Can Somalias Government Survive a PM Resignation?
When Somalia’s President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed took office in January 2009, hopes were high that here, finally, was the man who might stand a chance of pulling his country from the ruin it had fallen into after 20 years of near-perpetual war. A former member of Somalia’s main Islamic political group, Sharif supposedly had good enough contacts to start reconciling with armed Islamic hardliners. He was also hailed as a man of integrity who could rise above the corruption, petty squabbles and clan politics that had turned Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) which he would now lead into a laughingstock. (See more on Sharif in this TIME Q&A.) But whatever hopes there were that Sharif’s administration would turn things around were dashed on Tuesday when his prime minister, Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke, resigned under pressure, in the culmination of a political battle that had dragged on for several months. That two leaders could clash so intensely when their government controls an are
