SOMALILAND POSTPONES PRESIDENTIAL POLL TO NEXT YEAR

MOGADISHU - Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland will postpone its scheduled presidential election to next year, rather than holding it in November when the incumbent president’s term ends, the region’s electoral body has said.

In August deadly protests broke out in the region with demonstrators demanding elections be held in November amid suspicions President Muse Bihi Abdi wanted to delay the poll and extend his term.

The poll will now be held in nine months from October - or next July - because the current scheduled date of

November 13 “is not viable due to time, technical and financial constraints,” the Somaliland National Electoral Commission (SLNEC) tweeted on Saturday.

Somaliland broke away from Somalia in 1991 but has not gained widespread international recognition for its independence. The region has been mostly peaceful while Somalia has grappled with three decades of civil war.

In the August clashes between security forces and opposition protesters at least five people were killed and 100 injured.

In a press conference after the SLNEC’s announcement, Wadani, one of the opposition parties that championed the August protests, welcomed the new date.

“We welcome the decision … we congratulate them for ending the controversy of the presidential election,” Mohamud Aden Jama, Wadani party’s information secretary, told the press conference.

Meanwhile, one soldier was killed and at least six others injured in Somalia yesterday when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a military base in the west of the capital Mogadishu, a soldier and a hospital worker said.

The suicide bomber had disguised himself as a regular soldier and joined others as they filed into a military base early yesterday before he detonated the explosive, Captain Aden Omar, a soldier at the base said.

A nurse at Madina Hospital in Mogadishu said they had received one dead soldier and six others who were wounded.

It was not immediately clear who had carried out the attack but Islamist group al Shabaab frequently carries out bombings and gun attacks in Somalia and elsewhere.

The al Qaeda-allied group wants to topple Somalia’s central government and establish its own rule based on its own strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law.