Abdirizak Haji Hussein

Abdirizak Haji Hussein (Cabdirisaaq Xaaji Xuseen; عبد الرزاق حاجي حسين‎; 24 December 1924 – 31 January 2014) was a Somali diplomat and politician.

Hussein was born in 1924 in Galkayo, the capital of the north-central Mudug region of Somalia.

His family hailed from the Majeerteen Harti Darod clan.

He studied the Qur'an under his father, Hajji Hussein Atosh, who was an authority on Islam.

Hussein was largely self-educated, and was fluent in both Italian and English.

He was married, and had two daughters and a son.

From 1942 to 1949, Hussein served as an officer in the British Military Administration, including as an interpreter.

He was also a clerk during the early periods of the Trust Territory of Somalia.

In 1944, Hussein joined the Somali Youth League.

Hussein had been a party member since 1944 and had participated in the two previous Shermarke cabinets.

His primary appeal was to younger and more educated party members.

Several political leaders who had been left out of the cabinet joined the supporters of Shermarke to form an opposition group within the party.

As a result, the Hussein faction sought support among non-SYL members of the National Assembly.

Although the disagreements primarily involved personal or group political ambitions, the debate leading to the initial vote of confidence centered on the issue of Greater Somalia.

Both Osman and prime minister-designate Hussein wanted to give priority to the country's internal economic and social problems.

The proposed cabinet failed to be affirmed by a margin of two votes.

Seven National Assembly members, including Shermarke, abstained, while forty-eight members of the SYL voted for Hussein and thirty-three opposed him.

Despite the apparent split in the SYL, it continued to attract recruits from other parties.

In the first three months after the election, seventeen members of the parliamentary opposition resigned from their parties to join the SYL.

In 1950, he was imprisoned for six months for protesting for Somali independence.

He subsequently became a Galkayo Councillor in 1954, during the nation's first municipal elections.

In June 1955, Hussein was sent to the United Nations, where he presented a petition on the SYL's behalf.

He was elected the party's Secretary General a few months later, and became a Member of Parliament for the Nugal District of the Mudug region in 1959.

That same year, Hussein elected to the National Assembly in 1959.

During this period, he was also the president of the Higher Institute of Law and Economics and would later go on to become the president of the University Institute.

In the first post-independence government of Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, Hussein served as Minister of Interior from 1960 to 1962, and Minister of Public Works and Communications from 1962 to 1964.

Countrywide municipal elections, in which the Somali Youth League won 74 percent of the seats, occurred in November 1963.

He was the Prime Minister of Somali Republic from 14 June 1964 to 15 July 1967.

These were followed in March 1964 by the country's first post-independence national elections.

Again the SYL triumphed, winning 69 out of 123 parliamentary seats.

The party's true margin of victory was even greater, as the fifty-four seats won by the opposition were divided among a number of small parties.

After the 1964 National Assembly election in March, a crisis occurred that left Somalia without a government until the beginning of September.

President Osman, who was empowered to propose the candidate for prime minister after an election or the fall of a government, chose Abdirizak Haji Hussein as his nominee instead of the incumbent, Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, who had the endorsement of the SYL party leadership.

Shermarke had been prime minister for the four previous years, and Osman decided that new leadership might be able to introduce fresh ideas for solving national problems.

In drawing up a Council of Ministers for presentation to the National Assembly, the nominee for prime minister chose candidates on the basis of ability and without regard to place of origin.

But Hussein's choices strained intraparty relations and broke the unwritten rules that there be clan and regional balance.

For instance, only two members of Shermarke's cabinet were to be retained, and the number of posts in northern hands was to be increased from two to five.

The SYL's governing Central Committee and its parliamentary groups became split.

From 1975 to early 1980, he also served as the country's ambassador to the United Nations.

A former Secretary General of the Somali Youth League, Hussein played a leading role in the nation's early civilian administration.