The Time Has Come To Control The Inflation Of Candidacy For Somaliland Legislative And LocalHouse Representatives.

Democracy cannot survive without a concept. A concept cannot succeed without commitments to be fulfilled. This is the iron law of democracy.

The conventional wisdom of democracy even goes further from that law and alludes that the doctrine of democracy, as the old gag puts it, only becomes credible when people who embrace democracy express their choice wisely.

The wise expression of peoples’ choice has  two-fold construct. The first construct is that democracy is a system of government in which a country’s political leaders are chosen by the people in regular, through free, and fair elections. The second construct is that people have the right to replace their elected leaders and representatives and have also the choice between different candidates and parties who want the power to govern.

The thing is, political democracy is a function for representing the public  —  which means an electoral system where citizens vote to elect people to represent their interests and concerns. More importantly representation is the accountable aggregation of common interests.

The first question that every Somaliland citizen, who is elligible to vote, must answer in an honest and resposible way is: Are we all clear about why do we need to elect representatives, be they presidents, or parliamentarians, or local councillors?

If anything is not clear about where we are today in political democracy, it is how we identify those people that represent us to hold positions of public trust and the criteria we use to choose public figures that we want to entrust them with the future.

If not mass delusion, it is a self-betrayal to cast your vote when you don’t exactly know for what role or responsibility you elect a candidate running for political post. Knowing well about why you need to have representative is crucial to your own role in social responsibility as a citizen.

The main responsibility for representatives is to check and challenge the works of the government.The point is to find out why this role is and evidently has been missing from Somaliland political system. There must be reasons of why elected representatives fail to do their duties.

As we are aware Somaliland politics has become a business, something that puts money into one’s pocket  —  which means that the aim and intention to becone a politician or hold public positions is to amass opulent wealth out of public property.

There is no denial that the current legislators and local councillors represent themselves instead of the public that elected them, and that almost all members of the two bodies and even the unelected Guurti are all good at fighting to the death for their own interests.

In all countries of the world, legal institutions are public assets but ours are a liability to the nation. What takes money out of the peoples’ purses is a liability, while what brings money into peoples’ purses is an asset.

Objectively speaking money is the only factor that motivates those who seek political posts. Rare are those who seek political positions for putting the peoples’ interests first.

When one’s own money is the only means that makes him/her elected (every political post contender), how could he/she be alleged or accused of not doing his/her national duty? If you don’t invest your candidate materially and morally during election campaign, how would you account him/her? Is that too neat to be correct?

To elect your representative on tribal line is not  a crime nor even a questionable point, simply because we have not been recruited politically, educationally and socially into anything else other than the ideology of tribalism.

The questionable is the criteria or the quality that you base on your decision to choose between competitors hailing from your own clan when money is not what controls your mind and not just aim only at looking for one’s ledger.

Regardless of whether we are rich or poor Somaliland citizens, the tough, time-consuming contest is coming up and all clans will be obliged to line up a fleet of political competitors for the nation’s favorite future-time, the parliamentarian and governotorial games.

Dear citizen, all we recall is unlimited exposure of runners, inflation of candidacy for the legislative body and local council, which is worse than the inflation of money. So how are we going to deal with this problem? Is it possible for us to intellectualise the way we elect our leaders?

If we all want to win and have our ideas and beliefs triumph to pick the right cadidates, and avoid recreating enabling another cycle of vicious representatives, we should configure and construct plainly what exactly do we like to look for in our future candidates.

In order for us to come up with solutions, what are the credentials or credibility that might allow one to run for a position of public trust? What kind of a person that can be a community representative? The one who has been practically an activist and advocate of public demands, needs and requirements or the one that walks from the street and just runs amok in every where in election times?

How we elect people who don’t represent themselves but represent the community, people who don’t come prepared to fight to the death for what they individually desire to achieve, but people who are well prepared to fight and find for the common cause?

Maybe you’re after the meanest, toughest looking ones? The ones with the best abs and the biggest biceps?  Or the ones with the most intimidating smack talk?  The ones who will put on the best show and get the crowd riled up? How about the ones who look and sound like they belong in your own clan and who won’t pull punches in insulting the other guys? The ones who attract the cheers and the jeers of the rowdy capital?

We must look for people to run for office that we think are not only good at arguing on principal, but are good at practical, common-sense and problem-solving. We should elect people who are really good at getting power on its course, not necessarily those who are good at using and abusing it.

We have many problems that need national conversation. Every problem which we encounter is an opportunity to know ourselves better. Ask the questions. How do we react? What can we do differently? How can we solve this problem? Can we do anything to prevent this from happening again? What can we do to ease the pain, the problems, the ills in the services of our people?

We need planners and builders. We need reformers and renovators. We need men of their own words, men with living conscience and conviction. We do not need people who cann’t work without payments of bribes. We are fed up with arrogants and ignorants. Not more  crooks and cranks, no more liers and misfits.

By: Jama Falaag

       Hargeisa, Somaliland