May 27, 2008

“The mark of how we find the sense of choosing parliament or presidents is not intellectual fervour, It does not have the very high refinement of vision” Jama Falaag.

2008 presidential election is, of course, a contest people can not stop discussing. Some people may see that election is a pledge of revealing, simply because it is a process to pick up a president who is enough tough to pull his country out of difficult times. Some others may believe hat elections bring change people can believe in. Does this mean that election is the season of hope and people are so hopeful about it that they have not lost faith in future president because they are not forgetting how much their past presidents and the present one have done for Somaliland?

The beauty about election is to produce parliament or presidents who know exactly what their people need; politicians who know well that their responsibility is to lead their people aright, public figures who could enable the people to move their world closer to perfection; men who take up their country cause more than they care for themselves.

If the hope of every election is in its anticipation, it is often so only in the sense that people elect parliament and presidents who are apt to address the issues that are at stake, cross-country anxiety over the things that are urgent, with a call to construct a concrete administration that could deliver the public from an ideology that has led all societies to invest less and less in all public and private institutions.

The mark of how we find the sense of choosing parliament or presidents is not intellectual fervour. It does not have the very high refinement of vision, a concern for the common that takes an intelligent form. This lack of intelligent fervour in how we choose our public figures shows one simple script: that our choice does not reflect the right kind of resolve.

Take a look at previous elections in which a parliament and a president were elected. Did we ever see any parliamentary or presidential runner who revealed himself fully in the intensity of election? Did we see a runner who stepped out of a crowd and described how change bubbles from the bottom-up? If the public picked up the right candidates, where are they? Why did they not do the work for which they were elected? Did the members of the parliament that the people of Somaliland elected become people who really know the choice between a clan and a country or a cash and a cause?

The answer is a resounding no. The parliament Somaliland elected did not prove their presence or performances by any practical test. Number one, they have not yet passed measures to build trust in government by allowing the public to go online and see how and where every penny of government revenue is spent. Two, they have not become the lead voice in championing ethics reform that would root out Siyad Barre-corruption style in the public bodies now leading to one another. Three, they have not shown any ability or interest to unite parties around a politics – a politics that puts solving challenges of everyday ahead partisan calculation and political again. Four, they have not spoken out on the issues that will define Somaliland in the 21st century. These facts are not amazing still.

What is more amazing than those facts is that the parliament, as members of a law-making body, failed to complete the country’s unfinished constitution. Constitution was, and still is one of the things the parliament were to put their hands on and amend any articles that need to be amended, reworded, redefined, or even modified. How come could the state go by ambiguous and incomplete constitution? The state needs a constitution that is literally and linguistically clear, one that can not be argued about, but can be altered whenever and wherever the need arises.

The fervent hope in Somaliland’s 2008 presidential election will not be that the next president will come up with fresh thinking and a politics that no longer settles for the lowest common denominator. What will happen from hereon will be a reprise of the old kind of politics and tragically, one that will be filled with bad choices.

For one, there is no blood that is new in the picture of presidential election. All candidates are the old kind. But the contenders are worse than the incumbent.

The incumbent, President Riyaale is a person who, right from the day he was inaugurated, began to handle and still continues to handle his administration in a traditional way, as someone who only coaxes, cajoles, compromises, negotiates the deal and, in general, provides the oil that keeps major clans satisfied. Has Mr Riyaale been taught to rule the country in that way? Or the society is telling him to do that when all else has been exhausted? Those who see this rubric tradition as a weakness in President Riyaale must explain why the home that cradles the rock does not rule our world – put the right man in the right place at the ight time, regardless of who one is and which tribe one belongs to.

The 2008 presidential contenders, Mr Silaanyo and Mr Faisal, are men who, in my judgment, are not made of steel, but are politicians in this country not because they are the best in the best, not because of what they have done, but because they became politicians at a time when politics itself ran out of its own element and real politick no longer has to do with who has a plan to provide relief to the people. The graphical report of their political record reveals that they always focus on finding a form of words around which to escalate an argumentative notion or an injuring activity that could end up highlighting even more starkly what divides than what unites people.

Evidence: weigh their words. Watch what they do. Listen what they say. Objectively viewed, their inspiration is a matter of how to sit on the highest chair and having the price. The question for them, and their political campaign, is how and when their thinking and sense of seeking presidency will become one in a way that preserves the dignity of leadership.

Politicians are the power and the pride of their nations. They are the hook that pulls people into peace and prosperity. When politicians fail to pull their nations into certainties of life, as they frequently are in most of the time, there is no reason for pride. What decides Somaliland people as a nation and where they stand now is not totally what one could give credit to Somaliland politicians. It is as if the lessons they learned from politics are such that the one who usurps the lore and language of uplift and applies the law notoriously is the one who would have the larger estate. The proof is before our eyes, each and every time.

If history is our guide, Somaliland politicians did not honestly play their role in a way that could land Somaliland people on the shore of brightness. In fact peace and tranquility is what people of Somaliland are proud of; building their country without any external support is the honor of their high achievement.

Praise always goes to the public. It is the people who made peace; it is the people who built their country from the scratch; it is the people who fought once against one another, but forgot what had happened between them in the past and became friends again. What is it that changed the people?

Peace is what brings change to people, what makes possible for man to change his life, what allows humans to achieve what they want to achieve. Politics do not always bring change, because politics is a blend of promise and possibility. But promises are not usually fulfilled, because politicians do not do what they promise to do, and possibility itself is not a fact. This is why peace is the only thing people can believe in and, therefore, no one has the right to play it.

The people of Somaliland have felt what peace is all about, and they are doing everything they can to live up to it. Those who felt what peace and stability meant to them are all those to whom Somaliland belongs, those who valiantly fought for the arena, whose faces are marred by dust and sweet and blood, who are just making a start in life and assuming upon themselves the responsibility for the future. They are strong enough to give crushing rebuff to any attempt to encroach on peace and are holding this not by use of force, but only and exclusively by force of example that people must prove the corrections of wrong.

Democracy is not a new phenomenon to the people of Somaliland. History shows that the way our fathers and grandfathers managed their affairs was a very liberal kind, which offered unlimited freedom of speech; not because this was fanciful, but because that was the safest and significant way of life, involving the least offence to the society. How this liberal gift got into our forefathers’ culture was partly because dedication had been so appealing to their belief in life as their formal and final burst of integrity and partly because effort was the style of their life, of which openness was the reigning element, and as such, they must, in honor of their integrity, admire it.

So the people of Somaliland must come to realize that in order to keep democracy alive in their land, they must make a change in their law and in their politics. The question is how. Step one: Keep your emotions in check when you are ever going to elect someone to a position of trust. Step two: Find a sense of who is the most electable and eligible for a public position. Step three: Analyze who you want to elect as a leader in terms of conscience and culture, honesty and honor, religion and responsibility, and punch out those who are cash-and-clan oriented. Making full use of your right resolve would make a change in our politics and intellectual life in terms of quality.

That version is about just one question: What kind of state Somaliland will be? A state that will exist as long as states exist, a state of Its own identity, the example of its neighbors, where peace pervades all walks of life, a state that invests its resources in its people, in industry and moral authority, where future generation will pay the retirements of the old?

Prosperity needs peace. Progress requires fortitude, experience and mettle. Consistency requires special creation; reaffirmation needs reorganization and republican ideas. What this would mean is that Somaliland needs firm hands to hold it, minds more ingenuous, more subtle, more cultivated, more cultured, more trained consciously to the task of devotion and mental development.

Today the joint efforts of politicians and people are needed more than ever to deliver the people from the threat of hunger and horrors of war. A step forward is much like the next to come; and a step backward is a hint of freefall for another failure. Looking ahead is where the future lies. He who thinks ahead gets the first.

Home is where we rise and fall as one family. Let us build a base that can support peoples’ ambition. It is about our country. It is about our children. It is about our future.