By Ahmed M.I. Egal
There has been a spate of reports recently in the Somaliland press that a contingent of Kulmiye supporters from the UK attended the recent Djibouti conference that elected Sheikh Sharif Ahmed as President of Somalia. In addition, it has also been reported that this contingent held at least one secret meeting with the new President of Somalia, and that the two sides have agreed to meet again in Mogadishu in early April. This date is significant in that it is immediately after the Somaliland elections which are scheduled for end-March 2009. The reports continue that the two parties have reached a secret agreement that if Kulmiye wins the upcoming Presidential elections, they will agree to a form of federal structure uniting Somaliland & Somalia.
There have been rumors about the federalist leanings of Mr. Ahmed Mahmoud Sillanyo, Chairman of Kulmiye and its candidate for President in the upcoming elections, for many years now. It is also a fact that some erstwhile prominent Kulmiye members, such as Sifir, have long been ensconced in the various parliaments convened for Somalia since the time of Abdi Salat Qasim’s ill-fated TNG. Thus, these latest reports cannot be dismissed as idle chatter and they demand a clear response from Kulmiye and its Chairman. The simple fact is that it is against the law for a Somaliland citizen to attend these conferences convened to establish governments for Somalia. It is also a simple fact that the constitution of Somaliland is premised upon the independence of the country and the recovery of our sovereignty from Somalia.
Thus, for a prospective Presidential candidate to be party to an agreement that would surrender that sovereignty is nothing less than treason. To be sure, everyone is entitled to his or her political beliefs, and support for a federal state which unites Somalia and Somaliland is neither dishonorable nor disloyal. What is unacceptable and inexcusable, however, is for a prospective Presidential candidate or party to present one face to the electorate, while presenting another, diametrically opposed to the first, to foreign leaders while conspiring to subvert the constitution under which he/it seeks office.
These reports may well be false, yet neither Kulmiye nor Mr. Sillanyo has seen fit to deny them. It is high time for both Kulmiye as a party and Mr. Sillanyo to put a stop to these reports by either issuing definitive denials proving the falsity of these reports, or by coming clean and initiating a debate on their position regarding Somaliland’s independence. However, if they persist with ambiguity of the current position regarding their reported Misyar marriage to Sheikh Sharif, they must know that the people of Somaliland will divorce them emphatically.

 

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