House of Representatives, Hargeysa, Somaliland.

Mr. Speaker,

Let me congratulate you on your election as the leader of the House of Representatives. As you are well aware, the speaker of the House wields enormous influence/power and leads one of the institutions of government in our constitutional checks and balance system: the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the President of this Republic being the others.

Therefore, your responsibility includes not only issues of national importance; nor only of the loyal opposition; nor of those of your faction in Parliament; nor of those who lobbied for your victory and subsequent election to this important seat: once you are elected speaker of this august House Sir, you join the President and the Chief Justice as citizens who must put the interests of the nation first; the interests of democracy first; the interests of the constitution first; the interests of the poor first; the interests of those militants of the republic first; the interests of bread for the people of this country first; the interests of the marginalized and the downtrodden of this country first; and, the interests of your party and your political ambitions must be second.

There is another responsibility you have, and that responsibility Mr. Speaker is to watch how the President does his job, as the President watches how you do your job and in turn the judiciary balancing the interests of the constitutions in this country. That is why it is called the checks and balance system of government.

Your role Mr. Speaker cannot be confused nor collapsed into a tool of the opposition parties, your elections as Speaker ended that role. For, you now represent the entire people of this country as speaker of the House of Representatives.

Africans today as you can attest are a jaded people; any weary and cynical African can tell you what our dilemmas are and the answers to these uncertainties: in a word, it is the collective leadership failures of our politicians.

If there is a specter haunting Africans it is the wretched wickedness of our politicians as they steal from the collective purse; pay-lip service to democracy; ignite civil wars; watch children starve and waste away; abuse their citizens and sleep at night laughing at the nerve of the people of this continent when they ask why? When they rebel; when they form armed movements; when they ask: am I not somebody? Am I not entitled to a peaceful and nurturing country in the land of my forefathers? Am I not entitled to housing, education; food; work; and the pursuit of good citizenship?

These answers have yet to be answered for they are the questions that were posed by those politicians early in the independence struggle and who were brutally murdered by international and local forces allied to make Africa what it is today –a place where it seems men and women of good will have abandoned. In Bolivia today we have a re-incarnation of those values of a renewed commitment to the lot of the dispossessed, of dignity returned to the people. One need only watch the inauguration of the new President of this beleaguered and tortured country to see dignity of a politician who is one and the same as the most disenfranchised Bolivian, and believes in committing his country to confront these times of Empire that we live in. One needs to see the leadership of Xanana Guzman President of East Timor to notice how vision and character play a part in leadership; one needs to see that the courage of the President of the state of Venezuela to understand what it means to be a leader. And then, we need only look at our region and understand the long road that needs to be traveled.

The President of Eritrea has become a bona fide thug, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia is shooting the opposition in broad daylight; in Djibouti we have a comedian as a leader, whose interests are simply the size of his belly and what house he lives in while the people of Djibouti are starving and live in the poorest country anywhere. Mwai Kibaki of Kenya recently invaded the freedom of the Press in Kenya and called it “a snake returning the favor”. The reaction in Africa always uses morbid metaphors.

Right here at home our President does not inspire us, for we are a people who wish to see inspiration and a leadership of ideas. Although we have in our President a well meaning man, perhaps, leadership is more than well meaning, it means to sleep uneasy at night because some child somewhere in the country has a bleak and un-inspiring future. It means one must have an ideological bend, a theoretical understanding of post-colonial government, or, to have advisors that educate the President. I have yet to see this man say one inspiring word; the President seems still un-comfortable with his role in this country. Governance does not mean in our context just balancing the absurdities of factionalism in this country, leadership means joining the battle on the side of the poor who constitute the majority of the people in this country.

In our President we have the status quo, let’s keep our mouths shut and hope all will be well. Yesterday the administration, Sir, in another low point in its history accused the press of clan prejudice, yes, clan prejudice translated from “Cunsuriyad Qabyaaladeed”!

The Spokesperson of the government Mr. Speaker said this in broad daylight in our capital Hargeysa on the orders of the President and those who advise him. When criminal corruption is alleged by the press, cry clannism, demand “clan accountability” demand ‘clan equal opportunity to be corrupt”! The President knows about his spokesman’s words and that he let him say these things is indicative of the unbearable lightness of his political philosophy. It is an unmitigated disaster Mr. Speaker, to have the most senior government officials misunderstands the concept of embarrassment in politics. Given the 1969 dictatorship, it is not surprising that the culture of impunity and these glaring impostors of virtue continue to speak in this way, Somali Landers must know that speaking out is in fact supporting the government, and, in fact, shows the way to better governance, we must not be at whatever cost, birds that just sing….

Yet, we in Somaliland are building something and at the heart of this construction is the idea that we ought to have men and women who see public service as the highest ideal of the individual. We are a very poor country and anyone who seeks public office must have the moral weight and the intellectual gravitas to understand that it is the responsibility of the government to make war on destitution and diseases and depravation. We will be lost if we do not do the right thing here.

Mr. Speaker, as you may know, bravery and gallantry is being bad-mouthed and ridiculed by a new viciousness in order to placate the guilt of yesterday. We ought to say the truth about our country or we are doomed a newer wretchedness, the one which the dictatorship of october1969 claimed to be the moral campus of society and government. That the “birds” need to sing, to sing about the dictatorship that turned the Somali people upside down. Mohamed Moghe Libaan, that revolutionary, in reply, said that he “had talked to these birds and gave them closed letter “ indeed decrying the culture of sycophancy and adulation which saps the moral and ethical juices out of human beings. We ought to guard against this impulse for in a poor country without resources those in charge can fall into the trap of accepting this sycophancy as a real response to one’s leadership. You must Sir make sure that corruption does not enter into the House of Representatives, period.

Eastern Sanaag and Laas Anood are not in our constitutional order for they did not vote for the constitution. We ought to tell the truth about these areas where exclusion rather inclusion has been the policy of our government. There can be no Somaliland without these citizens participating vibrantly in the politics and economy of our country. Sir, our recognition is tied to bringing these outlays of resentment back to the fold of their country it must be done and we must do it now – the new culture of exclusion and wait and see does not help in this regard: you are expected to take the bulls by the horn on this issue.

Let me remind you Sir, of the sterling tradition of those came before you. I am reminded of those who fought for freedom in the colonial era, those men and women must be honored in the House by building and erecting statues in the honor, for it is mentioned even in our constitution.

I am reminded of those who struggled to remove the dictatorship of October 1969, these men and women who gave up their lives for us to return home rule to this country. There are many of them who live in poverty in Somaliland and many have mental health problems. It is the hypocrisy of the times that these men and women are now “politically incorrect” for they are living testament to what they did and the attendant human costs. Yes, the Somali National Movement accomplished its task and that was to return democratic government to the people of this country. Politicians are now famous for distancing themselves away from the Somali National Movement and I want to register my gratitude and solidarity with the that movement and its contribution to the march of democratic government in this country.

These men and women ought to be remembered for they symbolize to me the daring and the valor to fight injustice. We must know under what conditions their children live, and the children of all those who have helped liberate this country.

Where Sir are the memorial trees and symbols to these men, where Sir can we as a people see the acknowledgement due to these men; where Sir is the gratitude that we owe these men who made it possible for me and you to stand up among all men and register our right to speak and vote and live honorable lives in our towns and hamlets. When we quench this thirst for fair play and root out the idea that we must have national amnesia about these men, then, and only then can we understand what decency and ethical fortitude means in this country.

Somaliland will stand as a caricature and empty shell not worth the salt on the street unless we honor all those men and women. Honor these men and women, honor those prisoners of conscience who lost their humanity; we must endeavor to speak truthfully about what happened here and still be men and women of good will, committed to democratic government. We must not Mr. Speaker shy away from controversy, we do not want to live a lie, Somalis have done that for a long time, it is time to speak as candidly as possible within our democratic rights about the ebb and flow of political life in this country.

Mr. Speaker, in a recent speech given by our Foreign Minister who labors under difficult political and institutional restraints in her Ministry, the following was stated in front of an African audience where federalism and the crisis of ethnicity in Africa hold sway;

“The case for Unitary Government is based on the real-life experience of the people of Somaliland who have suffered injustice, oppression, and genocide as a result of the hasty union they entered into with another country, Somalia, whose people had a different culture, different colonial past, different system of administration, different life-styles, different trading partners, and had even different local foods. In Somaliland, we spoke one language, while in Somalia they spoke several different languages and dialects. In short, Somaliland and Somalia were two countries whose many differences far outnumbered the similarities that had made them want to unite in the first place”. [italics my emphasis]

Mr. Speaker, we ought not to stretch the truth in this way, and stretched it is here, to make a point about our fundamental political right to independence: which in a word, is based on nothing more and nothing less than the colonial question.

Somalia deserves our moral sympathy, economic and social help, we must be in solidarity with those oppressed Somalis who suffer under the foot of brutish war-lords there. Somalia is already looking awful, Somali Landers need not have any glee nor present some ugly picture about these men and women who I stand in solidarity with given their oppression under warlordism, simply because we must be magnanimous and high-minded given our success in peace making and state-building. We must remember that not so long ago we were butchering ourselves in the towns and hamlets of this county. The will to end our long misery and the determination of the people not to be sold into another slavery of barbarism made us victorious over those who would want to rule by the gun. Let us not forget that old English saying – “there go I but for the grace of God”.

Mr. Speaker, let me end by saying that we expect much from you, we expect a new leadership, we expect, that you commit to use the power of the House of Representatives to make change in this country, and to remind yourself everyday that we are not without history and that we are part and parcel of world history and not condemned to some barren and empty landscape filled with rural idiocy. That is not the history of this country, nor is it my history and this why I wrote this letter because I believe we are an ancient people with the potential to do incredible things given the chance and the right leadership.

Mr. Speaker, use your offices t o engender a people’s power, fight for the poor who constitute the majority of this country, bring our history into your institution to remind those who sit there of what they must do for this country. Most of all reject that simple claim that “this is Africa and you must “eat”, or be “eaten” we must most of all refuse to accept this common racist reduction of what leadership means in Africa. We need to prove that we are different and we are a noble people who have always had our majesty and dignity since ancient times.

Mr. Speaker, set down the tradition to be followed for the coming generations show that it can be done right here in this parched land of camels and poets and indeed men and women of good will.

I dedicate this letter to Abyaan.

She can, though every face should scowl

And every windy quarter howl

Or every bellows burst, be happy Still - William Butler Yates

Ahmed Hashi Dhimbiil

March 2006, Ottawa

dallo57us@yahoo.com

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