Somaliland: The Two Colonels’ Crackdown On Their Critics.

Every political move needs a plan  whirling through the mainframe. The most captivating within our current political theatre is surely the battle that  Kulmiye party has begun with its most senior executive members.

On surface level, the battle is not much more than a claim for primacy between two war veterans-turned politicians who inherited Kulmiye party, as a birthright, and insiders who learnt lessons of how energized persons could become part of constitutive members of a political party from the mainstream.

But no story-within-a-story is worth the price of admission if it is limited to the obvious. All of them, the war veterans  and the insiders learnt politics in teashops. Non of them really went to college to study political literature and their idea of social responsibility is nothing more than a he-she-says ambivalence.

The thing is, in all walks of life, serendipity sometimes plays the role. Imagine what positions would the two Colonels hold in Somaliland if Mujahid Lixle were alive today. Colonel Muse Biixi would not hold any position. He would be among those who always rant and raive after Mujahid Lixle.  Colonel Mohamed Kahin would be those who play marbles under the trees.

If distrust is about contemporary politics then democracy is about temporary delusion. Kulmiye is not a national political party. The party is really far off from being that. Kulmiye is a two-clan-led party. Besides the structural power, its own vision and mission tell its own tale.

The battle has just left one remarkable point. The attention of the party is focused on the aliens. The hunt has already started. Jama Shebeel, the then Kulmiye Secretary was the first alien who kissed the dust. He was sacked and silenced by a sword hanging on his head.

Abdillahi Geeljire, a former minister of fisheries and sea resources in Siilaanyo administration, became Kulmiye’s second kill. The litmus test is well done.

There is no compelling evidence other than the allegation that the exclusionists had publicly violated Kulmiye’s internal discipline by expressing political weak points of the current administration through press releases. The decision to expell these senior members from the party has just come from the two Colonels who now co-rule this country. No one else has the power to force anyone out of the party.

The questions that need convincing answers are: Why official warning has not been given to these chaps? When the right to express personal opinions has become a crime?

There were occasions in which party leaders violated the party’s internal discipline and ruling policies during Siilaanyo’s reign, and no one was expelled.

One good example is when Abdulaziz Samaale publicly slandered Siilaanyo after being dischared from the minister of finance. The party did not take any action against him. Muse Biixi also violated the party’s discipline as he  accused Siilaaanyo and his administration of failing to monitor the terrorist activities in Somaliland in 2014. No disciplinary action was taken against him. Doesn’t this mean that Kulmiye’s internal discipline is only applicable to some certain people?

The expulsion is nothing more than the reality that the two Colonels are afraid of anything that might result in people seeing through their charades. To kill knowledge and know-hows is their own construct reality.

We can never be sure what transpires within the recesses of the mind, let alone the heart. But one wonders if Colonel Muse Biixi and Colonel Mohamed Kahin are signalling to their young jibes and jabs to their own party and  intending to clean the party from the old generation. This version would have been a good guess if the opposite is not true.

Leaving all pontificating aside, faults are visible on the Colonels’ sides. Where there are human beings there are blunders and problems. Where there are problems, there can be solutions. That is why nations employ corps of advisory bodies.

An advisory body knows that civilized solutions can only be found through dialogue; so the first and abiding requirement of civil behaviour is common sense.

 But instead of finding a calm way out of a pinprick problem, some ignorant within the Colonel’s establishment decided that the time has come to “teach” aliens,  a “lesson”.

The expelled aliens belong now to “renegade” nation. The veneration might possibly go to the only remaining alien who is surrounded by a gang of four whose job is to monitor every action that the laughing cow will take.

By: Jama Falaag

       Hargeisa, Somaliland.