N.O.R.F Posted December 15, 2008 Somalia’s President Fires Prime Minister but May Not Have the Power to Do So NAIROBI, Kenya — The president of Somalia announced Sunday that he was unilaterally firing the prime minister, throwing Somalia’s beleaguered government, and the nation itself, into further disarray. President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, a warlord in his 70s who has been steadily marginalized for several months because he is widely seen as an obstacle to peace, said he was dismissing Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, a former aid official, because the government had “failed to accomplish its duties.” But it is not even clear that the president has the authority to do this. According to the transitional government’s charter, only Parliament can hire or fire the prime minister. And most analysts believe Parliament — a fractious, unpredictable group that is dominated by former warlords — actually supports the prime minister, which means a high-level showdown may be coming next. Mr. Nur said he was not going anywhere. On Sunday, he insisted the president had no right to fire him and that only “Parliament has the authority to sack the government.” The two men have never really gotten along, constantly blaming each other for the ever-deepening crisis that Somalia has sunk into, from the current piracy problem to the Islamist resurgence to the looming famine that is threatening millions of lives. The latest bone of contention is a peace agreement that Mr. Nur helped broker between the government and a group of moderate Islamist opposition leaders. Mr. Yusuf rejected that agreement and called the Islamists terrorists. Many Western diplomats are supporting Mr. Nur and have indicated in recent weeks that they are fed up with Mr. Yusuf. But the bickering and posturing within the transitional government may, in the end, be purely academic. The transitional government now controls no more than a few city blocks in a country almost as big as Texas. The Ethiopian troops who have been shoring it up for the past two years have said they were about to withdraw, and a small force of African Union peacekeepers in Somalia is expected to follow. Most analysts say that as soon as the Ethiopians pull out, the Islamist insurgents who have seized control of most of the country in the past year will take over the capital, Mogadishu. The transitional government will then collapse, as did the 13 transitional governments before it, the analysts predict. The Somali Parliament is expected to meet in the coming days. On top of the president’s move to dismiss Mr. Nur, members of Parliament are also considering a measure to impeach President Yusuf. One serious risk, though, is that Mr. Yusuf still enjoys the support of his clan, one of the biggest in the country. Many analysts worry that too drastic a move against him could ignite the type of heavy clan warfare that brought down Somalia’s central government in 1991 and has kept the country mired in violent chaos ever since. Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/world/africa/15s omalia.html?ref=world Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
