Somalia’s prime minister remained steadfast in his refusal to resign on Tuesday, defying a deal struck between the president and parliamentary speaker to oust him while extending the troubled administration’s term. Signed last week, the
“Kampala Accord” resolved a showdown over how to manage elections slated for August by deferring them to next year.
It also required Prime Minister Mohammed Abdullahi Mohammed step down and a new premier be appointed by mid-July.
Citing rallies on his behalf, the US-educated Mohammed has demurred — a stance that risks stoking the tensions with President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed and Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, who covets the top job, as the handover deadline nears.
“I will not resign as long as the people want and protest for me. Protests will go on peacefully. We do not want violence,” Mohammed told reporters in the capital Mogadishu.
Only parliament could order him to leave office, said Mohamed, an ex-diplomat with a reputation for honesty who returned last year to head a government riven by internal fighting and corruption. Foreign donors and regional allies have grown increasingly impatient at the slow pace of political reform in the Horn of Africa country, which they say is hampering efforts to quash to an Islamist insurgency there.