By John Stephen Katende

20^th Aug 2012:

Somalia is set to elect a new president today.  The war-torn country took a decisive step toward electing a new president last week after a committee overseeing the country’s transition named more than 200 parliamentarians.

The “Technical Selection Committee” – which is charged with ratifying new MPs from a list chosen by a group of 135 traditional elders, published the names of the first of 275 new legislators last Friday.

Under the agreement, each of Somalia’s four main clan families – the Darod, Dir, Hawiye and Rahanweyn – named 30 members to the group of elders nominating the members of parliament. The remaining 15 were drawn from a coalition of minority groups.

The committee however rejected 70 nominees because they did not meet the requirements to serve in parliament.  Legislators must be Somali citizens of sound mind, have a high school diploma, and be free of ties to warlords or links to atrocities committed during the country’s civil war.

“…We have 202 members readied now and we are working on 40 others that were passed today and we hope the first parliament session will be held around Monday,” said Halimo Yarey, who co-chairs the committee.

She told reporters in the Somali capital Mogadishu that the rest of the list is still pending because of inter-clan argument and other reasons related to the failure to fulfil some conditions.

The new legislature is due to elect the next president on Monday (today) under a UN-backed agreement, effectively putting an end to eight years of Somalia’s graft-riddled, Western-backed Transitional Federal Government, or TFG.

Somalia has not had a central government since the 1991 ouster of the country’s then dictator Siad Barre – the aftermath of which triggered a bloody civil war that lasted for almost two decades.

Until recently, the TFG only controlled a tiny part of the capital Mogadishu.  African Union and other troops under the AMISOM umbrella have however helped the TFG to make key territorial gains from al-Shabab, the Islamic fundamentalist fighters who oppose the TFG.

With better security, members of the Somali Diaspora have returned to invest in their battered homeland, and many now hope that a new government will help the war-torn country stabilise and recover.

Indeed, last week Uganda Correspondent reported that the BBC’s former Somali Service Editor Yusuf Garaad had abandoned his job and returned to Somalia to contest for the presidency.

The new president (whoever that will be) will then appoint a Prime Minister, who in turn will form a council of ministers.  END.  Login to www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories mid-week for our updates

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