Egal’s expanded 27-member cabinet soon exceeded the constitutional size he had criticized

Evidence

It appears Egal was satisfied with these concessions, which brought the SYL a huge majority in parliament (103 out of 123). But this success had its downside, as Somalia’s two top leaders had to deal with the incredible number of ministerial and payment promises they had made to MPs from all major political parties. Under incredible pressure to include as many MPs as possible in his government, Egal finally made his cabinet lineup public. He retained Foreign Affairs in addition to being prime minister. In all, the new cabinet was expansive and included seventeen ministers and ten deputy ministers for a total of twenty-seven. Such a cabinet size was much in excess of the last one. Ironically, Sharmarkee and Egal had been the most caustic critics of Hussen for marginally expanding his cabinet in 1964. They took Hussen to task for exceeding the constitutionally set cabinet size, but from their new vantage point the constitutional limit set for the cabinet size was secondary to the political prerogatives of the time. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 978

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general theme of patronage and cabinet-bloating that critics blamed for destroying Somalia’s democracy by 1969.