Somali Parliamentarians Fight on The Floor of Parliament
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Somalia is an amazing place to live in, that is, if you live at all. Fighting seem to be the in-thing there, where everybody wants to have a piece of the pye!
Whereas parliament is a place where legislators are expected to engage in wars of wits and persuasive arguments to push politically bending views into policies and laws, in Somalia it is a place where atrocious blows and jabs get traded in an atmosphere where swords are pulled out of their plowshares in a total war scenario! While all these are happening, outside parliament, bombs are exploding, and the Islamist rebels are shooting indiscriminately at innocent Somalis and pro government state functionaries.
In this recent incident, the legislators in the august house were seen physically fighting each other in a war that pitted opposition verses the ruling party. Blows were traded in all directions with the majority ruling party having naturally an upper hand, given the fact that some opposition party members had the discomfort of concurrently facing two or three members of the ruling party in a hand-to-hand fight.
Some armed members of parliament were seen drawing out pistols form their holsters and firing into the roof of parliament!. It took a big platoon of heavily armed policemen to disperse the angry parliamentarians. Some had to be roughed up by the police before everybody was thrown out of the House and a heavy lock slammed on the door of Parliament.
It all started when opposition members discerned that the President of the Somalia Transitional Government was attempting to drag his feet on issues of national elections. They were particularly angry that the Speaker was deliberately refusing to table election bill inspite of the fact that the country was long over due for fresh elections. They then mooted out a spirited effort to impeach the President over this matter. The ruling party would not hear anything like this so in the heat of the moment, fighting erupted in a typical Somali fashion. Thanks to the intervention of the armed police to restore order, otherwise, parliamentarians were likely to finish themselves up right inside the National Assembly building.
