ADDIS ABABA: Djibouti\u2019s parliament removed the age limit for presidents with a unanimous vote on Sunday, its speaker said, opening the way for leader Ismail Omar Guelleh to run for a sixth term.<\/p>\n
Guelleh, 77, has held power since 1999 in the tiny Horn of Africa nation, a major port that hosts military bases for the United States, France, China, Japan and Italy.<\/p>\n
Djibouti\u2019s lawmakers unanimously approved the change to the constitution to remove a bar on running for president past the age of 75.<\/p>\n
The move allows Guelleh to run in the next election in April 2026, likely facing minimal opposition in a country with limited freedom of expression and press.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe National Assembly ratified the removal of the age limit today, so it is official,\u201d said parliament speaker Dileita Mohamed Dileita.<\/p>\n
Parliament had already passed the motion a week earlier in an initial vote that was then approved by Guelleh and sent back to lawmakers for the final vote.<\/p>\n
Dileita earlier said the constitutional change was necessary to ensure \u201cthe stability of the small country, in a troubled region, the Horn of Africa, with Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guelleh won the last election in 2021 with 97 percent of the vote while his party, the Union for the Presidential Majority, holds the majority of parliamentary seats.<\/p>\n
He succeeded Hassan Gouled Aptidon, the father of Djibouti\u2019s independence, in 1999 after serving as his chief of staff for 22 years.<\/p>\n
Djibouti has only around one million inhabitants but lies on the strategic trade route of the Bab El-Mandeb Strait on the Red Sea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ADDIS ABABA: Djibouti\u2019s parliament removed the age limit for presidents with a unanimous vote on Sunday, its speaker said, opening the way for leader Ismail Omar Guelleh to run for a sixth term. Guelleh, 77, has held power since 1999 in the tiny Horn of Africa nation, a major port that hosts military bases for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89032,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89009\/revisions\/89032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}