Somali politics 1964-67 split democratic nationalists from self-interested sectarian entrepreneurs.

Evidence

This chapter’s claim is that the period of the second republic, 1964 to 1967, best exemplifies the work of two democratic statesmen and the tussle between two competing political forces for national supremacy: the democratic nationalists versus sectarian entrepreneurs. During this period, the president and the prime minister, who led the civic element, were keen to institutionalize Somalia’s nascent democracy and deepen merit-based public service, while the second camp was more predisposed to self-enrichment and saw membership in parliament and the cabinet as an end in itself. The latter group gradually coalesced around the former prime minister Abdirashid Ali Sharmarkee but still had an informal and shifting membership driven by self-interest rather than an oppositional national program. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 697

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the book’s organizing dyad of ‘democratic nationalists versus sectarian entrepreneurs’ that structures the entire second-republic analysis.
• XREF: connects to: Somali inter-order religious rivalry weakened the Dervish national cause