June 1959: the fascinating debate in the Constituent Assembly over the age of the President of the Republic

[Deeq A.]

In the last three years of the Trusteeship period much time and effort was devoted to the preparation of the Constitution for the future of the independent Somali State. For this purpose a Technical Committee of experts was appointed in September 1957 (Administrator’s decree No 140 of September 6, 1957) The Technical Committee prepared a preliminary draft Constitution of 141articles, accompanied by 316-page commentary. (P. Contini, “The Somali Republic: An Experiment in Legal Integration 1969”, p, 3) A revised and shorter draft Constitution of 64 articles was prepared, with the assistance of an expert in Constitutional law, by the Minister for the Constitution Both drafts were examined in detail by a drafting Political Committee of fifty Somali members. The Committee approved a new draft Constitution of 100 articles and submitted it to the Constituent Assembly, comprising the ninety Deputies of the Legislative Assembly and twenty additional Somali members.

Source: Hiiraan Online