Somaliland: Are The Colonels Just Cash-Oriented And Not Cause-Oriented? What Is Going On?

Becoming a president through a tribal election is at best a temporary joy, a few days celebration before cycles of weakness and failure reverse direction.

Elections are just contests between candidates, which generally end in the defeat of one contestant. Democratic countries see elections as the epitome of civilisation; and they still acknowledge their essentiality, which again proves that healthy competition does not escalate clashes and conflicting ideas.

Elections are meaningless without national spirit. Each country has a character, which is what arouses the emotions of every citizen in times of elections.

A tribe is Somaliland character. It is a tradition that is over and above the psyche of every individual. For this a tribe never disapears from Somaliland culture. It is a national disease that always affects all social and political issues.

In times of political power struggle,  Somalilanders always tweak the meaning of election to eliminate contest and invite conspiracy as the alternative attribute.  In elections, they manipulate the votes. In politics, they miss the point and manage political issues without discipline.

Politics without discipline brings out the fear of the unknown, the most dangerous territory in human psychology. Fear never limits the danger of the despairing politics. Despair creates distrust and disunity.

Somaliland appetite for discord and disunity is unmistakable. There is no disunity without aggression. No aggression takes place in Somaliland without tensions of tribalism. A tribal war must still be going on somewhere in Somaliland.

A political tribal election is not a planless march to the gates of presidency and priviliges. Neither caution nor precaution is of any use. Only the desire to build a tribal dynasty plays the role.

In tribal politics, nationalism is not the issue. There is no point being a nation if you do not want nationalism. Tribalism is patently the number one enemy of nationalism. It is what actually inspires the whole population to fight for a lower cause.

The ruling behavior of the current Somaliland presidency is just a manifestation of that lower cause. Low thinking is the other face of lower cause. Here is a further condition. Elections whose result is fashioned by money and tribal card have two non-negotiable demands: Nepotism and Privileges.

Public theft and abuse of power, the favaurite weapons of tribal politics, are the keys to both nepotism and privileges. A collusion stressing and stipulating the two non-negotiable demands are made when some tribes politically unite to elect one particular presidential candidate.

What is interesting to know is “who Muse Biixi has become”  after ascending to the nation’s highest position? Has he demonstrated an aptitude that is different from the primitive  thoughts of tribalism?

Statistically speaking some people argue Colonel Muse has become greater than the greatest and better than the best when special consideration is given to in how he handles Somaliland. Some others assert that Colonel Muse Biixi has become an “empty vessel.”

Presidency is no bed of roses. It is terribly noisy and a tiring profession at that. It is where  presidents become boorish once the hurly-burly is done. Even pies and pancakes that marshal to surface cannot maintain health. Symptoms of aging, wrinkles, emotions down, fatigue, frustration, visionless approach, and tauted nerves appear on the faces of some presidents, particulatly those who need ability and skill to find solutions for the pressing issues, characteristics indicating that failure is inevitable.

Failure is the distance between bedtime story and a wake-up call. The former starts with when we regurgitate the old and think it is new and then lull ourselves to sleep. The latter starts with when we think ahead to address a new dawn and insist to know what we don’t know yet.

Colonel Muse Biixi has become a victim of his own political party programme. His political narrative has just run and renewed Kulmiye’s old course and has not been able to find a further chapter to his own administration

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There is no strong intellectual team in the Colonel’s administration, a team of high calibre that can take the nation out of its tight situation. Nor is there any serious thinking being made by Muse on how to fashion and form an alternative delivery system when he assumed the power of the state.

The wonderment is what Kulmiye’s tribal politics made Colonel Muse learn from the presidency: “Foes and friends.” Friends are those tribes who are with the president and foes are those tribes who challenge and criticize polices and plans the president makes.

The desire to be politically allied with the tribes that voted in favor of the elected president overtaks the idea to welcome the foes, the tribes who voted against. The imperative to impress both factions through adult supervision and restorative polices appears not to come into Colonel’s mind. So, in whose side, then, does the fault lie?

Fault neither lies in friends nor in foes, but in the president who thinks opposition party as the usual suspects. The observation is that Colonel Muse Biixi looks now like the tailor who insists that one-size-fits-all. That is a politics of one-man-show, not a contest to determine the fate of this land.

Somaliland fostered in a volatile game played in an open ground. It is, therefore, of  paramount importance to keep the key stakeholders together to resolve conflicts collectively and address the future impact of the conflicts through the practical implementation of restorative practices. If the imagination to think ahead is left with Colonel Muse, such initiative is the best option, but if otherwise becomes true, the question that arises is: Which faction will be driven out first, the foes or the friends, since insiders realise in their final analysis that differences between all stakeholders exist?

Indications are such that Colonel Muse will finally place his consuming flair and flamboyance in the safe custody of his political coach, whose behaviour on the sidelines, consequently, was reassuringly bizarre. Muse Biixi is under pressure that compels him to respect Kulmiye’s conditioned politics. The rainbow coalition wants to win.

The interesting thing is what the eastern rainbow block are doing. They are playing measured, thoughtful and sometimes thought-provoking politics as if the tempest in their arteries has been bottled in conditioned doctrine and disciplines. They are going to kill one stone with two birds. They never give up.

The great puzzle, however, is the opposition parties. Nothing is more restorative than a wake-up call. Their leaders must admit that words, as the old saying puts it, without action never to heaven go.

Since 1991, defenders at the highest level of Kulmiye party were routinely hacking to hurt opposition’s political leader’s knees or ankles, very often breaking them.  Kulmiye party tests the tensile strength of what the opposition parties are prepared to accept.

Mujahids, goes the saying, never die; they just fade away. Unless their career includes a tendency to take stands in the side in which their bread is buttered.

Our economy policy is bleak; our demostic mandate is bleak; our foreign policy bleak and fraught with disasters; our vision for Somaliland is even bleaker still. Sool and Sanaag regions seem to be getting out of Somaliland souvereign. What is going on? People want to know.

By: Jama Falaag

       Somaliland, Hargeisa.