Prime Minister Hussen ordered popular bills first to exhaust the parliamentary opposition.

Evidence

Parliament was the last authority that could reverse the government’s intention to make redundant those civil servants deemed unfit to serve. Individual petitioners lobbied their representatives while parliament was not in session and intensified their efforts once MPs returned to work. They submitted the same petition to parliament and then mobilized their network to pressure MPs into action. But the government was well prepared to fend off this challenge. Hussen organized his government’s presentations in parliament in such a way that the most popular bills, in a list of twenty-three agenda items, were taken up first and the contentious items were left to the last. Among the popular bills was one allowing the government to support the family of deceased General Hersi and earmarks for pensions for the veterans of the Ethiopia-Somalia conflict of 1964. It appears that the prime minister’s strategy was to exhaust the opposition with other details and some popular bills before they got to his administrative reform. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 817