At least 40 members of Somalia’s interim government left the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Wednesday for various regions of Somalia to explain the new government’s policies to the public, an official in Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi’s office said.
The delegations, made up of five teams of ministers and MPs, were due to visit regions in southern and central Somalia.
”Teams comprising seven to eight ministers and MPs will visit the regions of Bay, Bakol, Hiran, Middle Shabelle, Galagadud and Mudug,” Abdurrahman Ali ”Malaysia”, the special adviser to Gedi, said on Wednesday.
The teams will spend five days ”explaining government policies and establishing a presence” in those regions, he said.
”Upon their return, they will report back on their impressions of what they have seen in the respective regions,” he added.
The trip is the latest indicator that momentum is building up for the Kenya-based Somali government to return home. It is the first ”bold” trip for the new government to venture into the regions, according to a Somali political source.
”Some of these regions have not had any contact with any form of authority” since the fall of President Muhammad Siyad Barre in 1991. ”It is basically a wild west out there,” the source said.
On February 6, 50 MPs of the 275-strong Parliament left Nairobi for the Somali capital, Mogadishu, to join another 30 who arrived in the city on February 3.
The second group of parliamentarians, led by Speaker Sharif Hassan Shaykh Aden, included some Cabinet ministers. They received a rousing welcome from the public and a show of support from militiamen allied to the country’s faction leaders, according to eyewitnesses.
The MPs’ trip to Mogadishu was also part of preparations for the return of the government to Somalia.
The Somali political source said if this latest trip succeeds, it will greatly advance government plans for relocation.
Ali said the ministers and MPs are also due to visit their native regions.
Gedi will ”most likely be in Mogadishu by the end of this week”, Ali added.
Military experts from various African countries are currently in Somalia to assess the situation ahead of the proposed deployment of a peace mission to the war-torn country.
The regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development, whose members are Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda, sponsored two years of peace talks between various Somali clans and factions that culminated in the formation of the transitional government.
The new government, which includes several faction leaders, has not been able to relocate from Nairobi to Somalia, citing security considerations. However, it has come under increasing pressure from the Kenyan government and Western diplomats to do so.
The transitional federal Parliament elected Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed as president on October 10. The election marked the culmination of the two-year reconciliation conference that brought representatives from various clans and factions together. — Irin