President Osman worked to keep the ruling party government bound by law.

Evidence

In this context, the most important and immediate challenge of the republic in its first phase was how to transform the aspiration of the Somali people for freedom and unity into functioning democratic institutions. A most decisive instrument for meeting such a daunting transformation was the quality of political leadership in parliament and senior members of the government. This chapter examines the efforts made during the first republic to maintain the constitutional separation of responsibilities between the three branches of government—the division of power between the head of state, the prime minister and his cabinet, and parliament—and most centrally the efforts made by President Osman to ensure that the ruling-party government lived by the law of the land. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 474