Mr. President,
When I address you as Mr. President I don’t say it lightly. I feel the
weight that every letter of it carries. And I am sure you feel it too. Not only
as an honor that the Somali people have bestowed upon you but as a heavy
responsibility that has been entrusted to you.
Mr. President, the Somali people were ecstatic about your election. Somalis
at home and everywhere in the world jumped to their feet with happiness when
you were declared the winner of the election. Somali youth flooded the social
media with their excitement. Mothers expressed their delight with poetry. The
excitement was overwhelming. Even people in breakaway Somaliland didn’t want to
be left behind. Their proverbial patriotism kicked off and many of them have
unequivocally voiced their enjoyment for the wind of change coming from
Mogadishu.
Let me first join the people and congratulate you on your historic victory.
The question, however, that comes to mind Mr. President is whether you would
seize the moment and reflect on why the people give you such unqualified
support and unreserved trust without even testing you. Will you understand the
awe and fear that comes with the burden that such enormous hope puts on your
shoulders?
I hope you do Mr. President, but amid the jubilation and celebrations, let
me try in my humble way to put this into perspective and to remind you of the
issues at stake once the dust of jubilation settles down and the real test of
your leadership begins.
Mr. President, as Professor Abdi Samatar said in his moving speech before
the parliament on the eve of the Presidential election. The Somali nation fell
from being a beacon of hope and democracy in Africa to a shamefully failed
state. After 26 years of long night, of shame, of disrespect and of nearly
losing our sovereignty and our territorial integrity, the people were looking
for leader that would bring back Somali decisions to Somali hands after
neighboring countries played with the fate of the nation for many years.
There were occasions over this long period, when Somali people experienced
glimpses of hope which immediately disappeared and left them in despair. In
2000, Abdiqasim Salad Hassan received a hero’s welcome in Mogadishu. People saw
hope and celebrated but the expectations were soon dissipated and the nightmare
returned in earnest. So beware. In 2006, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC),
defeated the notorious warlords and drove them out of Mogadishu and for the
first time they opened the capital’s airport and port for commercial
operations. People saw hope but soon this vanished too. So beware.
In 2009, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed returned to a warm welcome in Mogadishu
after the Ethiopian occupying army withdrew from the capital. People saw hope
and to his credit Sheikh Sharif made some progress in removing Al Shabab from
the capital, in starting to build the Somali military but the great hope
invested in him was not realized. This was followed by Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud
whose election was seen by many people as a remarkable beginning for a positive
change but only to end up as farce. So beware.
Mr. President, when they see hope, Somali people are generous with their
emotions and expression of love. We have seen it at the time of independence
and unification of the country in 1960, we have seen it again when the military
overthrew the corrupt and chaotic civilian government and announced the
beginning of an age of accountability, rule of law and competence. The Somali
people saw it as a new dawn and sang: “Waa baa beryey, bilicsan…”.
The military regime not only squandered the trust of the people, but it threw
us into the abyss in which we are today. So beware.
Once more today, Mr. President, the Somali people see hope in you. They are
fed up with being cited as an example of internecine fratricide, of
lawlessness, of extremism, of piracy, or ignorance and of corruption to the
point that the New York Times described the latest Somali presidential election
in which you have won as a milestone of corruption. The Somali people are sick
and tired of seeing their fate decided by neighboring countries, of their
political leaders genuflecting to the whims of foreign leaders and measuring
their success by their degree of servitude to their bosses in Addis Ababa and
Nairobi. They are fed up with belonging to a country that even its physical
existence as a sovereign state is at stake let alone a member of the international
community.
So you see, Mr. President, the jubilation of the Somali people on your
election is nothing else but hope. Hope first, hope second and hope last. They
yearned for change after Hassan Sheikh and his corrupt regime pushed them
deeper and deeper into the dungeons of corruption and indignity.
Your responsibility is therefore as enormous as the hope people have
invested in you. Everyone knows the difficult situation you inherited from the
previous government. Al Shabab is still a threat, you and your government will
still owe your protection to AMISOM and other foreign troops, the fact that the
venue in which you were elected was at the airport with the protection of
AMISOM forces and that generals from neighboring countries were publicly trying
to intervene in the decision making process and sometimes threatening
Parliamentarians to vote for their country’s favorite candidate is a proof that
we are not a free nation anymore.
With all these issues at stake, the Somali people have great expectations of
your leadership. For a long time they were looking for a hero, and all of a
sudden you appeared on the horizon. And they applauded you. The burden is
enormous Mr. President, but rest assured the people don’t expect miracles from
you. All they want from you is to set an example. To be an example for honesty,
a commitment for accountability, for good governance, for genuine efforts to
set a momentum for building state institutions, and striving to achieve a
certain level of fairness for all. The real test to this will be how you choose
your Prime Minister. Whether you would be brave enough to break the wall of duopoly
to borrow Prof. Ahmed Samatar’s description of the unholy power alliance in
Mogadishu or you would go down the same old road.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “The institution is the lengthened shadow of
one man.” So if you could be that man in being honest, in setting a vision, in
lifting the people’s morale both in your words and actions and in being always
mindful of the great hope and trust the people have invested in you, then the
people will be generous enough to understand your failures. With the few
statements you delivered thus far, you have shown Mr. President that you are
not a man blessed with a gift of oratory but you can compensate that with being
a man of action.
Seize the moment Mr. President, the people desire to see you as a President
whose decision doesn’t come from Addis Ababa, Nairobi or elsewhere. This is the
people’s first and foremost hope of your government. We need our sovereignty
back. If you score high on this issue, you will break new ground as a new breed
of leadership. Otherwise, as Karl Marx said: “history repeats itself, first as
tragedy, second as farce”. We have already seen the tragedy many times but if
you fail the people’s aspirations Mr. President then your legacy will be
history repeated in farce. So beware.