Four members of the Gabiley local council have been detained for plotting to remove the Mayor of the town, Mohamed Amin Omar, from his post.
In a bizarre twist to the tail, the discredited and anti-Somaliland BBC Somali Service conducted an interview with an impostor pretending to be the town’s mayor. The Service has since admitted to his incompetence and issued an apology to the mayor of Gabiley.
The four detained councillors are , Burale Mawlid Abdi, Hassan Mohamed Dhegjar, Mahdi Mohamed Hashi Jiijaa, and Id Hassan Abdi.
The councillors accused the mayor of rampant corruption and cronyism. They were arrested by local Police officers acting on orders from the Somaliland Home minister, Mohamed Kahin Ahmed and are currently being held in Hargeisa.
The terms of all the directly elected local councils in Somaliland are set to expire and the prospective parliamentary and local elections scheduled for December, 2019, if held, will see new councillors and mayors elected.
There is also a new legislation enacted by equally the moribund and severely overdue Somaliland House of Representatives, which gives more power to the Council Secretaries to hold accountable their respective councils. This was always the intended purpose, but, the Council Secretaries instead of being independent and representing the central government became part of the local council politics.
Ahmed Kheyre
