The Borama conference had at least three significant results. Harking back to the S.N.M.’s original programme, it produced a Peace Charter (a kind of national heer) to strengthen security and regularize the role of the traditional local elders in all aspects of peace making. It also formulated a national charter to serve for two years as the country’s temporary constitution. The new government, which Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Igal (Habar Awal in succession to Abdarahman Tur, Habar Yunis) was elected to lead, would be required to draft a formal constitution to be put to a referendum within this two-year period. The most novel feature here was an imaginative innovation in the shape of a bicameral legislature, with a non-elected upper house of traditional elders (the guurti), and an elected lower house of representatives: a kind of compromise between the old clan-based S.N.M. and the exigencies of modern administration.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 657