December 28, 2016 | Morning Headlines
UN, Global partners ‘gravely Concerned’ Over Changes To Electoral Process
27 December – Source: UN News Centre – 456 Words
The United Nations and other members of the international community have voiced grave concern over recent decisions by Somalia’s National Leadership Forum (NLF) that contravenes the African country’s constitutional electoral processes. Currently, Somalia’s Provisional Constitution allows for 54 seats in the Upper House of its parliament. Elections have already been held, but according to a communiqué issued on 24 December, the NLF has decided to add seats.
While today’s inauguration of the Federal Parliament is a positive step in the electoral process, “any further expansion of the Upper House should only be contemplated after the presidential vote has been held in the new federal parliament and implemented through a proper constitutional process,” stated a joint press statement released today by the UN, African Union, European Union, Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The statement also pointed to a number of “egregious cases of abuse,” including men who have taken parliamentary seats reserved for women and the NLF’s decision to invalidate all disqualifications for candidates who have allegedly committed abuse and malpractice.
“It contravenes the Federal Government’s solemn commitment to respect the rule of law. If these candidates are allowed to take their seats in Somalia’s tenth parliament, it will bring into question the NLF’s expressed commitment to the principles of accountability and credibility that underpin the entire process,” said the statement.The international community is concerned that such steps will thwart attempts to level the playing field and to safeguard a credible process. International partners are calling for a re-run for those parliamentary seats whose outcomes were influenced by violence, corruption, intimidation, an unauthorized substitution of electoral college delegates, or a failure to set aside one in three seats for women.
Key Headlines
- UN Global partners ‘gravely Concerned’ Over Changes To Electoral Process (UN News Centre)
- NISA Apprehends Suspect Behind Mogadishu Port Bombing (Garowe Online)
- Kenya Extends Mandera Curfew After Al-Shabaab Raids (Shabelle News)
- Somalia Swears In Federal Lawmakers Who Will Pick Future President (Reuters)
- From The Kitchen Somali President’s Cook Wins Seat In Parliament (Africa News)
- Writing About Somalia: Representations and Misrepresentations (Wardheer News)
NATIONAL MEDIA
NISA Apprehends Suspect Behind Mogadishu Port Bombing
27 December – Source: Garowe Online – 197 Words
Security agencies have reported that they have captured the suspect who is believed to be behind the deadly car bombing near Somalia’s main seaport in Mogadishu city on December 11. Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) displayed the picture of the driver who was arrested during a security swoop in Mogadishu.
The driver is identified as Mohamed Ibrahim Hasan, according to the agency’s Twitter post. Hasan is accused of driving an explosive-laden vehicle from Janale district to Mogadishu port, which resulted in the killing of 20 people and wounding dozens more. On the other hand, Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Shabaab militants still didn’t comment on the arrest of the driver, who is accused to be linked to the group.
The suspect has claimed responsibility for the attack at Mogadishu port and he is expected to undergo trials at the court following ongoing investigations. Mogadishu city has witnessed surge of terrorist attacks in the past weeks by the militant group who are fighting the security forces, allied AMISOM forces and UN-backed Somali government. Earlier, the group vowed to disrupt the Somali election, as the country is preparing to hold elections of new Parliament Speakers and new President in January 2017.
Kenya Extends Mandera Curfew After Al-Shabaab Raids
28 December – Source: Shabelle News – 165 Words
The government has extended the dusk to dawn curfew in Mandera county by three months starting Wednesday, December 28.Interior CS Joseph Nkaissery on Tuesday said the order remains effective until March 28, 2017 at 6.30 am.He said the directive aims at boosting the efforts by the government towards taming terrorism activities in the entire region.
Nkaissery said the curfew will be observed in Mandera Town, Omar Jillo, Arabia, Fino, Lafey Kotulo and environs to the said locations extending to 20 kilometres from Kenya-Somalia border.The government had in October declared a one-month curfew in the county.Nkaissery at that time said the order applied to every person except under special conditions of a written permit granted by the respective deputy county commissioner.“Remain indoors and in such other premises as may be authorised,” read part of the legal notice.The curfew came after Al-Shabaab militants attacked the Bishaaro Guest House in Mandera town, killing 12 people and seriously injuring six others.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Somalia Swears In Federal Lawmakers Who Will Pick Future President
27 December – Source: Reuters- 317 Words
Almost 300 members of Somalia’s federal parliament were sworn in on Tuesday, although parliament’s election of a new president to head the government was postponed.The ceremony at least gives the chronically unstable Horn of Africa country a quorate assembly, four weeks after the conclusion of a month-long election conducted among 14,000 representative citizens.
The lawmakers were supposed to pick a new president on Wednesday, but the electoral commission said on Tuesday that the vote had been postponed to an as yet unspecified date.”As you witnessed, 243 lawmakers and 38 upper house members have been sworn in,” Abdikarim haji Abdi, the chief secretary of Somalia’s federal parliament, told reporters at a police training camp in the capital Mogadishu, where the ceremony took place.This left 32 members of the lower house still to be sworn in, because their elections either had not yet taken place or were disputed. In addition, 18 new seats in the upper house were only created by the electoral committee last week for the six federal states, in order to resolve a disagreement.Once all the remaining seats are filled, the parliament will have a total complement of 347 legislators. However, the 281 already sworn-in are enough to be able to elect a president.
Plagued by Islamist militancy, famine and maritime piracy, Somalia has been at war for more than a quarter of a century, but diplomats and some citizens hope the current political process will help bring some stability.Legislator Khalif Sheikh Abdullahi told Reuters before the swearing-in ceremony that the oldest MP would temporarily act as House speaker, in line with the constitution, until a full-time speaker was elected.
From The Kitchen, Somali President’s Cook Wins Seat In Parliament
27 December – Source: Africa News – 190 Words
From the presidential kitchen, Abdirahman Yonis has stepped up his position as Head of Cooks to Member of Parliament for Somaliland.Yonis beat his competitors with 36 votes stirring a lot of controversy after suspicion that incumbent President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is behind his aspiration to gain his vote during the presidential election, local media Radio Dalsan reports.The former chef however denied the allegations.
Parliamentary elections are ongoing in the country and they are expected to end before December 28, which has been scheduled for the presidential election.Members of the 275-seat Lower House of parliament and the 54-seat Upper House elect the president, according to the country’s Provisional Federal Constitution.use of parliament while regional parliaments elect the 54 members of the Upper House.
OPINION , CULTURE & ANALYSIS
“Most Somalis, even those who have no personal experience of the civil war, and who were born in foreign, more peaceful countries, grieve the fall of their homeland and suffer from what the Swedish-Somali blogger Mulki Ali calls “unprocessed trauma” pent up frustration and pain that is bottled up, and often denied, and passed on from generation to generation by people,”
Writing About Somalia: Representations and Misrepresentations
26 December – Source: Wardheernews – 1277 Words
At a recent literary panel discussion held in Nairobi, Asad Hussein, a Somali refugee, who also happens to be a blogger and writer, asked me and the BBC correspondent Andrew Harding whether we felt we were qualified to write books about Somalia given that neither of us is Somali. (Harding was in Nairobi to launch his book The Mayor of Mogadishu and I was invited to talk about my book War Crimes.) It is a question that most non-African, particularly Western, writers are confronted with when they write books about Africa. Perhaps it is because Africa is so misrepresented in the Western media that Africans have become wary of those who claim to know the continent and its people.
Or maybe it is because Africans fear that their narratives are being appropriated by foreigners who have a tendency to reduce the complexity of African society to easy-to-digest stereotypes and simplified compartments. Like the 17-year-old American student who when asked by a New York Times journalist why she wanted to go to Africa, replied, “There are a lot of problems [in Africa] but you can group them together. I can organise Africa in my head, in terms of poverty, droughts, even governments.”.The irony is that I wrote War Crimes because I felt that both the international and the Kenyan media were not doing justice to Somalia, which only features in the news if the story is about terrorism, piracy or famine. Yet, here I was, a Kenyan of Indian descent, being cast in the same mould as the Western journalist/writer.
It was an exiled Somali novelist who first suggested to me that that as a non-Somali I had no “right” to write about his homeland because I could not claim to know what it is like being a Somali, a suggestion I found strange coming from a writer of fiction, given that novels are largely a work of the imagination – they force novelists to inhabit worlds that are different from their own. If we were only permitted to write about people who are very much like us, or who come from our own village/city/country, then no male writer could write about or create a female character because he would never in a million years know what it is like being a woman or a girl.