National Constituent Assembly re-scheduled for Wednesday

Sabahi Online
Tuesday, July 24, 2012

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The Somali National Constituent Assembly (NCA) will open in Mogadishu on Wednesday (July 25th) after yet another delay, Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali announced on Monday.

The Ministry of Constitution and Reconciliation had announced earlier in the day that the assembly would convene Tuesday, citing technical reasons for the delay.

"Today it was scheduled for the National Constituent Assembly to convene in Mogadishu, but unfortunately, it has been postponed for technical reasons, because some selected representatives or delegates from the remote regions of Somalia have not yet arrived at the venue of the meeting in Mogadishu," Minister of Constitution and Reconciliation Abdirahman Hosh Jibril said Monday, according to Somalia's Shabelle Media Network.

Even though the NCA has been scheduled to begin on Wednesday, there has been no indication that all 825 members have been selected. The prime minister met with the technical committees for resolving disputes between tribal chiefs on Saturday, urging elders to resolve outstanding differences and to speed up the selection of delegates to approve the new draft constitution.

This is the sixth time tribal leaders have exceeded the deadline to complete the task of choosing the NCA members. Tribal leaders failed to select the delegates to the assembly before May 15th, and failed to meet five subsequent deadlines.

The NCA is tasked with ratifying the Somali draft constitution, after which the document will act provisionally until it can be subject to a national referendum.

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