From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Tue Sep 16 2008 - 09:32:14 EDT
Somali MP resigns over president remarks
Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:36:28 GMT
Somali parliament in 2004
A high member of Somalia's parliament has resigned in reaction to President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed's call for lawmakers to obey him.
Lawmaker Ali Bashi Omar Rooraye has left the country and is now in Djibouti, Somali transitional parliament speaker Sheikh Adan Madoobe told a Press TV correspondent on Tuesday, adding that his resignation was accepted.
When asked how legislators would respond to the Somali president's threat to dissolve the parliament, Madoobe said that lawmakers would convene on the issue.
"We are lawmakers not the president's soldiers. We will show him," he said.
Somalia's president is at odds with the parliament over its decision not to return 10 pro-Yusuf cabinet members, who resigned in protest after bringing various accusations against Prime Minister Nur Adde.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since president Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. In 2006, US-backed Ethiopian troops invaded the country and now support Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
Thousands of civilians have been killed and displaced as a result of the ongoing violence in the war-torn country.
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