Unite And Serve Is Not Muse Biixi’s Mission

One of the startling facts of the past two year’s politics is the manner in which Colonel Muse Biixi and  Abdirahman Cirro have bled away their credibility through self-inflicted wounds. Contest has helped in more ways than one.

On the eve of the country’s crucial parliamentary election, for instance, thanks to an electoral calendar that no one could have preordained, Wadani party put serious allegations against the National election Commissioners to Colonel Muse Biixi. This generated unstoppable political confusions and conflicting differences in Somaliland.

Wadani party has shown definite ability to put S/land administration in a tight situation. We shall know soon enough if Wadani party could convert that into enough votes to carry it to national office. But what is indisputable is that Wadani has the required quota of stronghold.

It is true that politicians have a sharper eye. But this does not mean that they cannot miss the obvious. Ignorants who have skeletal jaws that lack a massive bite always miss the obvious.

A tectonic shift has taken place in the structure of Kulmiye party politics. After a long and dominant reign, the high command is dead.

Siilaanyo was not the last architect of a concept that has exhausted its moment in history. After him, there came a command that is more cynical than him.

Colonel Muse Biixi restructured the party.  In 2017, when he took control, he reinvented his own Congress with some radical engineering. He created a pyramid without slopes. He sat at the apex. Across the wide base are the masses, busy building crypts in which Muse buried Siilaanyo empire. He brought two radicals, Abdulaziz Samaale and Mohamed Kahin at the back bench, and put Mohamed Abdi Dheere at the front, a moderate who has no authority to have the final say about the things that are political

Muse is not transparent about his methods. He considers himself a dictator before anyone could accuse him of being one. Adult supervision is not Muse Biixi’s attitude when it comes to politics. Of course all that made him ignore Wadani’s complaint against national electorate commission.

In his political life, Colonel Muse Biixi owes a deep debt of gratitude to two tribal leaders for his rise: Siilaanyo and Mohamed Kahin. Siilaanyo’s weakness has not become Muse Biixi’s strength. In public perception Colonel Muse represents everything that Siilaanyo and Mohamed Kahin lack.

Colonel Muse is not articulate. Right or wrong, we know where he stands. He neither listens to the public nor looks for advice. His promises to build good governance, rather than a waffled approach to policy and partners, have gone amiss. Voters, who hoped he will control corruption and ensure accountability because he seemed to them tough, have lost their trust in him.

Colonel Muse Biixi had enough time and opportunity to correct what went wrong, but he never have tried to find the answers to wrongs and scandals manufactured by Siilaanyo’s government.  Inane politics and policies  like — “I will go on my way rather than yours to fulfil my dreams” — only highlight the fact that “Unite and serve” is not Muse Biixi’s mission.

The electorates now yearn for a leader who is both right and forthright. For two years, Colonel Muse Biixi has been neither.

The magic potion of democracy is options. But there lies the problem, for this potion is not a glue for discipline or decency.

The politician’s primary job  is to keep all options tribal to create a locked structure, and keep inside and outside order of the tribe intact.

In Somaliland tribal politics breeds power more often than power leads to politics. Neither roots of national pride climb sharply nor the insights of the  intellectuals and elites announce that the time has come for change.

A Somali politician, being Somali, is more akin to a joint family locked in a tribe. Anyone who thinks this is bad news, has lost touch with family. A joint tribe is patriarchal in structure, which provides a veneer of magnetic cohesion, where the mantra for megalomania is constantly measured by loyalty.

Loyalty to a tribe is not a variable virtue qualified by elevated thoughts, since tribalism is blind to enlightenment. Each tribe believes that rising to the country’s highest office is a blessing  But this belief is no guarantee of power. The blessing just generates wealth amassed only through the abuse of authority. A government born out of a tribal election is just a family quarrel run through intense politics.

The high point of Somaliland’s political tension is palpable in the excitement of a maternity ward, when the future is being born. Somaliland’s inner tribal struggles are always accentuated by the fact that a shift is taking place at a pregnant time rather than at prudent moments in national affairs.

All presidents are not potential until they have uttered the oath of office. Since an oath is a solemn promise of loyalty to one’s country and its people, every politician who raised his/her hand in an oath is obliged to do according to all that proceeds out of his/her mind and mouth.

Unfortunately the oaths uttered by Somaliland politicians are mostly unfulfilled. So far no adult supervision is evident in all that proceeds from Muse Biixi’s mind and mouth.

Somaliland presidential palace has no thick log of credentials that can make claimants stumble on the stairs of the President’s office where the anointment takes place. The final climb demands reservoirs of energy and clarity which the ignorant barely knows he/she does not possess.

There are no critical requirements if you want to reach to Somaliland’s highest office. First you don’t need ability. For ability is not a negotiable asset in Somaliland presidential election. Second, competency is not required. For competency is not relevant and traditionally a white man’s business. Instead, retaliation is important; dishonesty is compulsory.

There have been Kulmiye politicians in Somaliland whose skills did not extend beyond finding the right corner for a corruption stamp.

In Somaliland politics, the basic question does not change: How can we win the presidential post and control the power? But the common voice does. How can we combine the conerns for all and make common voice to combat what regularly kills Somaliland country?

We need a leadership that is not corrupt. We need a leadership that is capable of creating spaces for the broadest possible sectors to meet and join forces in struggle. We need a leadership that understands that we must obtain hegemony, that is to say, that we have to convince instead of imposing. We need a leadership that understands that, more important than what we have done in the past, is what we will do together in the future to win our sovereignty—to build a society that makes possible the full development of all our people.

The realization that there are many of us in the same struggle is what makes us strong. We must recognise, if we are intellectual, that being divided on tribal lines is what radicalizes us and reverses our positive steps.

In conclusion, all of us must understand that we should do what all other humans have done. Our problems are not different from that of other societies.

By:Jama Falaag

      Hargeisa, Somaliland.