First Elec­tion in the coun­try that gave So­mali peo­ple a wide mea­sure of self-gov­ern­ment and au­ton­omy. A pro­file of those called to ad­min­is­ter the do­mes­tic af­fairs of the coun­try

by Mo­hamed I. Trunji
Wednes­day, July 08, 2020

In 1956, four years ahead of the end of the trustee­ship man­date, the ter­ri­to­ry’s progress to­wards self-gov­ern­ment had pro­ceeded at a speedy pace, with a view to prepar­ing the ter­ri­tory for full in­de­pen­dence by the tar­get date of De­cem­ber 1960. In fact, a po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of con­sid­er­able sig­nif­i­cance took place with the es­tab­lish­ment in 1956 of the first five-mem­ber So­mali gov­ern­ment, en­joy­ing very wide pow­ers with re­gard to in­ter­nal ad­min­is­tra­tion of the ter­ri­tory (Legge n° 1 Mag­gio 7, 1956)

Ab­dul­lahi Issa Mo­hamoud, for­mer Lega en­voy to the United Na­tions and known for his strong op­po­si­tion to the Ital­ian re­turn to South­ern So­ma­lia as Ad­min­is­ter­ing Au­thor­ity, was des­ig­nated as Prime Min­is­ter. The for­ma­tion of the gov­ern­ment rep­re­sented a turn­ing point in the hith­erto un­easy re­la­tions be­tween the ma­jor po­lit­i­cal party in the ter­ri­tory and the Ital­ian Trustee­ship Ad­min­is­tra­tion. “By the time Ab­dul­lahi Issa as­sumed the of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter, lit­tle trace re­mained of the ear­lier an­tag­o­nism be­tween the Ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Lega; a good work­ing ba­sis had now been reached be­tween the two sides”. (I.M. Lewis, 2002)

The Legislative Assembly decided to limit the number of ministries to five: Domestic Affairs, Social Affairs, Economic Affairs, Financial Affairs and General Affairs. The government was composed of the Prime Minister, selected from the majority party in the Legislative Assembly, and ministers appointed by the Administrator, all from the ruling party, the Lega dei Giovani Somali (LGS). A proposal for multi-party cabinet so that other parties could gain experience in executive responsibility advanced by Aden Abdulla, in his capacity as President of the party, fell short of being endorsed by the party Congress. The proposal was voted down because the party “felt that to bring in the Hisbia Dighil Mirifle party (HDM) would imply an acceptance of tribalism.”(Castagno). Behind the nationalist facade, the composition of the government was clearly based on clan logic, but not every Somali clan was represented. The HDM, for instance, with 13 MPs, representing the population in the fertile and agriculturally developed inter-riverine areas were not given ministerial positions, and the party leaders immediately accused the government of favouratism towards the nomads.

The pro­gramme pre­sented to the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly cen­tered mainly on do­mes­tic is­sues, for­eign pol­icy be­ing still out­side its purview. Im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion was given to the pre­car­i­ous econ­omy of the ter­ri­tory, with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on the fields of agri­cul­ture, live­stock and small in­dus­try, and on the at­trac­tion of for­eign cap­i­tal and aid. The long-stand­ing ques­tion of the script for the So­mali lan­guage also re­ceived at­ten­tion. Re­gard­ing so­cial af­fairs, the gov­ern­ment pledged to find ways of in­tro­duc­ing full uni­ver­sal suf­frage, with the in­clu­sion of women. The lat­ter move was met with strong op­po­si­tion by con­ser­v­a­tive el­e­ments in the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly who saw as un-Is­lamic any form of fe­male eman­ci­pa­tion, in­clud­ing vot­ing rights. To win sup­port from Par­lia­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter went into de­tail, ex­plain­ing the ben­e­fits of grant­ing women the right to vote and cit­ing ex­am­ples of a num­ber of Is­lamic coun­tries where women al­ready did en­joy that right. The gov­ern­ment ob­tained the con­fi­dence of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly by 44 against 10 votes on Oc­to­ber 3, 1956. (Cor­riere della So­ma­lia, Ot­to­bere 4, 1956)

Un­sur­pris­ingly, those ap­pointed as min­is­ters were ill-pre­pared in terms of ed­u­ca­tional cre­den­tials and pro­fes­sional ex­pe­ri­ence. In fact, none of the new min­is­ters, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, had any for­mal ed­u­ca­tion or ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pe­ri­ence. Be­fore en­ter­ing pol­i­tics, they were small busi­ness­men, pro­pelled to power by sheer abil­ity. Given that the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly was com­posed largely of un­e­d­u­cated old-timers, it was in­deed dif­fi­cult to find any­one with even pre­tence of the ca­pa­bil­ity re­quired of a min­is­ter. As a re­sult, “when the Ad­min­is­tra­tor de­cided to form a So­mali gov­ern­ment, it was with dif­fi­culty that six So­mali mem­bers of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly could be found, suf­fi­ciently ca­pa­ble to be­gin on the task of be­com­ing Min­is­ters: and if they re­signed, to­day, it would prove al­most im­pos­si­ble to find an­other six”, com­ments a British source in Mo­gadis­cio (TNA FO 371/​125675 Jan­u­ary 4, 1957). None of the min­is­ters knew what the job of a min­is­ter was. As a re­sult, for the first few months, the for­mer Ital­ian di­rec­tors, op­er­at­ing as ad­vi­sors, con­tin­ued to run the de­part­ments. To each So­mali min­is­ter a per­sonal ad­vi­sor was ap­pointed. (De­creto am­min­is­tra­tivo del 7 mag­gio 1956 n° 7). The ad­vi­sors would at­tend the meet­ings of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters, with­out the right to vote. Later on, in 1957, the ad­vi­sors were re­placed by Ital­ian ex­perts re­port­ing di­rectly to their So­mali su­pe­ri­ors. So­mali cab­i­net min­is­ters were heav­ily de­pen­dent on sub­stan­tial ad­vice, but this did not in­ter­fere with their in­de­pen­dence of de­ci­sion. The ex­perts would do all the work and sim­ply get the min­is­ters to put their sig­na­tures on the pa­pers. At­tempts to ap­point tech­nocrats as min­is­ters were strongly dis­cour­aged by the Ad­min­is­tra­tion on the grounds that such a move may ad­versely af­fect the ef­fi­ciency of the pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion. (Cor­riere della So­ma­lia, Mag­gio 9, 1956)

How­ever, the short­com­ings re­ferred to above with­stand­ing, the So­mali Min­is­ters be­came suc­cess­ful in ful­fill­ing the dif­fi­cult du­ties placed on the shoul­ders. With the elec­tion of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly, which sup­planted the Ter­ri­to­r­ial Coun­cil, and the es­tab­lish­ment of the So­mali gov­ern­ment in 1956 , the So­mali peo­ple ac­quired a wide mea­sure of self-gov­ern­ment and au­ton­omy, con­sis­tent with the un­der­tak­ing as­sumed by the Ad­min­is­ter­ing Au­thor­ity to “fos­ter the de­vel­op­ment of free po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions and pro­mote the de­vel­op­ment of the in­hab­i­tants of the Ter­ri­tory to­wards in­de­pen­dence and give to the in­hab­i­tants of the Ter­ri­tory a pro­gres­sively in­creas­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in the var­i­ous or­gans of gov­ern­ment”.

In the same year, three other im­por­tant steps were taken: (a) dis­so­lu­tion and repa­tri­a­tion of the ‘Corpo di Si­curez­za’ (the Ital­ian troops sent to So­ma­lia in 1950 to re­place the British colo­nial troops) re­sult­ing in the in­cor­po­ra­tion of the So­mali com­po­nents of the force into the po­lice force; (b) es­tab­lish­ment of the So­mali Po­lice Force un­der the com­mand of Lt. Colonel Um­berto Ripa di Meana (De­creto n° 19 Gen­naio 1, 1956), and (c) en­act­ment of new ju­di­cial reg­u­la­tions, known as ‘Or­di­na­mento Giudiziario.

Following the political elections held in 1959, the second in the territory, the Congress of the ruling party adopted a resolution rejecting the idea of forming a coalition government on the basis of Aden Abdulla’s repeated proposal. (Diary May 19, 1959).

A broad-based gov­ern­ment was formed, un­der the pre­mier­ship again of Ab­dul­lahi Issa. It was in that oc­ca­sion that, for the first time, Dighil Mir­i­fle mem­bers of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly were in­cluded in the gov­ern­ment. How­ever, they were urged to ab­jure their HDM al­le­giance and join the rul­ing party in ex­change for min­is­te­r­ial po­si­tion. This pol­icy has badly weak­ened the de­mo­c­ra­tic and mul­ti­party sys­tem the Ad­min­is­tra­tion en­vis­aged to es­tab­lish in the coun­try. Un­der these cir­cum­stances, a num­ber of promi­nent HDM lead­ers, in­clud­ing the Pres­i­dent and the Sec­re­tary-Gen­eral of the party, joined the rul­ing party and were ap­pointed Min­is­ters. The first to leave the party was Ab­di­nour Mo­hamed Hus­sein who be­came Min­is­ter in 1959, fol­lowed, a year later, by the Sec­re­tary-Gen­eral, Ab­dulka­dir Mo­hamed Aden “Zoppo” who be­came Min­is­ter in 1960. With most of the leg­endary ‘found­ing fa­thers’ re­pu­di­at­ing their party, its role and its im­por­tance as a cred­i­ble op­po­si­tion force grad­u­ally di­min­ished. In fact, in the fourth and last gen­eral elec­tions of 1969, the party gained a mere 3 seats..

M. Trunji
E-mail: trunji@ya­hoo.com