Juba­land Min­istry of Jus­tice and Con­sti­tu­tional & Re­li­gious Af­fairs as an­nounced on Fri­day that it will not be at­tend­ing the Na­tional Con­sti­tu­tional Con­ven­tion this week.

Aden Ibrahim Aw Hirsi, Juba­land’s Min­is­ter of Jus­tice, Con­sti­tu­tion & Re­li­gious Af­fairs, con­firmed that Juba­land has de­clined to at­tend the con­fer­ence and have com­mu­ni­cated their de­ci­sion to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment.

Aw Hirsi tweeted his frus­tra­tions shortly af­ter an­nounc­ing the de­ci­sion say­ing le­git­i­mate stake­hold­ers and au­thor­i­ties can’t be dressed up as a su­per­fi­cial dis­play.

“The se­ri­ous, sub­stan­tial, thor­ough ne­go­ti­a­tions by all stake­hold­ers & per­ti­nent au­thor­i­ties re­quired for So­ma­li­a’s Con­sti­tu­tional Re­view Process can’t be re­placed by cheer­ing crowds, jaded sound­bites, cen­trist dog­whis­tles & chore­o­graphed ap­pear­ances by pho­to­genic lead­ers.”

Hi­iraan On­line con­tacted Aw Hirsi to elab­o­rate but he de­clined to com­ment fur­ther.

The de­ci­sion to not at­tend comes at a time of grow­ing po­lit­i­cal fric­tion be­tween the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment of So­ma­lia and Punt­land – an­other pow­er­ful re­gional mem­ber state -.

Jub­ba­land Pres­i­dent, Ahmed Mo­hammed Is­lam, who re­cently re­turned to Kismayo, held a press con­fer­ence, ac­cus­ing the gov­ern­ment of not re­spect­ing the re­gional gov­ern­ments and called on the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment to pro­tect the con­sti­tu­tional rights of the re­gional states.

Last Oc­to­ber, two piv­otal bod­ies that are re­spon­si­ble for the re­view and im­ple­men­ta­tion of So­ma­li­a’s con­sti­tu­tion boy­cotted a planned con­fer­ence sched­uled in Mo­gadishu, cit­ing an over­reach­ing Min­istry of Con­sti­tu­tional Af­fairs of de­rail­ing the talks. The So­mali gov­ern­ment was forced to can­cel the en­tire con­fer­ence due to “tech­ni­cal rea­sons”, with­out cit­ing any spe­cific de­tails.

Prime Min­is­ter Kheyre held an mer­gency meet­ing with the Over­sight Com­mit­tee shortly af­ter in re­sponse to the boy­cott. OC Chair­man Abdi Qeyb­did emerged from the meet­ing say­ing that that the two par­ties have reached a ten­ta­tive agree­ment but did not elab­o­rate