Tuesday, November 18, 2014
MOGADISHU, (Xinhua) -- Fourteen cabinet members of Somalia have signed on Sunday a manifesto, urging Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed to resign and leave the office to solve a long standing rift between him and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
Interior and Federalism Minister Abdirahman Godah Barre confirmed that 14 cabinet members including him signed the manifesto which urges the PM to compromise and leave the office.
"We signed the letter and sent to the PM to convince him to leave the office in order to safe the government," Barre said.
"The President has lost his confidence in the PM. The parliament tried to sit and discuss about a no-confidence motion against the PM," he added.
Barre, who is a close ally to the president, described the move as a solution if the PM accepts and smoothly leaves the office.
The ministers that signed the manifesto include the interior minister, the defense minister, the finance minister, the foreign minister, the justice minister.
The prime minister didn't comment whether he would accept the suggestions of his cabinet members that consist of 23 ministers, but the 14 ministers threatened to resign if he refuses to accept their suggestion.
The rift between the PM and the president, which sparked division in the parliament and government shutdown, started when the PM made a cabinet reshuffle that affected the president's key ally Farah Abdulkader who is the minister of the constitution and justice.
The Somalia parliament had organized two failed sessions in one week, after pro-PM members of the parliament protested in the parliament and blocked the speaker to open discussion that would finally vote for a motion against the PM.
Somalia president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud Monday flies to Denmark to attend the New Deal conference in Copenhagen, but the U.S. government withdrew its delegations from that conference in protest of the current rift of the Somalia leadership.