Abdikarim Jama close ally of Sharif close to be PM..

[General Duke]

President wants associate as PM, but competition persists

24 Sep 24, 2010 - 3:45:39 PM

 

Somalia's interim President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed wants to appoint a close associate as the Horn of Africa country’s interim Prime Minister, but there is much competition, Radio Garowe reports.

 

Mr. Abdikarim Jama, a resident of Virginia who has been the President's chief of staff since early 2009, is a front-runner for the position of Prime Minister of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and has the full support of President Sharif, sources say.

 

 

Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, President of TFG of Somalia

Sources close to the TFG President tell Garowe Online that Mr. Jama is President Sharif's favored candidate for the PM position. The two men grew up together in Jowhar, Middle Shabelle region, 90km north of Mogadishu.

 

In 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) seized Mogadishu with Sharif as the faction's leader, Mr. Jama was an active ICU member and a close ally of Sharif.

 

Mr. Jama's clan homeland is in Puntland region, where former Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmake also hailed from.

 

President Sharif has appointed Mr. Abdiwahid Elmi Goonjeh as the caretaker Prime Minister a day after Sharmake's resignation.

 

The TFG is built on the 4.5 formula, which shares power among the Somali clan-families. As such, the Prime Minister is has been independent of the President's inner political circle since the TFG was created in 2004.

 

Meanwhile, there are several other candidates for the Prime Minister's position. Sources say countries interested in Somali affairs, including Western powers, Ethiopia, Uganda, and even the U.N., have all advanced their own recommendations to President Sharif and some countries are presenting their own PM candidates, according to diplomatic sources.

 

President Sharif's interim government, whose mandates expire in August 2011, faces tremendous challenges of security, governance, development and an upcoming election to advance the TFG into the third stage.

 

But the TFG under Sharif's leadership has been plagued by corruption, infighting, and the strength of a growing insurgency under Al Shabaab, which has worsened humanitarian conditions especially in southern Somalia.

 

Somalia's last central government collapsed in 1991 and the country entered a period of lawlessness and war. In 2004, the TFG was created to establish a new future for Somalia under a federal system, supported by powerful states like Puntland.

 

GAROWE ONLINE