By Abdisalam Mohamud
There will be an election in Somalia soon for electing its Head of State. It is an open secret the post of Somali president is for sale. The contesting parties interested in buying this presidential post for sale are among the International Community’s heavyweights and its lightweights. Somehow, their converging interests in Somalia’s instability make them bedfellows on the selection of their man on a string to buy. Surprisingly, misrepresentation by the trustee of Somali politics, the United Nations Special Representative, Michael Keating, showcases the forthcoming elections in Somalia as Somali-owned election. In fact, he streamlined by endorsing the illegitimate processes of voting which is based on clannish instead of one-man one-vote that will make easy the proceedings of vote for a cash.
However, there are a dozen candidates vying to fit into this one political post. Each one of them has no credible national view except unsubstantiated claims that they are capable, and the best to steer the country from its doldrums. Nonetheless, a glance at each one of them clearly highlights that they are only for self-aggrandizement, which transform them into what they are: unworthy generic commodities. No wonder then, if each contender for the Somali presidential post boasts external sponsors taking special interest in support of their candidacy; no wonder then there is a hidden exchange the presidential hopeful is expected to oblige to. Yet, should such support have been in any other national election of any nation, it would have been an automatic disqualification of their candidacy, but it is the showcase for their qualifications in Somalia. That does not matter, if some of their claim of backing is coming from states that are the minnows of world stage, like The United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Kenya. Worse still, almost all the contestants for the presidential post on sale are known for the blunders they have committed, however, it is tantamount to hypocrisy that they have been wrongly shortlisted to serve a nation crying out for good governance.
For instance, the current president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud, whose term as a president has ended, has squandered every opportunity to moor Somalia in a safe shore, where it could rise from the ashes of its self-destruction. Instead, he deepened its misfortunes. He became an ardent clan advocate in place of a national figure, a factor that made him a stooge of foreign hands that have their vested interests; in essence, he is a tool of combination for Western, and Somalia’s African and Arab neighbors, which blinded him not to see any issue of national importance. On the contrary, being a puppet is in the crux of his leadership. It is not uncommon for Hassan Sheikh to go around belittling Somalia as the case of his Jigjiga visit (a city in Ethiopia-occupied region of Somalia) amply have shown. All in the hope that Ethiopia will throw its false weight behind him in buying votes for his re-election.
As a result, President Hassan Sheikh symbolizes everything related to bad governance
any one can imagine. He has mired the country in deep corruption; as a result, Somalia is in the front face of the most corrupt nations in the index of world transparency. It has achieved under him infamously the country with the largest number of military officers in the world (particularly from his clan), despite his administration’s confinement in the four walls of Villa Somalia. Also, he has created a new Spivey clan, though President Hassan is their leading light.
These spivy’s are one of the elements that oversee the chaos in the country–their only means of enrichment. That enrichment could be either in monetary terms or holding high posts without prerequisite qualifications. Among them are business groups which he had handed all the resource making taps of national resources, whether they are telecommunication, its natural resources like oil exploration, schools, universities or legitimizing the popping up of self-appointed chairs to look funding from the UN and other international organizations that are the agents spreading the tentacles of corruption in Somalia, like the Chamber of Somali Commerce, or buying the garb status of officially representing Somalia within or abroad, most of the times lacking any knowledge to qualify them for such posts. Thus, actions of such nature are what make Somali officials the laughing stocks in the world arena.
Briefly, Hassan Sheikh leaves a country that is asunder; he’s got the distinction of reviving its dirty politics of the nineties where clans were at each other’s throat. He boosted in an unsavory manner the value of the chair of presidency like that of a pauper who sits on a chair and does the bidding of what the International Community wants from Somalia. In short, President Hassan Sheikh is the bad flesh in Somali politics. And it is the kind of bad character espoused by President Hassan that the International Community is in search of to buy for the post of Somalia’s presidency. That is why they have put on sale the position of the presidency through their dubious means so that Somalia resembles a federated NGO state to be ruled by different warlords.
Hence, Hassan’s other competitors struggling to be placed on the card on sale are on the same plane. Former president Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, one of the presidential aspirants, if he ever succeeds, is another Mobutu Sese Seko in the making. The late president Mobutu of Congo, formerly known as Zaire, was a CIA creation. In 1960 when Congo got its independence from Belgium, the US fear of the Congo crumbling–the mineral rich state in central Africa–falling into the orbit of the communist sphere, acted against the popular leader of Congo, Patrice Lumumba with the help of Belgium. The famous Pan-Africanist was killed and then replaced with Mobutu as the Head of Congo. Mobutu ruled Congo for over 30 years until he was overthrown by popular uprising led by Laurent Kabila in May 17, 1997. Sheikh Sharif shares that distinction of Mobutu as the US-favored son of Somalia. Like him, he was placed on the throne of Somalia with US support. He was indeed on the run after the Union of the Islamic Courts’ defeat in 2006 when US Special Forces flew him out of the jungle of Jubbaland, a Somali region bordering Kenya, to the safety of Nairobi, till they engineered him to become the president of Somalia.
Yet, after his loss to Hassan Sheikh in the elections of September 2012, he was taken by his masters to polish him for his lack of understanding of English language to elite Schools in the USA and Britain. However, he was one of those responsible for the current mayhem of death and pillage in Somalia where local and foreign powers used the emergence of Al-Shabaab factor to hammer its destabilization.
Al-Shabab was born as a wing of the Union of the Islamic Courts that failed to throw the gauntlet after the intervention of Ethiopia into Somalia in 2006, and Sheikh Sharif was the self-proclaimed spokesperson of the Union of the Islamic Courts. Anyhow, on the advice of his masters, Sheikh Sharif, when he was the president, refused to negotiate with Al -Shabaab. Thus the embers he has ignited as War on Terror on Somalia is still burning, and sadly, it threatens Somalia’s existentiality.
The other remaining candidates are not worth mentioning. Each of them is thorn in the side of Somalia’s state building. For example, its current Prime Minister, Omar Abdirashid, who is a candidate for the post on sale, his yes-man-ship character, which is a par excellence trait among the candidates, appears now the most sought candidate by the buyers, especially the UAE which is a surrogate to Ethiopia, the archenemy of Somalia, and the hidden agenda of some Western countries. It sees in him the paragon that will facilitate its aim- to make Somalia at least a sub-state of Ethiopia. It had openly earlier stated that the reason it bought the rights of the Berbera port from the so-called breakaway Republic of Somaliland was to serve Ethiopia.
Surprisingly, the likes of Abdirahman Abdishakur, Jabril Ibrahim and Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo are suspects–men whose hearts are not in the best interest of Somalia because of their present and past activities, yet they are among the candidates. For instance, the NGO in which candidate Jabril Ibrahim is the Director, the Centre for Research and Dialogue, is funded by a US organization. In his campaign, he is portrayed as having good relations with some western organizations, in particular the ones in the United States. However, we are well aware the activities of NGOs. In many countries where they operate they are accused of being spies for their sponsors. Dr. Khan’s NGO of Pakistan bespeaks the truth of that accusation. He is credited in nailing on behalf of the US the Al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, although Abdishakur and Farmajo, both their past role in Transitional National Government sheds light on for their unfitness to lead Somalia.
In the case for Abdirahman Abdishakur, we know him very well for his infamous MOU he had signed with Kenya that jeopardized our rightful claim and ownership of our own coastline. Thus, what he stands for does not need much elaboration. Truly, we are tired of him, though the former president and the present prime minister share the blame with him in this case. As for Farmajo, he in fact lacks the most essential element of leadership–courage. He shuns the real issues that confronts him whether it was what led him to resign from his prime ministerial role or to call spade a spade when he was asked persistently by a South African reporter while he was on a visit in South Africa, his stand on Ethiopian interference in Somalia which he equivocated, despite his knowledge of Ethiopia’s openness that Somalia is not its brotherly neighboring country as asserted by its foreign minister. Commenting the remaining contestants is not worth the candle.
Above all, all the candidates standing for the presidential post on sale show their readiness they are on sale by cultivating their eagerness to work with any or combination of dealers. If the buyers like UAE rebuffs one of the candidates like Hassan sheikh, he complains to one of the other shoppers. In Hassan’s case to the Ethiopians, he has expressed his readiness more than ever to serve them. So, the hope therefore for better Somalia emerging after this election is a mirage, but definitely, Somalia will get a foreign sponsored president. Thus Somalia to come out from this farcical mode of representations, it should heed the advice of Mao Zedong who said: ‘Without destruction there can be no construction’. Its people of every hue hence should oppose the foisting on them a president without responsibility, and the system that breeds such outcomes.
Abdisalam Mohamud
Email: [email protected]
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Abdisalam Mohamud is a political analyst on world affairs.
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