[LINK] "Somali parliament endorses new prime minister"

[rfmcdonald]

Last November, I blogged about how the head of government of the state-like and apparently piracy-sponsoring Somali region of Puntland. It turns out that the new Somalian Prime Minister is actually Canadian citizen.

Somalia's parliament in exile endorsed Saturday the choice of Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke, a dual Canadian and Somali national, as the war-torn country's new prime minister, assembly speaker Aden Mohamed Nur said.

Nur said the parliament, meeting in Djibouti, approved Sharmarke's nomination by President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, by 410 votes in favour, with nine against and two abstentions.

The new prime minister, the son of a former president but a relative newcomer to Somalia's political scene, will face the daunting task of forming an inclusive government and restoring stability to the Horn of Africa country.

Sharmarke, 48, has worked with the United Nations in Sudan and Sierra Leone, holds Canadian citizenship and obtained degrees in political science and political economy from Carleton University in Ottawa.

He is a member of the same Darod subclan -- the Majarteen -- as former president Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who resigned late last year.

According to Somalia's transitional charter, the president, the prime minister and the parliament speaker have to belong to three different major clans.

[. . .]

The incoming prime minister's father, Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, was the last democratically-elected president of the Horn of Africa country.

He was assassinated in October 1969. Days later, Mohamed Siad Barre took power in a bloodless coup and remained there until his overthnrow in 1991 plunged the country into anarchy.