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EDITORIAL
The decision of the British government to help in the investigation of the recent murders of expatriates in Somaliland and train Somaliland’s security forces, is excellent news. We in the Somaliland Times have good reason to welcome it, because in addition to its being a step forward for the country, it was in our editorial pages that this idea was first articulated. To be fair, the Somaliland government did appeal for international help before our editorial was published. But it was the Somaliland Times that made the suggestion to specifically ask for Scotland Yard’s help (see the Somaliland Times, issue 92). It seems that the government took our advice (of course, it is possible that the government came up with this idea on its own, which will be a happy coincidence). This illustrates 2 things:
1-
Somaliland’s government is not totally deaf to the opinions of its citizens.
2-
Criticisms of the government (or anyone else for that matter) have a better
chance of bearing fruit when accompanied by specific suggestions on how to
remedy the situation.
We can recall another occasion when Somaliland’s government, again to its
credit, took the views of its citizens into account when making a decision.
This was the appointment of Edna A. Ismail as Foreign Minister, after many
Somalilanders in the diaspora proposed that she would be a great candidate
for the post.
We are also glad to report the reconfiguration of the BBC Somali Service’s
website. We had pointed out many times how this website uses both crude and
subtle ways to sabotage Somaliland’s independence. The new configuration of
the website does not show the many links that they had with southern
websites and the one non-functional link with Radio Hargeisa. Of course, we
would have preferred that they showed balance in the number of links with
Somaliland and Somalia websites, but since they decided to have no links
with Somali websites rather than balance their choices, we can live with
this. This does not mean that our problems with the BBC Somali Service have
ended, only that one problem was taken care of, and there still remains a
lot to be done.
We have decided to highlight the above positive developments, not because we
want to praise ourselves, but because, as journalists, we should not only
focus on the negative but should also cover what is positive.
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