By Abdiaziz Abdi
I am of the opinion that it is always useful to study the reception accorded to a leader of a nation, because that provides a scale to measure the popularity (and lack of thereof) of that leader. Given that Somalia’s president is in the U.S. for a third time, a science-minded observer sees quasi, relevant, and miniature datum ready for analysis. To that end, I cannot resist the temptation to pontificate on the visit of Somali’s president to the US: Specifically, the degree to which the current visit is similar or different from the two previous ones and the implication of the current visit.
Indeed, the visit of 2013 of the president of the Somali federal government (SFG) to the United States was one full of euphoria and optimism. Many observers, including the U.S government, household names in the US in the realm of punditry and international studies, and the Somali Diaspora extended unprecedented welcome to the SFG president. For instance, in January of 2013, president Barack Obama allotted time to sit down with Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud, the president of federal republic of Somalia, in an event billed as the first event of its kind in the US-Somali relations history since the collapse of the Somali republic in 1991. In September of 2013, both Charlie Rose of PBS and Fareed Zakaria of CNN GPS featured the president of Somalia in their talk shows. In April of 2013, Time magazine included the name of the SFG president in the list of world’s 100 most influential people in a short essay penned by the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame. In that same year, an American Diaspora hungry for stability, peace, and tranquility for their homeland received the president in droves in Minneapolis and Ohio Columbus.
However, this time around the landscape is significantly different from that of 2013. For starters, the groundswell of euphoria of 2013 is no more: neither snapshot photo with president Obama (or for that matter, with John Kerry), nor Charlie Rose invitation or “Statesmen’s Forum” from Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) is greeted with the visiting president. What is more, the president’s visit is anticipated to spark the biggest ever rally in the State of Minnesota by Somali-Americans to protest against what they see as political failures, corruption, and mismanagement brought about by this president. It seems as though the optimism ignited by the visit of the SFG president to the US in 2013 has been substituted by indifference, irrelevance, and repugnance among those who have high stakes in Somali politics including Somalis in United States, and US leadership.
The question that arises here is what accounts for the apathetic and the cold welcome afforded to the SFG in his current visit to the US, and what implication one can extrapolate from this? The most persuasive explanation states that Mr. Mohamud as president failed miserably to commit himself to the principles of which he was elected; and as a result, Somalis and Western countries finally have started looking past the hype, and the SFG president has ceased being a darling of the West and of the Somalis. The implication of this goes like this: if one strives for making a dent in Somali politics, he/she needs to gain it not through rosy assessments rendered in a time of fleeting jubilation and ecstasy but by committing to the principles of serving the Somali nation and producing a solid record of progress. I hope whoever is next in line to the Somali throne would heed the call.
Abdiaziz Abdi
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