House of Elders respond to case filed against them

Hargeisa (Somaliland.com) – The House of Elders, Somaliland’s upper house of parliament, has responded to a lawsuit filed against them by an independent group called the National Consultative/Advisory Forum.

The forum which is mostly made up by former SNM veterans brought before the Constitutional Court against the House for unconstitutional extension of parliament’s term.

Mohamed Sheik Abdirahman, the chairman of the internal affairs committee, said the House of Elders’ recent term extension was constitutional.

Senator Mohamed Sheikh Abdirahman argued that term extension prevented a vacuum in the legislative branch of the government. Such a prevented vacuum, the senator said, is tantamount to a dire disaster which is a cause for term extension allowed in the Consitution. Mohamed Sheikh Abdirah argued that the latest term extension made by the House of Elders has precedents that legitimize it.

The term extension by the House of Elders is constitutional because there is no disaster bigger than a lack of timely election and vacuum in government. It is not the first time the House of Elders made a term extension, and these people were not out of the country in those previous times.

MP Mohamed Abdirahman

However, the constitutional article in question further clarifies the meaning of dire circumstances which is defined as either a wide war, internal instability, serious natural disasters

On Wednesday, The national advisory forum lodged the case at the constitutional court, seeking to reverse the house of elders’ decision to extend the house of representatives term to January 2022 and their term to January 2023. This is part of a wider condemnation of the latest term extension made by the House of Elders which is the sixth for the current lower house of parliament alone.