Speaker chairs first Standing Committee session as legislative programme is set out

MOGADISHU (SONNA): The Speaker of the House of the People, Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur, has chaired the weekly meeting of the Standing Committee at Villa Hargeysa, the parliamentary offices in Mogadishu, alongside the Second Deputy Speaker, Abdullahi Omar Abshirow.

Opening the meeting, the Speaker briefed members on talks he has held with a committee of members representing the opposition, on messages of congratulation received from the speakers of parliaments abroad and from international organizations, and on the general business of the house.

The report on the opposition talks is the substantive item. Addressing parliament on 10 August after his election, the Speaker said there are colleagues absent in political councils who hold political grievances, and undertook to develop a clear policy for resolving those grievances and bringing them back, working with his deputies, the parliamentary committees, the President and the executive. Ten days later he has reported to the Standing Committee on meetings with a committee representing those members.

The undertaking was one of two he made that day. The other was to resign every position he held in the government and in the Justice and Solidarity Party, which he announced in the same address, citing Article 86(2) of the Constitution and Article 13(9) of the internal rules of the house. He had until that point held the portfolio of Ports and Marine Transport.

The Secretary General of the House of the People, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdulle, known as Jabiri, set out for the committee the bills currently before the parliamentary committees and the readings they have passed. Committee chairs then reported on the legislation in their hands, the stages it has reached and the timing of its return to the floor.

That legislative programme is the work the President identified as the business of the current period. Opening the eighth session on 1 August, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told members that responsibilities lay before them that could not be deferred, that existing laws must be brought into line with the constitution, and that international agreements important to national interests required ratification. He named the eighth session and the ninth and tenth that follow as the window for completing that work and placing national institutions on a full legal footing.

The Standing Committee is where the sequencing of that programme is settled, which is why the reports from committee chairs on stages and timing carry more weight in this session than they ordinarily would.

Closing the meeting, the Speaker told members of the Standing Committee to work for the unity and cohesion of the house so that it can discharge its constitutional duties, and undertook to lead it in accordance with the internal rules and the other regulations governing the chamber.

Neither the outcome of the talks with opposition members nor any timeline for their return has been announced. What has been established is that a speaker who resigned his party membership on the day of his election has opened a channel to members outside the chamber within his first fortnight, and has reported doing so to the body that manages the work of the house.