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There are
incidents that capture the essence of an administration and lay bare to
the public what that administration is all bout: the quality of its top
people, its priorities, and how it operates. One such incident occurred
in Hargeysa Hospital last week. The gist of what happened was that the
Minister of Health, Mr Abdi Haybe Muhammad fired the Director General of
Hargeysa hospital, Dr Yasin Arab Abdi, when the latter objected to the
minister’s appropriation of a vehicle belonging to the ministry of
health. The minister did not just fire the director general for blowing
the whistle on him, but also made the ridiculous claim that the reason
he kept the vehicle at his home was so that he could secure a government
number for it. In other words, the minister wants the Somaliland public
to believe that he was doing the public a favor by keeping the vehicle
for his personal use.
It is bad enough for a government minister to confiscate public
property. But what makes the minister’s actions even more heinous is
that the vehicle was donated by the UNDP to be used in transporting
women victims of rape. Moreover, this is not the only vehicle that the
minister has taken as private property, for there is another vehicle
that was donated by UNICEF to the inoculation program (EPI) that
Minister Abdi Haybe has kept for his private use.
Before he became minister of health, Abdi Haybe ran as a candidate for
parliament from Kulmiye party and was rejected by the voters. He stayed
as a member of Kulmiye until he cut a deal under the table with the
government, and was appointed as minister, which earned him a reputation
for naked opportunism. Now he has added a reputation for corruption to
his already existing reputation for opportunism.
Some of our readers may be asking themselves where does the minister get
the confidence that he can appropriate public property, destroy an
already weak health system, fire those who object to his misuse of his
power, and insult reporters who inform the public about his abusive
actions? The simple and obvious answer is that the reason Abdi Haybe
thinks he can do all these things with impunity is because he knows
President Dahir Rayale Kahin will not hold him accountable, and that the
only time that the president moves against a minister, or a government
official, is when he thinks they have shown signs of disloyalty to him.
The fact that the President has not even reprimanded the minister of
health, let alone sack him, is sufficient proof.
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