This Piece is an epilogue of a body of a longer paper “Leadership for the Common Vice"
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…the present interregnum, both in the regional and national guises, registers either a recycling of spent out yet still ambitious failures or throws up elative newcomers hungry for power but Lilliputain in the attributes that count: competence, integrity, and promise.  
Ahmed & Abdi Samatar 

Since the first draft of this paper was completed by the first weeks of March 2008, a few of its declared priori of dictatorially deleterious behaviors in “Somaliland” have been proven bare in short days that followed.  For one, Dahir Riyale Kahin “the President” showed his true colors by consolidating his illegal grip on power upon testing of his ability to reign, regardless. 

When Riyale’s five-year-term in office ended in May 15, 2008, he simply lung the main opposition parties aside after he had already hoodwinked the hapless House of Elders.  The so-called Upper House of the Parliament extended his time for a year with neither the legal precedence nor public’s consent.  Yet, despite the financial and political woes that began to snarl at Somalilanders, it seems that they have fallen in line to legitimize the raider as “President.”  Thus, the devastating economic and political assault that, Riyale and his cronies are inflicting on the north are grave and fast accumulating.  Second, the venal House of Elders (of which the paper had predicted its susceptibility to deceit) was rumored to sell the votes to him, making the illegal extension seem benign.  Consequently, Riyale nullified and negated March 2008 as the designated, presidential election month.  Third, the brutality of his authority is rising.  His rogue police, for example, killed three and injured scores in late March in Hargeisa after an unarmed youth, protesting against his inapt reign, met a hail of live ammunition.  In October, a 19 year old girl was killed in Borama, again by Riyale’s police when a voter registration spun out of control and brought about a melee of frustration.  Fourth (and maybe the most damaging political consequence), Riyale issued an illegal, presidential decree of Gerrymandering (ignoring a provision in the “constitution” precisely intended to thwart this type of unilaterally ill-conceived presidential edict).  In late March 2008, Riyale simply declared “Somaliland” regions to be doubled from six to twelve.  The sudden state-hood expansion (with neither the capacity to carry that kind of responsibility nor the capability for an administrative body with legitimacy to govern demarcated regional new zones) made no economic sense or social gain.  Riyale just pulled names out of the hat, titling villages “regions!” 

Establishing pseudo regions (states) with governors or without, Riyale’s plan is an artlessly disguised charade to carve out tribal enclaves to manipulate, control and corral future votes for himself.  Whether his new method of Gerrymandering is going to work or not is not known but most of “Somaliland” politicians are too meek to mount a meaningful challenge to prove him wrong. Thus, the idea of injecting inane politics of partisan tribalism and economic anemia into the body of his constituency is taking shape.  Riyale is flexing his muscle, however myopic, thinking like the mindless dictators before him that the path to remain in power is dug with deception.  At what cost, the northerners are not yet able to tell, but could be as costly as the past of Barre’s regime.           

Fifth, in July 2008, Riyale mounted the gravest war on the financial vitality and the only economic engine of his “country” by unilaterally acting on a threat he had himself issued: (all livestock exported from the port of Berbera were to be sold to a Saudi tycoon at a preset below market value price).  With this audacious but shortsighted economic gamble, Riyale, for the first time in169 years, closed the doors to the only vital financial pipeline of the north, even after scores of business men and the commercial minded sector complained that the government was interfering with the free economic flow (Samatar, 1989). But despite the deleterious financial and political cost in the long run, Riyale refused to rationally negotiate with the businessmen who had just dared to ask for fair, market regulated competition and an elimination to the barriers of the entrepreneurial spirit!


Read the full paper Leadership for the Common Vice

Ahmed Ismail Yusuf
Email: yusuf006@umn.edu

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