July 24, 2012 | Daily Monitoring Report.
Somali National Constituent Assembly due to meet Tuesday
24 Jul – Source: Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs – 169 words
Hassan Jim’ ale, Somalia’s State Minister for Constitution and Reconciliation, told reporters that the 825-member National Constituent Assembly, scheduled to meet on Monday, would be meeting Tuesday (July 24th). The meeting was rescheduled from Monday to Tuesday, said the Minister, because some members of the Assembly had yet to arrive in Mogadishu.
This is the third time that the meeting of the Assembly has been delayed. Originally intended to meet on July 17th, it was postponed until July 21st, then to July 23rd and now again to July 24th. The Assembly, of course, is now going to deliberate on and adopt the draft constitution. With less than a month to go before the end of the transition on August 20th, a speedy adoption of the constitution is expected from the meeting of the Assembly. The next stage of the process to end the transition includes the nomination of members of Parliament, the election of the Speaker and his deputies and finally the election of the President on August 20th.
Key Headlines
- President Sharif remains optimistic of winning presidential race (Bar-kulan/Caasimada Online)
- Somali National Constituent Assembly due to meet Tuesday (Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
- UN Special Representative for Somalia on progress made in the political process (UNPOS)
- Kenya Defense Forces Trained AMISOM Troops on IED’s (Strategic Intelligence News)
- Ambassador Mahiga: “Elders will fail if conference doesn’t start by 25th this month” (Radio Risaala)
- Somalia set to open first embassy in South Africa (Somaliland Press)
- Judge assails prosecutors in Somali pirate case (AP)
- AMISOM seeks air and sea capabilities (Radio Kulmiye)
- Kenya’s police arrest four al Shabaab suspects in Malindi (Coast Week/ Xinhua)
PRESS STATEMENT
UN Special Representative for Somalia on progress made in the political process
23 Jul – Source: UNPOS – 379 words
The Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for Somalia, Dr. Augustine Mahiga, today welcomed the progress that has been made in completing the selection and verification of the 825 members of the National Constituent Assembly (NCA). The 9-day NCA will convene on Wednesday this week to discuss, vote on, and adopt a new Provisional Constitution, which will provide the legal framework governing the workings of the new Somali Federal Institutions after August 2012. It will also be the basis for further constitutional refinements before it is finally adopted by a referendum.
“It is encouraging to see that progress is being made,” SRSG Mahiga said, “I urge Somalia’s traditional and political leaders to do all that is necessary to complete in a timely manner the tasks that have been entrusted to them by their people to carry Somalia forward to a new political future.”
Somalia’s Traditional Leaders have spent weeks working on the selection of the 825 members of the NCA, who are drawn from all Somali clans along an agreed 4.5 formula and from a cross-section of Somali society. This work is now almost complete. The Technical Selection Committee, working with international observers, provides a level of quality assurance in the selection process has today announced that 816 out of 825 have been vetted, while 763 are registered already in Mogadishu.
The National Constituent Assembly (NCA) can now convene and begin 9 days of discussion and deliberation on the draft Provisional Constitution. The SRSG emphasised the importance of the delegate’s role in the current political process to ensure that the Somalia people have a representative voice. “The Provisional Constitution will be a pillar upon which the new parliament will build the New Somalia,” the SRSG said. “The function of the traditional Elders, the Technical Selection Committee and the National Constituent Assembly is to ensure that this process continues to be legitimate, accountable, transparent, participatory, inclusive and, most importantly, Somali-led.”
“This is a moment of optimism for all Somalis”, said Ambassador Mahiga, “This is a monumental event after several milestones in a long journey of the Roadmap. It marks significant progress towards ending the transition and providing the new political institutions for a stable and functional state in Somalia after twenty one years of political and civil strife.
SOMALI MEDIA
President Sharif remains optimistic of winning presidential race
24 Jul – Source: Bar-kulan/Caasimada Online – 145 words
Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has expressed his optimism that he will be re-elected again into the office once the election kicks off in the country next month. The president said he is contesting for the top seat again in order to finish what he could not accomplish during his first term in Villa Somalia as the president, saying that he is the best placed candidate for the presidency given his experience.
On matters regarding the current efforts to meet the 20 August deadline, the president is optimistic that the constituent assembly meeting will kick off tomorrow (Wednesday, 25 July 24, 2012) in Mogadishu and continue for the next one week as anticipated. As the 20 August deadline to end the transitional period looms, several Somali figures have expressed their interest in the country’s top seat including president Sharif who has been in office since early 2009.
Ambassador Mahiga: “Elders will fail if conference doesn’t start by 25th this month”
24 Jul – Source: Radio Risaala – 168 words
The Traditional Elders, Somali Prime minister Abdweli Mohammed Ali and the UN special envoy to Somalia Ambassador Augustine Mahiga on Monday held a meeting in Mogadishu. Mr. Mahiga told the elders that if the conference to pass the new constitution does not commence fully by 25th this month then the elders have failed in providing a solution to Somalia’s constitutional crises.
Mahiga also said after receiving numerous requests from the elders it was possible to increase the number of parliamentarians in the next parliament to 275 up from 225. Somali premier said if the country doesn’t realize a new constitution by 20th August the country will be in a tough situation. The number of elders who attended Monday’s meeting was much fewer than those in the previous meetings.
The meeting to pass the constitution has experienced several delays in the past. Although the deadline has been set on 25th this month, the elders and the government continue pointing fingers at each other, accusing the other for sabotaging the process.
Somalia set to open first embassy in South Africa
23 Jul – Source: Somaliland Press – 170 words
Somalia is set to strengthen and reinvigorate its public diplomacy and trade relations with the Republic of South Africa, announcing plans to open an Embassy in Pretoria. This was revealed during a meeting held in Cape Town this weekend by the Somali community in the rainbow nation. They stressed the urgent need to increase Somalia’s diplomatic representation in that part of the continent where many Somalis experience racial assault on daily bases.
The newly appointed Somali ambassador to South Africa, Sayid Hassan Sharif, has been meeting the Somali community in the Western Cape province since taking up the post at the beginning of this month.
He was also present on Saturday and urged the Somali business community to help the government establish the first ever Somali Embassy in the former Apartheid nation. The envoy emphasized the importance of having presence in South Africa. He said the embassy will strengthen Somali diplomatic engagement in the region, as well help protect the Somali expats there and unlock commercial opportunities for Somali traders.
Somalis arrested in Yemen for terrorism charges
24 Jul – Source: Radio Bar-kulan – 208 words
Yemeni police have arrested close to a hundred Somali nationals suspected of being al Qaeda sympathisers in Shabwa and Ebyan provinces, reports say. Somalia’s deputy consul in Aden, Hussein Hajji Ahmed told Bar-kulan that the suspects will soon be moved to Yemeni jails in Adan.
Yemeni police arrested the suspects, most of them youth, on suspicion that they were aiding al Qaeda militants battling the government in these two provinces. The Yemeni police have on several occasions in the past arrested several Somalis on suspicion of either being militants helping al Qaeda or are sympathisers of the global militant group.
In March this year, Yemeni police arrested four Somali nationals suspected of being Al-Shabaab fighters in Lahaj and Ebyan provinces. Security officials said they had substantial grounds to believe that the four were members of the outlawed al Shabaab militant group from Somalia. They said police arrested the suspects at an area frequented by al Qaeda militants.
Yemeni government has accused the Somalia-based al Shabaab for sending over 300 fighters to Yemen to fight alongside with al Qaeda during the first few months of this year. The U.S has also accsued al Qaeda branch in Yemen for providing weapons, fighters and training with explosives to al Shabaab months before the two groups announced their merger early in 2012.
AMISOM seeks air and sea capabilities
23 Jul – Source: Radio Kulmiye – 111 words
The African Union mission in Somalia is expected to receive additional military hardware including aerial and naval logistics, the newly appointed spokesman for AMISOM said. “We will be using air and sea capabilities to flush out the militants and pirates, our mission will require a new helicopters, and warships to increase our reach and oversee operations,” said Col. Ali Adam Hamud.
Thousands of African Union peacekeepers are currently operating in parts of the south and central Somalia especially in the capital of Mogadishu since their first deployment in 2007. Al Shabaab fighters are still trying to uphold the stronghold port town of Kismayu which is on the eyes of the allied forces from Kenya and Ethiopia.
Guri’el district authorities meet WFP official
23 Jul – Source: Radio Barkulan – 102 words
Somali government officials in central Somali town of Guri’el on Monday held talks with visiting United Nations food agency WFP officials to discuss delivery of humanitarian aid to locals in the district. The need for WFP humanitarian intervention in the district and ways to reach to the internally displaced families during relief distribution was among key issues discussed during the talks. Guri’el District Commissioner Osman Isse Noor assured the visiting UN officials that the security of their staff will be grantee once they resume work in the district. Apart from holding talks with the local district authorities, the UN officials also assessed humanitarian situation in the entire district.
REGIONAL MEDIA
Kenya Defense Forces Trained AMISOM Troops on IED’s
24 Jul – Source: Strategic Intelligence News – 222 words
Intelligence gathered on both technical and academic capabilities of the Kenya Defense Forces KDF, indicates KDF as having great knowledge besides capacity to train neighboring troops in counter-insurgency operations and related training. Strategic Intelligence confirms that AMISOM troops in Somalia got training on how to handle improvised explosive devices from Kenya Defense Forces.
Uganda, Burundi (AMISOM), and Comoros, Rwanda, and Comoros’s troops trained at Humanitarian Peace Support School in Nairobi on how to handle improvised explosive devices from Kenya Defense Forces.
Intelligence gathered by Strategic Intelligence with reference to fewer cases of IED incidents in the Somali theater where KDF is currently engaged shows a sharp decline in these incidents after KDF entered Somalia and subsequent engagement in counter insurgency operations.
Somali National Constituent Assembly due to meet Tuesday
24 Jul – Source: Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs – 169 words
Hassan Jim’ ale, Somalia’s State Minister for Constitution and Reconciliation, told reporters that the 825-member National Constituent Assembly, scheduled to meet on Monday, would be meeting Tuesday (July 24th). The meeting was rescheduled from Monday to Tuesday, said the Minister, because some members of the Assembly had yet to arrive in Mogadishu. This is the third time that the meeting of the Assembly has been delayed.
Originally intended to meet on July 17th, it was postponed until July 21st, then to July 23rd and now again to July 24th. The Assembly, of course, is now going to deliberate on and adopt the draft constitution. With less than a month to go before the end of the transition on August 20th, a speedy adoption of the constitution is expected from the meeting of the Assembly.
The next stage of the process to end the transition includes the nomination of members of Parliament, the election of the Speaker and his deputies and finally the election of the President on August 20th.
Kenya’s police arrest four al Shabaab suspects in Malindi
24 Jul – Source: Coast Week/ Xinhua – 650 words
Kenya’s police on Sunday arrested four al Shabaab suspects in the coastal town of Malindi as the authorities enhanced security across the east African nation. The police said the four Kenyans of Somali origin were arrested in a passenger bus that they had boarded from Tana River town heading to Mombasa city.
The suspects were arrested by team detectives from anti- terrorism police unit after they were trailed leading to the recovery of two G-3 rifles, four long knives, and two G3 magazines loaded with two rounds of ammunition.
Saved from planned terror attack
23 Jul – Source: Citizen TV – 2:40 min
Faithful of the Assumption of Mary Catholic Church in Nairobi’s Umoja Estate on Sunday 22nd July, attended mass and went home thereafter oblivious of the potential disaster that they had just been spared.
Two suspects had been arrested in Kitale in possession of 2 hand grenades with police intelligence indicating that the 2 men were travelling with the grenades to Nairobi with the aim of detonating them at the Umoja Catholic Church. It may have been a tragedy averted but it is one that has once again brought to the fore the ever present reality that is the war on terror.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Judge assails prosecutors in Somali pirate case
24 Jul – Source: AP – 802 words
The federal judge overseeing the case of a Somali man accused of negotiating a ransom payment during a 2008 pirate takeover of a Danish merchant ship told prosecutors they had engaged in “inexcusable behavior,” and suggested they will have a hard time winning a conviction.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle was furious when prosecutors told her at a status hearing last week that the alleged pirate, Ali Mohamed Ali, had been in international waters for only 24 to 28 minutes and they can’t specify how he facilitated piracy during that time.
“It’s astounding to me,” Huvelle told a prosecutor at Friday’s hearing, according to a court transcript. “I have the pleading where they (prosecutors) said this is no problem, you’re going to prove that he was on international waters. I didn’t know that you’d prove it for less than 24 hours.”
Somali president ‘very confident’ of new term
23 Jul – Source: AFP/Radio Netherlands – 228 words
The head of Somalia’s corruption-riddled government said Monday he expects to be re-selected as president of the war-torn Horn of Africa nation when his current mandate expires next month. “I am a strong candidate and I am very confident that I will win,” President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed told reporters.
Somalia’s Western-funded Transitional Federal Government (TFG) ends its mandate next month after years of infighting and minimal political progress. Transitional institutions, including the presidency and the parliament, were set up in 2004 but must be replaced by permanent institutions by August 20.
Somali elders are due to designate members of a new parliament which will chose the new president by August 20. Sharif, who faces competition for the presidency from parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, was linked to alleged graft in a UN report leaked earlier this month that called for corrupt leaders to face Security Council sanctions.
Sharif called the allegations “absolutely false” and said that he was unconcerned about the possibility of UN sanctions. “The UN will look at this and make their own conclusions, but for me my conscience is clear,” Sharif said. Billed as the key to lifting anarchic Somalia out of two decades of civil war, the end of the transitional period comes at a time when regional forces have wrested a series of key strongholds from the Islamist al Shabaab insurgents.
SOCIAL MEDIA
CULTURE / OPINION / EDITORIAL / BLOGS/ DISCUSSION BOARDS
“….it makes no sense what so ever to speculate on the question of who can win the presidency, which inherently implies that, the candidates with most money will buy votes. Instead we must concentrate all of our energy to examine the credibility and leadership quality of the candidates.”
Let’s Focus Who Should Win the Somali Presidency? Not Who Can Win
23 Jul – Source: Hiiraan Online – 1524 Words
The political discourse on Somalia tends to concentrate on the question of who can win the coming presidential election, since the field is populated with view serious candidate and many impotent ones. However, some political analysts may speculate one candidate who I think belong to the camp of inept candidates, but when I question the logic behind their prediction I tend to agree with their way of thinking.
The logic says such candidates wield considerable influence in the current reconciliation process; they selected clan elders who are about to choose the members of parliament, that will be deciding the next president. The other logic behind this assumption is that these candidates may have more financial resources than other candidates because of their involvement with TFG financial corruption scheme (United Nation Monitoring group and World Bank Audit Report) and nothing can prevent them to buy votes.
“If the Indian Ocean Star Cafe owners Sharif Abdulqadir and business partner Mohamud Dhagy, and others like them, continue at their current vigorous pace, Mogadishu will soon be on the road once again to being a wonderful city.”
Mogadishu’s Transition To Peace
23 Jul – Source: Getty Image Reportage Blog – 2554 Words
Smartly dressed waiters bustle busily around the attractive grass thatched open air pavilion at the Indian Ocean Star cafe and restaurant, tending to the customers sat at tables decorated with a floral theme, bringing cold drinks and freshly cooked food from the open plan kitchen as a wide screen television played an ongoing football match.
‘The Most Dangerous City in the World’… That is how Mogadishu was recently described. Notorious, and notoriously ungoverned, Somalia has been a no man’s land since Black Hawk Dawn was downed 20 years ago, on an unremarkable narrow street where the remains of its gear shaft and one surviving rotor blade lie barely visible in the overgrowth of rubbish-strewn cactus, betraying nothing of the seismic impact the deaths of the USA airmen in this incident had on the US and Western policy on foreign intervention for over a decade.
Top tweets
@BBCAndrewH “A moment of optimism for all Somalis” – as countdown to new constitution begins. Wishful thinking or breakthrough? http://bit.ly/ObCnyR.
@HOA_News Disappointment rained down on Range Resources investors as the company found water, rather than oil, in their Shabeel North well in #Somalia.
@afrodyite #Piracy still NO end in sight! What is the real problem in #Somalia? PIRACY 4 sure not!!! http://bit.ly/O7pcLF.
@iamsomali These are #Somalia Students who are learning at one of Mogadishu School which #Alshabaab terror group controls. http://pic.twitter.com/
@AnnThompson13 Hmmm, do we really want to commit funds again to train a #Somali #navy? #Africa #piracy #maritime #security: Somalia: http://bit.ly/P1hWVo.
@BillaoJournal @fosman3 Suspect these executions may also be attempt by #Shabaab to stem the flow of defections caused by low morale http://bit.ly/Mja8jv.
Image of the day
Somali Police Recruits Conduct Drill and Ceremony Training in Turkey. Photo: Radio Mogadishu.