By Liban Ahmad
Somalis welcomed the election of President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo in February as a necessary political change. The election turned on its head the Somali political stereotype that MPs and Senators are guided by pecuniary interests when electing a head of state. The selection of MPs and senators in administrative capitals of Federal Member States (FMS) was a strong indication that FMS will have more effective role in the new federal government.
The challenge President Farmajo is facing now has got to do with his reluctance to accept that power at the centre will never be as centralising as the government that gave him a foreign service career three decades ago.
In a speech to MPs and Senators before the election, President Farmajo vowed not delegate or share crucial decision-making with a leadership forum made up of federal member states. It was an unnecessary dig at his predecessor whose administration was overseeing the electoral process. A key criterion used by Somalia’s partners is the consensus-building skills of a Somali President manifested in the relations between the executive and federal member states. Accusation of clannism or nepotism is enough to dent a Somali President’s reputation in the eyes of the International Community. President Farmajo is keen to come across as a proponent of a centralised government but his diagnosis of Somalia’s persistent political problems stand in the way of realising that goal. In another speech President Farmajo made after signing the Telecommunications Bill he said that “our problem is the clan[nism]. If we were cohesive enough the International Community would leave us alone.”
Somali citizens do not practise clannism; politicians do. It was the military regime that changed how Somalis view the use and misuse of political power when President Mohamed Siad Barre and his Supreme Revolutionary Council colleagues launched a campaign to bury effigies personifying clannism. The objective of the symbolic burial of clannism was to dissuade people from corrupting politicians and civil servants. Politicians resort to nepotism (qof-jecleysi) or clannism (qabyaalad) when their relatives render a service ( e.g. boosting a politician’s standing among clansmen and clanswomen or mobilising clan members for government support ). Blaming citizens for what politicians practise led the military regime to commit widespread human rights violations between 1969 and 1991.
When Somali citizens perceive a politician to be practising clannism, they point to nepotism, demagoguery, impunity, unaccountability or disinformation as evidence. An example of nepotism is conveyed by a picture (see the above photo) of a meeting at the UN headquarters between a Somali delegation led by Prime Minister Kheire and a Chinese delegation. The Prime Minister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Somali Ambassador to the UN and the Somali Ambassador to Sweden at the meeting belong to one of the five Somali clans under the infamous 4.5 power-sharing formula. It is a classic example of political leaders using clan identity to show how clannism undermines the state.
A Question Mark over Kheire’s Political Judgement
When President Farmajo subtly blames Somali citizens for practising clannism helends credence to the agenda of anti-peace politicians and business cartels in Somalia. Is a clan responsible for making Lower Shebelle Somali Army division a force dominated by one subclan, as Michael Keating, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Somalia and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM), said in Oslo after February election?
The focus on clan identities as a driving force behind the Somali political conflict is a hangover from colonial administrations particularly the ex-British Somaliland Protectorate. Early anthropological studies of the late London School of Economics Professor, I.M. Lewis, emphasised, among other themes, abtirsiinyo (genealogy) and how subclans form a pact to pay blood-money (dia-paying groups).The colonial strategy was aimed at deepening the indirect rule through traditional leaders (chief/ails), who had their sons educated in Britain in return for loyalty. In areas where the British did not sign protectorate agreements with clans, colonial rulers adopted intensive measures to reconstitute traditional leadership structures outlawed by the Dervish movement of Sayid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan. Through a dual political power structure, the British colonial administration maintained law and order in the former Protectorate. Unlike the military regime, the British colonial administrators did not assume that citizens exercised political power or had the means to oppose colonial policies.
The Somali state, a feature of modernity embraced by Somalis, invested powers in career politicians and soldiers. Clannism –“an illegal and amoral process to use political power to help close or distant relatives to gain an unwarranted economic benefit, evade justice or marginalise a segment of the citizenry”— is a modern phenomenon. It is not about clan identity; it is about politicians’ desire to use the machinery of the state unaccountably. During the reign of the military regime only the coup leaders were able to illegally empower themselves to call out people they looked upon as practitioners of clannism. This policy choice was a precursor to the criminalisation of the state: military leaders anointed themselves as being all-knowing and above the law.
By misidentifying the source of the political turmoil President Farmajo accentuates stereotypes about Somalis and could waste political capital he gained when his predecessor, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamed, became too unpopular to be re-elected for a second term.
The September issue the London-based Africa Confidential newsletter reports “the government is bogged down in daily disputes with the Hawiye clans in Mogadishu and efforts to prevent its jealous police and military commanders from opening fire on each other”. Clashes between government forces in Mogadishu are unlike early 1990s power-struggles that divided Mogadishu into the North and South under former Interim President, Ali Mahdi Mohamed and the late General Mohamed Farah Aideed, Chairman of the United Somali Congress.The Paris-based Indian Ocean Newsletter reports that Ethiopia “ adds fuel to the fire between Farmajo and Ogaden”, leaving the impression that President Farmajo is, on one hand, busy reining in battle-hardened clan militias and acting unfairly against a Somali clan on the other. Both reports have essentialized Somalis as society still frozen in pre-colonial time warp.
There are lessons for President Farmajo in policies pursued by his predecessor in the first year of his four-year term of office to try to nip in the bud state formation efforts of Jubbaland and Southwest States. Villa Somalia’s attempts to destabilise Galmudug and Southwest States are what forced leaders of federal member states band together in Kismayo for a summit and form The Council for the Cooperation of Federal Member States.
The Federal Government of Somalia has the opportunity to turn political setbacks into opportunities for consensus-building with federal member states whose remit is to instil in their constituencies confidence in a central government based in Mogadishu. This bottom-up approach necessitates reliance on federal member states when embarking on large scale projects such as election, referendum or genuine political reconciliation.
A president who blames citizens for problems created by the political class will not be able to rise up to this challenge. Somalis need a servant leader working with stakeholders on the basis of collective leadership to strengthen citizens’ political obligation towards national institutions. President Farmajo can reverse his presidential underperformance by nudging himself and his fellow politicians towards cohesion-maximizing and transparency-based goals in the interest of Somalia.
Liban Ahmad
Email:[email protected]
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