in a recent
Open Letter to Prof Ahmed Ismail Samatar in WDN, I have referred to the man who beat him to the presidency, Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud, as “
The Man with the Angelic Smile and Satanic Ways”. For
me, that sums up my perception of him, based on his appearances,
actions and overall performance ever since he took the post. No matter
what situation he might be in, and irrespective of what sinister actions
he might be engaged in, or contemplating, you can be sure he will
without fail put on that instant enchanting angelic smile which has for a
while captivated many trusting impressionable onlookers.
As
Hassan completed his first year in office, commentators of all stripes
have pored over his performance during this period. Most of the articles
I have seen make dismal reading. Needless to say, the subject is far
from having been exhausted. My interest in joining the foray is to
dwell, from my perspective and those of like-minded observers, on how
the president used his exceptional personality gifts and extra-judiciary
self empowerment to achieve what he set out to accomplish – whether
personal, clan or national ends if any.
As we all remember, Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud was an academician of
modest means and for all appearances apolitical prior to his interest to
enter the race for the presidency. As such, he owes his election as
president not so much to any high profile national stature he had, or
previous government experience, or proven political track, but simply by
the good grace of his Gulf backers and their generous money. Since his
election, money is certainly one factor in helping him to grease many
palms to do his bidding. But money alone can not explain everything
about the president’s meteoric rise to supreme power.
What is amazing about him is that the hitherto unknown and nationally
insignificant NGO operator- cum-academician was able in no time, once
he was declared president, to crown himself unopposed as a supper
statesman acting as both president and prime minister, and all without
firing a shot! He was able to do this, in conjunction with his
unfettered misuse of State resources, through his cheery charm and
cunning, his put-on honesty and nationalism and not least his ebullient
eloquence. Give the devil his due and one has to grudgingly admire his
feats even if one abhors his underhand modus operandi.
For
his good fortunes, President Hassan can only thank a docile Prime
Minister agreeing or acquiescing to be shorn of his powers, a
collaborative speaker of Parliament who is either pliable by nature or
simply looking after his own self interest, and a Parliament amenable to
be rendered toothless and impotent. Few reckoned that the end of the
transitional government under Sheikh Shariif and the advent of its
successor would usher such undemocratic and unconstitutional outcomes.
As if by alchemy, Mr Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud has transformed his
presidency, constitutionally a ceremonial one, into an all conquering
one-man rule. While Siyad Barre came to power through a military coup
d’etat and maintained his absolute power by force, Hassan Sheikh
Mohamoud got it through money in the first place, and keeps his quasi
one-man-rule through manipulation, corruption and patronage. As Lord
Acton of Britain said (1887), “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute
power corrupts absolutely”. How true! President Hassan is already
making a mockery of the constitutional separation of the powers of the
key organs of the State.
People around the world do sometimes put up with power hungry and /or
authoritarian leaders and tolerate their excesses and abuse of power if
they are deemed benevolent, and so long as their contribution to the
nation’s development and progress far outweigh their authoritarian
downside. One can think of some legendary powerful leaders, such as Lee
Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore, Mahathir Mohamad, former
Prime Minister of Malaysia, Meles Zenawi, the late Ethiopian Prime
Minister, and Paul Kagame, the current President of Rwanda, as belonging
to the benevolent type. President Mohamed Siyad Barre could have been
included among this company for his undeniable landmark achievements in
his early years of his rule but has to be excluded for having in the end
sacrificed the nation for his own political survival.
For his part, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamed uses his acquired
political supremacy to single-mindedly monopolise power mainly for his
own personal ends and clan benefits. But this self-serving megalomaniac
power pursuit is not the image that the President would like to project
to the nation. Hence, for public consumption and distraction, he spares
no effort and misses no opportunity to portray himself with missionary
zeal as a leader with a mission to fulfil and as one solely motivated
and driven by national interest. And as proof, he would recite ad
nauseam his commitment to deliver on the six pillars of what he often
calls his administration’s priorities (technically, it should be that of
the PM and his government, but that is another story).
Lest we forget, the much vaunted six pillars consist of:
1) Creating stability in the country;
2) speeding economic recovery,
3) pursuing national reconciliation as a basis for peace- building;
4) improving Government’s capacity to respond to the needs of its people
by improving service delivery; 5) restoring national unity;
6) increasing international partnerships and creating closer ties with Somalia’s neighbours and friends.
No President since Siyad Barre was better placed than President
Hassan to accomplish these goals given the overwhelming public support
showered on him on his election throughout Somalia. The president could
have counted on their wholehearted support knowing they value these
goals more than he does. Where there is a will there is a way as the
axiom goes. And if the President was true to his word and mastered the
necessary will, he would have achieved at least some of these goals,
most notably national reconciliation and through it national unity,
while making tangible progress in others.
As it is, none of these goals has been achieved. If anything, there
has been marked regression since President Hassan took office in the
critical and interdependent areas of national reconciliation and the
restoration of national unity. This setback is due less to external
factors hampering his initiatives and more to his own confrontational
and conflict inducing actions aimed at cynically bolstering his own
personal aggrandisement regardless of their adverse consequences for
national reconciliation and unity on which hangs the survival of the
nation
. I am therefore focusing on national reconciliation and
the restoration of national unity given their pivotal and overarching
importance.
Reviving national unity across the country is unquestionably the
nation’s priority. But repairing our fractured unity would not be
feasible unless there is first reconciliation among the Somali people at
both the national and regional levels: at the national level, such
reconciliation is to heal the lingering festering wounds from the years
of inter-clan strife; and at the regional level, to persuade the
northern secessionist clan calling itself Somaliland to end their
secession now that they can enjoy their autonomy like other State
members of the federation. Rather than truly pursue the national
reconciliation goal in action, the President has only paid lip service
to it. Instead, he opted to ride roughshod over the constitution and
adopted gratuitous confrontational approach in his dealings with some
targeted clans and regions other than his own.
Whether his actions are driven by clannish dogma or by a cynical
desire to tap instant popularity among his core constituency, or both,
is a moot question. But what is quite clear is that their colossal
collateral damage to reconciliation and national unity is not uppermost
in the president’s calculations. His confrontational actions, not in the
least conducive to reconciliation, are willingly or unwittingly
contributory to conflict promotion. Under the circumstances, the
President had wriggled out of his obligation to deal with the most
thorny and pressing issue that can make or break reconciliation and
national unity. That, needless to say, is the restoration of looted
properties in Mogadishu to their rightful owners. Most of these owners
have now given up hope of ever recovering their property, as they also
lost trust with the president’s oft-repeated but hollow assurances.
Those property owners in Mogadishu, hailing from non-Hawiye clans,
whose property escaped occupation or downright appropriation, are now
auctioning them as fast as they can. Most Somalis in the diaspora and in
the rest of Somalia, repulsed by this adverse environment, consider it
foolhardy to invest in the capital when there is no respect for property
rights and when the current President, synonymous with the government,
is unwilling, despite his pledges, to enforce such rights when the
culprits are from his constituency. Mogadishu might have been once a
truly cosmopolitan capital of Somalia but is now increasingly becoming
one clan’s exclusive enclave. Under President’s Hassan’s watch, regional
and clan schisms in Somalia have now reached dangerous levels
reminiscent of the 1990s.
In the case of reconciliation between the secessionist clan calling
itself Somaliland and the State of Somalia, entailing the end of the
secession and restoring unity, the gulf between the President’s
professed public pronouncements defending Somalia’s unity and his real
actions on the ground could not have been again so glaringly far apart.
From the outset, the President saw it mutually advantageous to play the
mythical
Irirism card that is claimed to bind politically the northern secessionist clan and that from which the President hails.
Though no secret deals have been signed, the outlines of the common
understanding are all the same clear. President Hassan would count on
the support of their members in the Somali Parliament for his election
as well as their continued backing throughout his presidency any time he
faces possible challenges or impeachment in parliament. As a quid pro
quo, he is expected to be more receptive to Somaliland’s demands at the
on-going talks between the two sides. Both parties have delivered on
their commitments.
In the case of President Hassan, he has recognised Somaliland not as
the one-clan secessionist enclave it is, but as a de facto separate ”
country” encompassing all the territories/regions of former British
Somaliland. By doing this, he has sacrificed the unionist clans and
regions to the secessionists’ hegemony and aspirations in exchange for
their support. For the people of Khaatumo, what is an unforgettable and
unforgivable perfidy is the President’s hearty unsolicited
congratulations to the secessionists on the occasion of their last
election on the same day when they were massacring scores of Khatumo
unionists defending Somalia’s unity and resisting this sham election
being forced on their people. To add more injuries and insults, he
conceded to Somaliland at the two successive talks in Turkey as being a
country on par with Somalia, something unthinkable from previous Somali
leaders. That is one face the President puts on in his dealings with
Somaliland.
And there is the other side of the President who, when confronted
with his treacherous concessions to Somaliland, would cross his heart
and vow his unswerving defence of Somalia’s unity. And when faced with
outraged unionists from Khaatumo and AwdalStates, he would be reassuring
them that the unity of Somalia is sacrosanct and non-negotiable, or
promise them that they would take their rightful place at the next round
of these talks. This has yet to materialise. The President’s professed
defence of the unity of Somalia has been repeatedly exposed for the
fallacy it is.
Many Somalis will remember the question put to the president at the
press conference in Brussels after the end of the New Deal Conference
for Somalia on 16 September. The answer he gave epitomises his
double-dealing and double talk on the unity question as on other issues.
He was put on the spot when one gatecrasher hailing from Khaatumo State
asked him in French and then Somali why the northern States of Khaatumo
and Awdal were excluded from sending representations to the conference.
He retorted in Somali, putting on his usual beguiling smile, that there
is always
tomorrow, and when that comes, these absent States
would be invited next time! That speaks volumes about the extent to
which the President would go to fool the public.
As Abraham Lincoln said:
“you
can fool some of the people all of the time, and all the people some
of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.“. This, typically, applies to the current President of Somalia.
Fooling
the Somali people has been his choice of leadership. As a new leader
with an apparently clean past record, he was initially allowed a period
of prolonged honeymoon and self-indulgence. But the honeymoon is over
and the going has become increasingly uphill as the public ceased to be
fooled. The result is that his credibility has now plummeted to an all
time low. And the more he cuts corners to get his way, in the face of an
increasingly mistrustful public, the more his crumbling credibility is
further eroded. In many quarters in Somalia, he is now seen as
deceptive, devious and divisive, and far more dangerous to the destiny
of the country than his much-maligned predecessor.
As the title of this article cries for, to save Somalia and its unity
requires that it be saved from its own President. Short of impeaching
him, that would require that he be cut down to size and forced back to
his constitutional ceremonial role. That would not be possible as long
as the current Prime Minister, who is willing to let the President usurp
his executive powers, remains in office. That is why the Prime Minister
rather than the President be removed through a vote of no confidence in
Parliament and replaced with someone who is up to the job. Of course,
President Hassan, having became addicted to his abuse of power, will not
take his demise without a fight. As a minimum, he would use (or abuse)
his constitutional prerogative to appoint a Prime Minister, and would
name another pliant successor if he can find one. That is why Parliament
should this time put down its foot and fulfil its obligations to the
nation. The buck stops at its door. It should not allow the President to
play Russian roulette with our unity.
Osman Hassan
Khaatumo Forum for Peace, Unity and Development
