MOGADISHU (Halbeeg News) – The heads of Somali police and African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), Abdi Hassan Mohamed and Francisco Madeira respectively have discussed meeting on ways step up the security of the country’s upcoming election.
The meeting which also focused on strategies to provide adequate security for Somalia’s upcoming one-person-one-vote elections took place in Mogadishu this week.
Abdi gave an update on the newly formed Election Security Task Force and how AMISOM could support the taskforce by providing security for both the parliamentary and presidential elections, expected to be held in 2020/2021.
Abdi told the meeting that while a lot still needed to be done, tremendous progress had been made by Somali government, working together with international partners, to enhance the security of Mogadishu, other cities and villages across the country.
“The ministry of internal security has already nominated a number of commissioners at the regional and federal level to come together but what we need is to decentralize from the headquarters down to the regions and every village where the elections will take place,” he said.
The meeting also attended by senior AMISOM and SPF personnel among them Somali Deputy Police Commissioner, Brigadier General Zakia Hussein Ahmed and other senior officers.
Madeira emphasized the need for AMISOM and the SPF to work closely together in order to not only secure the elections but also enhance security all across so that the Somali people can go about their lives normally.
“What we need is to see how these small incidents (of attacks by militants) which are still taking place can also be put under control,” Ambassador Madeira said. “We need to look at a number of issues ranging from the resources that are available, how we can secure the elections, especially drawing from our experience and then the critical issue of identifying areas where the elections are going to take place”.
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