whatever the federal institutions did after their mandates lapsed is legally invalid. Reports of the judgment differ on how far that reaches, and no challenge to the Galmudug result on those grounds has been reported. By Friday morning no formal response from Villa Somalia to either ruling had been published.
Towfiiq, the party whose petition produced the rerun, was kept out of it; the chief justice whose court ordered it spent inauguration day reportedly sheltering in a former president’s house; and the Galmudug president it produced opened his term by offering Galmudug’s part in the defence of South West, where the federal column sent toward Buurhakaba was ambushed at Jameeco on 26 October and fell back to its camp.
