Issue 218

My fanatic friends say the president is the Raphana who stole Sieta, the cabinet is the Dracula’s castle, the Guurti are masters of voodoo and witch-craft, the court is a seven-headed dragon thrown out from hell, the commission is a satanic centre, and now they added the list to the newly elected parliamentarians, calling them names from pharaoh’s new magicians to a bunch of spineless little wizards who cheated their way to the house by promising everybody that they will flute away the devilish Government and who shamefully did exactly the opposite- Sharing the nation’s spoils with horrible regime.

My friends did not like that the budget was approved by the parliament. My fanatic friends would have rejoiced in a polemical situation. Their day would have been made by a Government shut-down. They will only get satisfied if the country halts to a standstill. There is nothing in their dictionary that calls for conciliation and compromise. I call them bloody minded. The truth is when you see demons and enemies in every wall; you are obviously out of it. And again when you do not want to understand anything that remotely smells good, certainly you are full of it.

The Minister of Finance tabled his budget to the Parliament.
The Finance committee of the house took the task of checking the Government Budget.
The Finance Committee took their responsibility seriously
They visited all the revenue departments and agencies of the nation.
They opened all the books and checked whether everything adds up or not.
They compared the estimates and the projections of the Ministry with what they saw for themselves.
They looked into the budget allocations for different departments and agencies and checked for any discrepancies and inadequacies.
They made a report on that and worked out clarifications and adjustments with the officials of the Finance department.
Then they came back to the parliament reporting to the house all that was bad with the system of the nation’s finance, and all that was good and encouraging about their work.
They then recommended that the budget be released by the parliament, subject to a set of recommendations.
They also made it clear that lack of budget guidelines from the parliament, and lack of financial rules and regulations as well as lack of expertise and knowledge are fundamental reasons of the unsound financial system and these are matters that could not be blamed on the side of Government only.

That was a superior performance from the Financial Committee of the house. Then the ball went into the corner of the leadership of the house. They also did their task marvelously.

- They opened a debate on the budget for all the members of the parliament to participate.

- At the behest of the MPs, they invited the Minister of Finance to make clarifications on certain questions of the members of the parliament...

- After the closure of the debate, the leadership of the house selected a committee to itemize the major trends of the debate.

- It was a choice between endorsing the original blue print of the budget of the Minister of Finance without any changes, or taking the recommendations of the Finance committee, or voting down the budget.

- The parliament trusted their Finance committee and overwhelmingly endorsed their recommendations.

I see this as one of the great moments in our history that shows our maturity. It was obvious that the Minister of Finance was poised for a big fight. His words, despite the fact they had a ring of reality about them could’ve been termed as far away from a conciliatory approach. Some of them were quite provocative. Yet the leadership of the parliament and the chair of the Finance committee, who all of them belong to a party with a great number fanatics and zealots, decided to take the nation’s best interest as their task. They are the shining stars of the long ordeal that showed once again that Somaliland is the place to be.