Somalia is choosing a president in a process that people here hope will bring stability after a dozen years of violence and chaos -- and 52 people are running for the top job, including the former dictator's brother and a soft-spoken millionaire who hasn't lived in the country for 26 years.
"The word peace is missing from the Somali dictionary," said wealthy businessman Al Haj Mohamed Yassin, the latest to join the field of presidential candidates in this Horn of Africa nation.
"It's high time someone stepped forward and said enough is enough," he told reporters at press conference on Thursday.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since clan-based opposition leaders joined forces to oust dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. They then turned on each other, reducing the country to a patchwork of fiefdoms ruled by heavily armed clan-based factions.
Although a transitional government was elected at an August 2000 peace conference in neighboring Djibouti, it has had little influence outside the capital, Mogadishu, and has been unable to disarm the gunmen. Its three-year mandate expired on Aug. 12.
After more than a dozen rounds of talks between warlords, clan leaders and members of the transitional government trying to end the chaos, the 366 delegates have agreed to create a parliament, which will appoint a president to govern the entire nation.
Ordinary Somalis won't choose the 351 members of parliament. That decision will be made the heads of 23 clan-based factions, in consultation with tribal leaders, who signed a cessation of hostilities agreement last October.
The goal is to select a parliament by next month, but the process could well take longer, and there is no deadline. Meanwhile, delegates are putting the final touches to the country's transitional charter.
The pool of presidential candidates is something of a looking glass into Somalia's past.
Abdirahman Jama Barre, brother of the former dictator, is running for the job.
Also in the race is Hussein Mohamed Aidid, a former US Marine and son of Mogadishu warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid, who managed to evade capture by American troops in 1993. A mission to apprehend some of Aidid's aides in October of that year resulted in the deaths of 18 American soldiers.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS