The Pursuit Of Wealth Is What Is Troubling Somaliland Politics.

Life is always a pursuit – the pursuit of fame, fortune and power.  Pursuit of popularity is part of our life. Rich people are popular. Powerful people are also popular. Everyone wants to be popular.

People can be popular by having a good sense of humor; a willingness to create new visions; making opulent wealth through serendipity or through a sense of dedication and devotion; and being helpful while holding a position of public trust.

In fact how people pursue prosperity or popularity –  which most of us desire to achieve and accomplish –  varies from person to person. Some people have the intensity to pursuit for more, and this is a never ending aspiration; while others pursuit for what is essential.

The pursuit for more is undisciplined; it is living by default, but the pursuit for essentials is disciplined. More than a principle, it is living by design, not by default.

The reason why most these days people abuse entrusted power, make opulent wealth out of wrongdoing and even pursue to own more by default is that contentment is missing from their culture and conscience.

Contenment is when we are   satisfied with what we have, who we are, and where we’re, and what we want out of our life, which is no longer applicable to the way we live now. Today it is rare to find anyone who is truly content with his or her condition in life.

In early times contentment was a basic religious anchor to human code of conduct when it comes to material possession. In our culture no one tried to rob of what his close relatives or a member of his clan had owned in the past. But today the passion for money and power has, without any fuss, no demarcation. Even brothers, sisters and son-in-laws have robbed one another. For we seem that we have accustomed to rob one another.

When people deliberately don’t fear God, and there is no law that punishes the robbers and wrongdoers, everyone feels that he/she is free to do what they want to, as we see today.

The confusion is we forget when too much is too much and too less is too less. The habit that evolved out of this is to grab and groan over the ill-gotten property.

The grandeur of pursuit, whether we pursue fame, fortune, or power, is not how to get more things but how to get what is essential. The beauty about pursuit in our life lies in making the wisest possible investment of our time and energy in order to operate at the highest point of contribution by doing the right thing to get only what is rightfully yours and avoiding to get what rightfully belongs to someone else’s pocket.

In life, there’s struggle, fear, anger, pains, pleasure, apprehension, competition, and of course a myriad of more complex emotions and unlimited desires that arouse human behavior.

Greed and grace do not go together. To hoard material objects beyond your basic needs is born out of a self-centric approach to life. It may make you grab things that belong to poor people. The mentality to grab what belongs to others leads to conflict, clashes, tension, grievance, and violence, besides impeding an individual’s  living conditions.

People have far more in common than they let on, in their past, and now in the possibilities of the present time. History before us clearly proves, using its rich reflective images and illusions, that discipline and decency sometimes pale before interests. Strange!! Isn’t it?

What controls the way we want to live also controls our pursuit of privileges. If devils rule the world, most of us want to find out and meet them. For the journey is about seeking wealth, nothing else.

Today if anything rules our life, it is politics. If anything designs and decorates our pursuits, it is greed – the other face of how to get more. For greed is the culture that directs the attitude of how we get our things done. The wild and stubborn spirit, which accounts for our aspiration and inspiration to achieve not what we need, but what we want, preaches that power and wealth are the factors that could only make one popular.

Of course wealth and power are what is troubling all people across the world.   Which comes the first could be one round question. Wealth and power mutate, then interlink and reinforce each other. Each can create the other. Out of their  reinforcement conspiracies spring. The abuse of power is the working element that encourages greed.

Wealth is what makes power, while politics is the business or profession that stems from power. The combination of ability of wealth, power and politics is what makes the culture in which our meanings are made. Their trouble depends on how we use them.

Hard knocks of any kind, visible or invisible are found in man and nature alike. There are times when most people leave their homes convinced they are going to conquer the world, because they only see consolation but never see consequences.

Politics has consequences when it has no times of clarity. It has great consequences when it gets poor people confused and keeps them in suspense.

Politics has times of clarity only when politicians and public figures behave rationally within clearly defined structures, processes and systems and  problems studied, and outcomes perused and predicted, in terms of “if we do this thing in this way, how we will reach that logic?”

I have noticed, with no  admiration, that in Somaliland rather less attention tends to be paid to our politics than it is elsewhere.

A sermon well delivered is more uncommon even than prayers well said. It is more difficult to build a nation well than to destroy it well; that is, the rules and reformations of any nation   are oftener on object of study.

 As they say “politics has no times of clarity when the ego of “my way, or no way” is just what only conditions a leadership’s mental imaginations. Leadership is about leaving an ego at the door. The only thing that worries all sensible Somalis is where and when to find out a leader who might leave his ego at the gate of of the state house.

It is not new that Somaliland’s politics is losing its shine and sheen, and in a nutshell is becoming a joke in the eyes of all people.The president’s last speeches in Berbera and Burco looked like a joke on Whatsapp that goes like this: “A US marine is strolling in a zoo and he sees a little girl dangerously close to a lion’s cage. The lion suddenly attacks the girl and drags her into the cage. The brave man jumps in to rescue the girl. A journalist who is a witness to the incident reports the event the next day. The headline says: ‘Marine attacks African immigrant and steals his lunch”.

The president’s speeches in Berbera and Burco with regard to the real status of UAE’s military base ended with a contradictory. And he has not yet recognized that his contradiction demands  apology. But more important than the content of the speeches is whether the president will mean what he said. People want know what Colonel Muse Biixi really fights for, what he stands for, where his demarcation line in the sand stands, and where he leads this nation.

Between President Muse Biix’s personal pursuits and his inability to get the real facts about UAE’s Berbera Military Base and DP world’s Berbera Port expansion project straight, his presidency is sinking from a massive loss of credibility. How long will Somaliland citizens tolerate to hear from Kulmiye’s  ruling administration speeches that are an insult to human intellect, only time will tell.

By:Jama Falaag

     Hargeisa, Somaliland.