New Parliament: Weighed In The Balance And Found Wanting

By Jamal Madar, London, UK

In the past, the Somaliland parliament performed poorly as an institution mandated to ensure that the executive branch serves the best interests of the public. The apparent lack of pressure by the parliament on the government to become financially, politically and constitutionally transparent and accountable enabled the president to become an authoritarian and wield an immense power, which renders his words unchallengeable.

As a result of the parliament’s complete and utter failure to exercise its legitimate responsibility to monitor and control the activities of the executive branch, the chief executive [president Rayale] took for granted in using his political power for illegitimate ends to the extent that it would not be an easy task to force him to submit himself and his government to a system of governance which will demand accountability and transparency.

After years of prolonged disillusionment and disenchantment with the old parliament, a new parliament was elected in September 2005 with much jubilations and high hopes.

  The peoples’ hopes and aspirations therefore hinged on the newly elected parliament to hit the brakes on this runaway government; and to ensure that the terms like accountability and transparency are introduced in its dictionary. After all, it is the primary function of any democratically elected parliament to discuss what the government has done, is doing and intends to do, and on occasion to try to show up the government's errors and even try to change or modify its policies. However, far from asserting its authority over the executive branch, the new parliament cowed in the face of government’s unceasing but empty rhetorical threats. A case in point is when the executive branch submitted the 2005/06 national budget to the parliament for approval. The government played stonewalling tactics in an effort to deny the parliament an ample time to debate on the budget such as government’s future spending plans and priorities etc. The budget, as reported by the Public Accounts Subcommittee or Economics Subcommittee as they call it, was full of inconsistencies, flaws and other shortcomings. Even worse the government’s numbers won’t add up. Yet, much to the irritation of the public, the parliament approved the budget overwhelmingly after the minister of finance, Hussein Ali Dualeh, said if the parliament continues to drag its feet on approving the budget “we [government] would release the entire armed forces into town”. In other words, the minister’s irresponsible remark implied that the government would instruct the army to rob the local businesses in Hargeysa if the parliament delayed the approval of the budget and subsequently withheld the salaries of the army and the police. This was followed by similarly explicit threat from president Rayale himself who said, “the country would be destabilized if you [the legislators] did not approve the budget as a matter of urgency.” At this point, the parliament approved the budget without further ado although it was demonstrably flawed from the outset as explained to us in depth by the chairman of the Economics Subcommittee Mohamed Haji Mohamoud Omar Hashi. In turn, the parliament instructed the government, as a face saving exercise, to give salary increments to the army, police etc. Both the finance minister and the president swiftly rejected the recommendation out of hand. Now Awil came up with an excuse, saying the sudden death of the Somaliland millionaire, Indho deero, had an adverse effect on the country’s revenue.

Hence, the government cannot give salary increments to the army and civil servants. It is an irony of fate that chairman Mohamed Haji Mohamoud- a man held in high regard by many people now moans on the sidelines about the government’s failure to fulfill its promise.

Surely, the parliament had dismally failed the electorate and did not act in the best interest of the people.

A second and more illustrating example is when the parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for the reinstatement of Amina-Waris, the wife of the leading opposition leader, Ahmed Mohammed Mohamoud Sillanyo, who was unfairly discriminated against by the government in taking up a post of a Team Leader with CARE International, which she successfully succeeded following an interview. Surprisingly as it may seem, the president, his wife and the discredited former minister of planning, Ahmed Haji Dahir, deliberately discriminated against Amina-Waris after the position of the Team Leader to which she was so rightfully entitled was offered to a Kenyan national who failed in the interview for the job.

Upon hearing the resolution passed by the parliament, Rayale’s confidante, Abdillahi Mohamed Dualeh, the minister of foreign affairs, swiftly issued a statement and said ”we [the government] will not act upon the resolution of the parliament’. It was an utter and complete contempt for the parliament. The parliament did not take any steps or measures against the president or his minister for their blatant contempt of the parliament and shameful discrimination against a Somaliland citizen in spite of the fact that the parliament has the right to demand written and oral information from the executive, to compel testimony, to require the executive to comply with parliament’s resolutions and to remove the executive if it fails to comply.

There were also instances in the past when the government openly rejected the parliament’s recommendations as in the case of the tragic incident at Hargeysa   Hospital. The parliament launched an investigation, which took several months, only to recommend that the government should apologize to the public for the illegal storming of the Hospital by the national army. The Vice-president, Ahmed Yusuf Yassin, said it was not necessary for the government to publicly apologize again for it has done so already. The parliament was ignominiously silenced. The parliament did not do anything about it.   Another glaringly embarrassing episode was when an invitation was extended to several MPs to attend a meeting in Nairobi. President Rayale barred them from attending that meeting and subsequently Abdillahi Tallaabo, the Vice-Minister of Justice, accused the MPs along with other respectable officials of being “agents of Abdillahi Yusuf”.   The parliament had demanded the government that an apology be given to the MPs for that vile slander. The president condescendingly ignored the parliament and the legislators, as usual, shied away to confront him.

In Dumbuluq where a trail of death and destruction was left behind when two opposing sides fought over a piece of disputed land, the parliament ignored to investigate into the root causes of the problem. President Rayale immediately pre-empted the incompetent and ever-bungling legislators and set up a fictitious fact-finding commission that never produced even one page of report as to who was ultimately to blame for the loss of lives and destruction of properties in Dumbuluq. The legislators did not even bother to seek an explanation until now as to why the president’s so-called fact finding committee failed to produce the outcome of their investigation. Yet again, the parliament has shamefully failed to meet the expectations of the people.

Following the break out of Hargeysa central prison, Rayale set up, as usual, a fictitious fact finding commission to investigate into the matter. No one ever reported back about this extremely serious matter involving the country’s national security because the president’s family was directly involved in it. The parliament, as usual, did not even lift a finger to find out what went wrong.

Under the constitution, parliamentary committees are empowered to scrutinize fully the performance of all ministries, with no exclusions. Yet when the Minister of Water and Mineral Resources, Qassim Sheikh Yusuf, was summoned to appear before parliamentary subcommittee hearing to explain what he knew about kickbacks paid to him and the president by bogus oil company, he fled abroad rather than giving evidence before the parliament. The legislators did not attempt to investigate into the conduct of the minister nor did they bother to follow it up. The minister spent three months crisscrossing Europe, Africa and the US to evade the hearing. To add an insult to injury, the minister returned back to the country having struck a new agreement with another bogus oil company, which he refused to name it when asked by the local press. Again the parliament did not act in the best interest of the people and had let the nation down.

Since the day the new parliament was elected, Rayale was constantly launching a series of unpredictable and escalating attacks on the parliament. The idea behind this was to measure the reaction of the legislators and identify the threshold at which the parliament would begin behaving as he hoped- ending working relationship between the parliament and executive. In all the cases mentioned above, the parliament consistently declined to engage, making essentially symbolic responses to the president’s serious violations of the constitution and the law of the land.

Instead of threatening the president with impeachment, the parliament recently threatened, out of desperation, that it would end its working relationship with the executive branch if the president did not promulgate the parliament’s decisions. The president, as usual, turned a deaf to the legislators’ meaningless threats for he was not prepared, at no time, to abide by the resolutions of a eunuch and gutless parliament.

Much to the glee and jubilation of Rayale, the parliament eventually adopted an adversarial and non-cooperative posture with the government. It was exactly the kind of response that Rayale was looking for. It was a win-win situation for the president.

Emboldened by this event, president Rayale promptly issued a presidential decree and sought an advisory note from his pliant Supreme Court, then headed by Faisal Sheikh Jama (now sacked). Equipped with these documents, Rayale then asked the House of Elders to renew their term of office for another four years in an apparent attempt to turn the tables on the opposition who control the Lower Chamber of the House. The presidential decree and the Supreme Court advisory note might have been an affront to the constitution as many analysts said already but for the elders, it was a Godsend. The elders did not even blink and extended their term of office until 2010 by an overwhelming vote. At this point, the disorientated and ever bungling lawmakers did not censure or deal with the president for the constitutional crime committed against the nation but rather, in their perverted logic, the lawmakers opted to launch a scathing attack on the House of Elders particularly the chairman, Saleban Mohamoud Aden. Cleverly, Rayale set the rival sides, namely the Lower and Upper House, against each other and made them to wrestle out in the open political arena sparing himself from their mud slinging business. Consequently, accusations and counter accusations, claims and counter claims flew over the legality of the extension of the elders’ term of office in both Houses. In the end, the parliament declared the extension as illegal. The elders lambasted the legislator’s resolution and the two sides came to a virtual deadlock.

It does not take a vivid imagination to grasp the essence of this predicament. We are in a situation of a complete breakdown of the whole legal institutions that was supposed to serve the interest of the people. The president (executive branch) lives in a seventh cloud cuckoo land of his own and has no interest in a functioning system other than accumulating wealth at the expense of the impoverished Somaliland masses. The Elders (Upper House)are rejoicing and are prepared to fight tooth and nail to secure their bread and butter- the extension of their term of office for another four years- irrespective of what the Lower Chamber of the House decides or what the critics may utter. The legislators (Lower House) have no sense of purpose and direction at all. Some are there to advance their own personal interests and can be easily bought; others are confused, bewildered and bemused and simply vote, in most cases, to where the majority are inclined; others are simply on ego trip and use their membership to the parliament for show off purposes only. The latter are also nationals of other countries in Europe and North America and do not often participate in crucial votes in parliament.

Such is the state of affairs in Somaliland today.   The parliament has been banished like a leper and compelled to work in isolation with no companion at all from other government institutions. But it is a shame that it has brought upon itself. It has made a series of lapses in which it completely failed to bring the president and his ministers to task for their repeated contempt of parliament. Thus, they have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

In conclusion, the parliament has already lost credibility with the electorate and hardly anyone, in his or her right frame of mind, would believe that it would impeach this president for the constitutional crimes he committed against the nation or twist the arm of the government to be accountable to the public in the foreseeable future. It is therefore pointless to list a set of recommendations that would never be taken into account nor there is a magic bullet that could resolve all these problems in one-go but there is one simple thing that the lawmakers can do if they really want to retain a semblance of dignity:   they MUST NOT allow the president and his ministers to treat the parliament, the most highly respected legal institution of the country, with utter contempt without some form of reprimand.

By Jamal Madar, London, UK

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