On Monday, December 29, 2008, President Abdullahi Yusuf of Somalia left Baidoa, the makeshift Capital of his government, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), to arrive in Garrowe, the Capital of his home province —Puntland—in less than two hours. This is amid reports that some of Yusuf’s foes have been pondering that Adan (Madobe) Mohamed Nur; the Speaker to the Parliament, will temporarily hold the office of the President for the next six month,  after which a new President will be elected. If the truth of this report is established, then it further illuminates the short resignation speech of PresidentYusuf to the Parliament, before he left Baidoa. President Yusuf, it has been reported, had, among other things, said: “Since the Charter has been violated [by the Parliament]—parenthesis is mine—I have decided to resign.” And there certainly has been tremendous international pressure from the international community—particularly, the Countries of IGAD.  

In this, President Yusuf has been hinting that the Parliament had, in a controversial vote, supported the PM he had sacked earlier, against the verse of the Charter, as he and his allies interpret it.  The international community, at least the neighboring countries, has threatened sanctions against him and his family, if he did not resign. The fact that the Speaker’s allies are already speculating that Adan (Madobe) to remain Acting President for the next six months, in violation of the Charter which envisages only one month for the Speaker to remain Acting, implies a brazen attempt by the Speaker to violate the Charter once again in a few weeks. At least, that’s how the supporters of the former President would interpret it. Despite this grand controversy, in a Press Release by the United Nations Political Office for Somalia, in Nairobi, the UN Special Representative for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, said in response to the President’s decision that “a new page of Somalia’s history is now open”. 

History will tell as to the nature of this” new page” for Somalia, but if things go by my hunch, the new page may involve the end of the TFG as we knew it, if not Somalia as a State. I raise the question, because in the last 36 hours alone, most of the MPs that have represented Puntland and “Somaliland” left Baidoa—some even before the President, some with the  President and some were already away from Baidoa. Others have been reported to have left for Nairobi or Mogadishu. Events in the ground indicate that there hardly are enough MPs left in Baidoa to constitute a quorum to conduct any business of Parliament. As if to confirm his supporters’ speculation that, there will be need for the Speaker to hold the Office for six months in an Acting capacity, the Speaker announced, in an interview with VOA/Somali that there may be need for more than a month to elect the next President.  All in all, if the point of the pressure on President Yusuf to resign was to facilitate reconciliation and widen the support for the TFG, it seems that the opposite will be true—rather than tempting the opposition or, at least, part of them to participate, the impact of the resignation dispersed the existing members of Parliament. Thus, it is as if to further qualify the maxim: ”A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”. 

I hasten to add that whatever happens in the future is the doing of His Excellency, Ould Abdallah, the UN representative to Somalia, among others, including President Ghelle of tiny, winy, sister Djibouti. The duo have helped to engineer the truce between members of the now defunct TFG, under the auspices of the now Care Taker PM, Nur Hassan Hussein, and some actors from the opposition. It is the outcome of this controversial  Djibouti Accords that resulted in a settlement that has become unpalatable to President Yusuf, and which envisages the addition of 275 members to the seats of Parliament—to double the number. President Yusuf and his allies rejected to endorse the plan outright. Hence, it will be known—at a minimum—as the debacle that led to the resignation of the President, if not as the one that finished off the TFG or Somalia as we knew it. 

Although the US State Department, the African Union (AU) and others have welcomed the step taken by the President as courageous, it seems that the effort of the IGAD countries to pressure him to resign has been an oxymoron, at best. The Islamists have captured most of the southern regions. Clan warfare has already resumed in Mogadishu. A representative of the Al-Shabab—Al-Qaeda trained squads of the Islamists—has blamed foreign actors to have supplied weapons to their ideological rivals—ahlu-Sunnah—to fight them in four different fronts. But, some of the questions that loom high are whether there will be enough MPs to make the quorum? Whether there will be equal representation from all provinces or regions in the interest of balance between all sectors or communities of the people of Somalia? Without the constitutional requirement to ratify the Djibouti Accords will the new Parliament be assembled to include the additional 275 members? Or, will the proportion of the Parliament left in the House be constitutionally competent to elect the next President?

Failing the assembly of a representative, national Parliament during the month, starting yesterday, we may see the end of the TFG and, in the absence of an alternative arrangement in its place, the future for Somalia as a State is bleaker than it ever it was. In my article of December 18, 2008, entitled “A Scoop of Constitutional Crisis in Somalia...” posted in Wardheernews.com, Awdalnews.com and other websites, I had forewarned that the world may have been meddling through without regard for the constitutional issues involved, when they should not have gotten involved in the matter  as they usually had. I was more specific than that in my warning in another article published in the same websites entitled “the Woes and Worries of President Yusuf of Somalia”, where I wrote: disposing of President Yusuf as quickly as possible, involved  “high risks and very expensive costs for all, because this option may lead to the crumple and peril of the TFG sooner and for good.

In the light of the above, one would legitimately ask why the intense pressure from some of the IGAD countries for the resignation of the President which has resulted in this, particularly when the future scenarios were obvious to all. Certainly, the contrast of Somalia with countries like Ethiopia in 1992, Sierra Leon, and more recently Kenya and Zimbabwe are clear, as far as the role of the international community is concerned. Somalia’s distress calls have always fallen in deaf ears. Is it because it is a black, Muslim country? Is it, therefore, bye-bye TFG? But, barring the continuation of wars and skirmishes—which is unlikely—the best outcome of this debacle may be the establishment of a regional administration in Mogadishu for the Benadir Region and is the best hope for Somalia, until there will be another reconciliation process similar to the one that brought about the TFG, as remote as this possibility may be.

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