In re­cent weeks, voices about plan to pro­long the term of the Fed­eral House of the Peo­ple and, pos­si­bly, that of the in­cum­bent Head of State be­came louder. Un­of­fi­cial me­dia re­ports sug­gest that a num­ber of Law­mak­ers would be pon­der­ing over a bill soon to be sub­mit­ted to the Fed­eral House of the Peo­ple to that end. The spec­u­la­tion about ex­ten­sion of par­lia­men­tary man­date has gained much wider cur­rency fol­low­ing re­cent an­nounce­ment made by the Chair­per­son of the Na­tional In­de­pen­dent Elec­toral Com­mis­sion (NIEC) that up­com­ing par­lia­men­tary elec­tions based on one-per­son-one vote sys­tem of vot­ing will not take place on time, as sched­uled. The par­lia­men­tary term of of­fice is slated to end in No­vem­ber 2020.

The much talked is­sue about ex­ten­sion of the term of the Fed­eral House of the Peo­ple re­minds us a sim­i­lar event which emerged in May1958 when a mo­tion spon­sored by a group of MPs call­ing for the pro­lon­ga­tion of the term of of­fice of the first leg­is­la­ture for 18 months (June 1958-De­cem­ber 1959) was sub­mit­ted to the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly. The man­date of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly, elected in 1956, was slated to end in June 1958. Elec­tions for the sec­ond leg­is­la­ture (1959-1964) were sched­uled for March 1959.

 

The rea­sons for call­ing the ex­ten­sion were stated in the pre­am­ble of the mo­tion as fol­lows: a reg­is­tra­tion of the pop­u­la­tion was con­sid­ered nec­es­sary in or­der to guar­an­tee the ac­cu­racy of the pop­u­lar con­sul­ta­tion by di­rect suf­frage; the hold­ing of elec­tion in 1959 would nec­es­sar­ily im­ply a sec­ond elec­toral con­sul­ta­tion in 1960, when the trustee­ship pe­riod was due to end, thus plac­ing an un­due bur­den on the Ter­ri­to­ry’s fi­nance; there was a need to ap­prove a com­pre­hen­sive law on cit­i­zen­ship, defin­ing per­sons who might vote or be elected. (UN Doc.T/​1444, Re­port of the UN Ad­vi­sory Coun­cil for the Trust Ter­ri­tory of So­ma­lia, April 14, 1959)

The mo­tion call­ing for the ex­ten­sion came up un­ex­pect­edly at a time when the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly had in its agenda the dis­cus­sion of a draft law on the forth­com­ing 1959 gen­eral elec­tions. The mo­tion spon­sored by a cross-party group of 50 MPs: 31 from the Lega, 12 from the HDM Party, and 7 from the Mixed Group, was ap­proved by 51 votes, out of 60 pre­sent, 2 against and 7 ab­sten­tions invit­ing the gov­ern­ment to pro­long the term of of­fice and ac­tiv­ity of the As­sem­bly, orig­i­nally ex­pected to end on 30 June 1958, up to De­cem­ber 31, 1959.

The two “nays” were from Aden Ab­dulla and Sheikh Has­san Kalif Sheikh Omar, Deputy of Bardera. (Aden Ab­dulla Di­ary, May 26, 1958) The mo­tion drew im­me­di­ate re­buke from Pres­i­dent of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly, Hon. Aden Ab­dulla, the Ad­min­is­ter­ing Au­thor­ity and the Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil of the United Na­tions.

Aden Ab­dulla, a straight-talk­ing man of prin­ci­ple, dubbed the mo­tion “a move dic­tated by per­sonal self­ish­ness, spon­sored by peo­ple whose de­sire was to pro­long their po­si­tion as MPs”. (Di­ary, May 26, 1958) He be­lieved that the lack of ac­cu­rate pop­u­la­tion cen­sus was not an im­ped­i­ment fac­tor to gen­eral elec­tions be­ing held in So­ma­lia, cit­ing as an ex­am­ple In­dia, Su­dan and Nige­ria as coun­tries where elec­tions had taken place de­spite ab­sence of pop­u­la­tion cen­sus.

The Pres­i­dent of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly, mind­ful of the fail­ures ex­pe­ri­enced in the past, was con­scious of the ex­tent of the prob­lem re­lated to the no­madic pop­u­la­tion cen­sus.

The gov­ern­ment was thus re­quested to with­draw the elec­tion bill and re­sub­mit it to the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly by the end of 1959, af­ter the pop­u­la­tion cen­sus had been com­pleted and the cit­i­zen­ship law passed. The Prime Min­is­ter, in a let­ter to the Act­ing Ad­min­is­tra­tor, Mr. Piero Franca, made clear that his gov­ern­ment was not ready to pre­sent a law pro­long­ing the term of of­fice of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly.

“With­out ig­nor­ing the de­ci­sion of the As­sem­bly”, he wrote, “it is a fact that the gov­ern­ment will not pre­sent a bill rel­a­tive to the pro­lon­ga­tion of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly up to 31 De­cem­ber, 1959, un­less such a pro­lon­ga­tion meets Your Ex­cel­len­cy’s favour.” (Let­ter No 027/​Ris. of May 28, 1958, from Ab­dul­lahi Issa to Piero Franca).

How­ever, as a re­sult of a sub­se­quent com­pro­mise be­tween the gov­ern­ment and Par­lia­ment, the mo­tion was later su­per­seded by a new bill sug­gest­ing the ex­ten­sion of the As­sem­bly for six months end­ing on De­cem­ber 31, 1958. (Legge n° 24, Agosto 1958)

Fol­low­ing the com­pro­mise over the ex­ten­sion of the du­ra­tion of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly, the gov­ern­ment sub­mit­ted in De­cem­ber the elec­tion bill to the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly prior to the gen­eral elec­tion sched­uled for March 1959 (Legge n° 26, Dicem­bre 12, 1958)

If we es­tab­lish a com­par­i­son be­tween the Leg­is­la­tures of the 1960s with the one of 2020, in terms of ef­fi­ciency in­tegrity and per­for­mance, the fol­low­ing pic­ture emerges:

In 1958, the Mem­bers of the Par­lia­ment en­joyed the con­fi­dence of the pub­lic who elected them through open com­pe­ti­tion be­tween po­lit­i­cal par­ties. Those days the Par­lia­ment boasted the mem­ber­ship of dis­tin­guished fig­ures of the likes of Aden Ab­dulla and his col­leagues who took the coun­try to in­de­pen­dence and ran it in full ob­ser­vance of the Con­sti­tu­tion and its prin­ci­ples. To­day the se­lec­tion, (not the elec­tion) of the MPs comes through an in­tri­cate net­work of cor­rup­tion and fraud.

To­day, in gen­eral terms, the Fed­eral House of the Peo­ple is packed with el­e­ments, of both gen­ders, hav­ing lit­tle or no fa­mil­iar­ity with the con­sti­tu­tional evo­lu­tion the coun­try had gone through since the Trustee­ship pe­riod. The di­vi­sion of power be­tween the con­sti­tu­tional or­gans of the State re­mains a purely the­o­ret­i­cal no­tion writ­ten in a piece of pa­per. As a re­sult to this anom­alous sit­u­a­tion, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts and con­sti­tu­tional ex­perts alike find it dif­fi­cult to reefer to So­ma­lia as a real par­lia­men­tary Re­pub­lic.

The cur­rent Leg­is­la­tors have lost the pub­lic con­fi­dence amid se­ries of un­ortho­dox de­ci­sions they have reached, the lat­est of which was the un­con­ven­tional man­ner they ousted the Prime Min­is­ter on July 25, 2020. Many of them have the low­est sup­port for an­other term be­cause of their fail­ure to ex­er­cise any of the four core du­ties typ­i­cally as­so­ci­ated with the role of a MP: leg­is­la­tion, ex­ec­u­tive over­sight, con­stituency rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and con­stituency ser­vice. Hence, the des­per­ate at­tempt to pro­long the term of the House of the Peo­ple be­yond its ex­piry date.

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M. Trunji
 E-mail: trunji@ya­hoo.com