Published On: Mon, Aug 20th, 2012

Somalia’s New Parliament Sworn In

(RTTNews) – Somalia’s first formal parliament in more than two decades was sworn into office on Monday, marking a major milestone in the country’s efforts to end the eight-year-long transitional period by establishing a stable and permanent government.

The 211 new parliament members sworn in on Monday were selected by a group of 135 traditional Somali elders with the help of a technical selection committee entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that the new parliament does not include those accused of war crimes.

The group of elders who chose the new parliament was in-turn selected by Somalia’s National Constituent Assembly (NCA), which has total of 825 elders drawn from all Somali clans. The group of elders were originally expected to select 275 members to the lower house of parliament, but the technical selection committee rejected some of their choices.

Although another 64 seats remain to the filled to the 275-member lower house of parliament, the 211 new MPs are sufficient for a quorum. They are currently holding the first ever meeting of the new parliament at an airport protected by the African Union peacekeeping forces in capital Mogadishu.

During Monday’s meeting, the new MPs elected General Muse Hassan, the oldest member of parliament at 72, as a temporary speaker. Nevertheless, they are not expected to meet the August 20 deadline set by the international community for completing the transition process by electing new Speaker, Deputy Speaker as well as the President.

General Hassan will now oversee the formation of an electoral commission that will organize the vote for selecting the new parliamentary speaker, his deputy and the president. The main presidential contenders include outgoing President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali and former parliamentary speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden.

In a joint statement issued Sunday, the United Nation, the African Union, the United States and the European Union noted that conclusion of the transition process would mark the “beginning of more representative government in Somalia.”

“Whilst parliament remains a selected rather than elected body, it is essential that it cuts its ties with the past of self-interest and warlordism, and is populated by a new generation of Somali politicians, including the proper representation of Somali women,” they added.

In recent months, the country had been undergoing a peace and national reconciliation process, with the country’s transitional federal institutions implementing the ‘Roadmap for the End of Transition’ devised last September. The Roadmap outlined priority measures to be carried out before the transitional governing arrangements end, on August 20.

In line with the Roadmap, the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) had voted earlier this month to endorse a Draft Constitution. However, the NCA-approved draft constitution still has to be ratified by the new Parliament to take effect.

Somalia has been without a functioning government since the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre’s government in 1991. Incidentally, the outgoing UN-backed interim government set up in 2004 has been struggling to enforce its authority in the Horn of Africa nation.

Until recently, Islamist militant groups controlled large areas in southern Somalia where they enforced strict Islamic laws or Sharia. But in recent months, Somali forces, backed by African Union peacekeepers, have managed to seize control of most regions, except some pockets that are under rebel control. However, the country still witnesses frequent bombings and militant attacks, mainly in Mogadishu.

by RTT Staff Writer

For comments and feedback: editorial@rttnews.com


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Hiiraan Net. All Rights Reserved Designed by Hiiraan Net.
There have been no elections in Somalia since 1967 and there won’t be any this year either. But the country has a new parliament (appointed on the advice of clan elders) who have elected a new president, and the new government actually now controls a significant part of the country. The world’s only fully “failed state” may finally be starting to return to normality.A failed state is a horrendous thing: no government, no army, no police, no courts, no law, just bands of armed men taking what they want. Somalia has been like that for more than 20 years, but now there is hope. So much hope that last month the United Nations Security Council partially lifted its embargo on arms sales to Somalia in order to let the new Somali government buy arms, and last week the U.S. government followed suit.The new government replaces the “Transitional Federal Government”, another unelected body that had enjoyed the support of the UN and the African Union for eight pointless years. Then last year a World Bank report demonstrated the sheer scale of its corruption: seven out of every ten dollars of foreign aid vanished into the pockets of TFG officials before reaching the state’s coffers.Fully a quarter of the “national budget” was being absorbed by the offices of the president, the vice-president and the speaker of parliament. The fact that after all that the TFG still only controlled about one square kilometre (less than one square mile) of Mogadishu, the capital, while the rest of the shattered city was run by the Islamist al-Shabaab militia, an affiliate of al-Qaeda, also contributed to the international disillusionment.That tiny patch of ground, moreover, was being defended not by Somali troops but by thousands of Ugandan and Burundian soldiers of the African Union Mission in Somalia (Unisom). More than 500 of them had lost their lives defending the useless TFG, and the foreign donors were losing faith in the mission. But the Unisom soldiers did achieve one major thing: they fought al-Shabaab to a standstill in Mogadishu.In August 2011 the Islamist militia pulled its troops out of the capital. That created an opening, and the international community seized it. It ruthlessly initiated a process designed to push the TFG aside: Somali clan elders were asked to nominate members for a new 250-seat parliament, which was then asked to vote for a new president and government.It was obviously impossible to hold a free election in a country much of which was still under al-Shabaab’s control, but this process also had the advantage that it allowed the foreigners to shape the result. The corrupt officials who had run the old TFG all re-applied for their old jobs, but none of them succeeded.The new president who emerged from this process, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, is a former academic and human rights worker who only entered politics in 2011. No whiff of corruption clings to him, and he has worked tirelessly to bring about national reconciliation. And he has the wind at his back: just after he was chosen last September, a Kenyan force evicted al-Shebaab from Somalia’s second city, Kismayo.That still leaves about 95 percent of the country’s territory and three-quarters of its population beyond the government’s direct control. Al-Shabaab still rules in most rural parts of the country, and Ethiopian troops and their militia allies control much of the western border areas. Pirates with a lot of guns and money effectively dominate much of the north.One whole chunk of the country, calling itself Somaliland, has declared its independence (and runs its affairs much more peacefully and efficiently than any other part of Somalia). No other country recognizes its independence at the moment, but it used to be a British colony, quite separate from Italian-ruled Somalia, and in principle it can make exactly the same case for independence as Eritrea did when it broke away from Ethiopia.The worst problem facing President Mohamud is the venal and cunning politicians who have exploited the clan loyalties that pervade every aspect of Somali life to carve out their own little empires. Some are frankly and unashamedly warlords; others, including all the senior officials in the defunct TFG, masquerade as national politicians but work for their own interests.They have not gone away, nor have the clan rivalries that kept the fighting going for 21 years. Drawing up the rules and sharing out the power for a new federal Somalia (none of which has yet been decided) will give them plenty of opportunities to make trouble for the new president and regain their former power. Mohamud definitely has his work cut out for him.Nevertheless, he has strong UN and African Union support, and he now has a chance to create a spreading zone of peace in the country and start rebuilding national institutions. So last week the United States declared that it was now willing to provide military aid, including arms exports, to Somalia. Weirdly, that actually means that thing are looking up in the world’s only failed state.Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.