Align laws with new federal system to avoid inter-governmental conflicts-AG
Existing laws must be reviewed to align them with the new federal system to avoid conflicts between the federal and state government, Attorney General Dr. Ahmed Dahir has said.
The AG said whereas the country adopted a federal system five years ago, several pieces of legislations and laws are still based on the unitary system which governed the country since independence.
“This federalism we are using now is something new to Somalia and our previous laws are based on another different system known as unitary system. To inculcate federalism, we need to carry out reviews on laws and come up with [new] laws on everything taking into consideration relationship between the two levels of government,” Dahir told Goobjoog News.
Somalia adopted a federal system in 2012 which led to creation of interim regional administrations yet to be fully transformed into federal states. Puntland state however existed before having set itself as a semi-autonomous region in 1998.
Dahir said the regional administrations were formed before critical federal laws were passed causing conflicts between the state and federal governments. “Federal states came up even before federals laws were properly enacted such as on tax collection, resource sharing, and devolution of the judiciary, police department and elections.”
Parliament must therefore come up with laws to set clear direction on how these issues will be managed, said Dahir but called on regional states to work with corresponding federal departments to create synchrony.
“Every regional state department needs to work in tandem with its corresponding federal department. All these can be attained through constitutional review which will provide clarity on these things.”
Meanwhile the AG said the maritime case between Kenya and Somalia will come up for hearing after Nairobi files its counter-memorial December 18.
“Kenya was compelled to respond to the subject of the case. Initially we are the ones who submitted the case. Now Kenya was given ultimatum till 18th December 2017 to submit their response. After this submission, the court will start hearing the case and the exchange of statements from the opposing sides and will give out its final ruling based on the arguments.”