Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed (Farmajo)

By expelling the Kenyan ambassador and then doubling down by severing all diplomatic ties with its southern neighbour President Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed 'Farmajo' appears to be hoping that Somalis will respect his raising of the stakes with parliamentary elections due next month followed by presidential polls in February (AC Vol 61 No 24 Testing time for elections)...

Yet it is becoming increasingly clear that President Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed 'Farmajo' will not give up power easily...

That's what happened we hear when Somalia's President Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed 'Farmajo' sacked his Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmed Isse Awad on 19 November...

Abiy had brought Somali President Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed 'Farmajo' into the negotiations (AC Vol 61 No 16 Clearing a path)...

Khaire's fall is a consequence of the stance he took over the meeting at Dhusamareb two days earlier at which heads of the Federal Member States agreed with President Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed 'Farmajo' that the country wasn't ready yet for elections based on one person one vote (AC Vol 61 No 15 Ugly compromises)...

In early July 70 notables had signed 'Manifesto II' a declaration warning the Somali political elite and the international community that a new civil war could break out if President Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed 'Farmajo's' administration continued to refuse the possibility of compromise with opposition political parties and the devolved federal member states...

ASWJ and the new Puntland administration of President Said Abdullahi Dani distrusted and loathed both Al Shabaab and the state president Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed 'Farmajo'...

The likeliest scenarios this year are either an extension of the mandate of President Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed 'Farmajo' and the two parliamentary houses or a return to the 2016 political arrangement...

Months of tensions between Mogadishu and its southern state of Jubaland came to the boil in early March and spilled across the Kenyan border in a violent face-off between the Somali National Army (SNA) of President  Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed  'Farmajo' and a militia loyal to Jubaland's fugitive security minister Abdirashid Hassan Abdinur Janan who is suspected to have taken refuge in Kenya...

Yamamoto has sided with President Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed 'Farmajo' who has been attempting to get his allies appointed president in a number of the federal member states while drumming up international interest in Somalia's oil sector...

The calculation could be that if humanitarian aid failed to get through to Somalia the resulting suffering would be a recruiting tool for Al Shabaab and therefore President Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed 'Farmajo' would do all he could to prevent it...