Somali Parliament Rejects Reinstatement of Ministers

Somali legislators on Friday rejected an attempt to reinstate 10 ministers who resigned from the cabinet at the height of a feud between President Abdullahi Yusuf and Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein last July. Somali Parliament Speaker Sheikh Adan Mohamed announced the House verdict after a vote in which 175 lawmakers opposed the reinstatements, with a paltry 15 in support. The 10 pro-Yusuf ministers had resigned to side with the president’s revocation of Prime Minister Hussein’s sacking of Mogadishu Mayor Mohamed Dheere, which sparked off a rift that almost disintegrated the country’s fragile interim government. The rejection was a second blow for President Yusuf this week, coming only days after he agreed to uphold Hussein’s decision to sack the Mogadishu mayor.[PE]