Somaliland Politics Introduction
Somaliland politics
101: introduction to the art of political insult
The chairman of Kulmiye
political party held a press conference at Ming Sing restaurant,
Hargeisa on May 13th. The party chairman spoke about the general
condition of the country and articulated the views of his party on a lot
of current issues like corruption, the budget for this fiscal year and
the peace and stability of the country. However, the chairman
unexpectedly concluded the press conference by launching a serious
assault on person of Somaliland finance minister, Mr. Hussien Ali
Du’alle(Awil).
Mr. Awil, who is known for his
erratic and offensive outbursts, has been provoking the Kulmiye chairman
for sometime, accusing the chairman even to have been behind the
assassinations of the two great SNM leaders of Abdikadir Koosaar and
Adan Shiine. Awil also exchanged similar invectives with other
politicians like Gen.Jama Mohamed Qalib and the Kulmiye party member
Abdi Aw Dahir.
Siraanyo restrained himself
for sometime and refused to be led into publicly trading insults with
Awil, fearing from possible negative implications that this might have
for his political part. Nevertheless, as what goes around comes around,
it was a matter of time before Siraanyo joined the
‘insult-your-neighbor’ club.
What seems to have been the
last straw that broke Siraanyo’s back was the minister of finances’
ironic comment while discussing the budget of the country this fiscal
year. The minister said that Siraanyo should congratulate him for
preparing the budget; a budged Siraanyo himself could not prepare for
almost two years, while he was the finance minister. Siraanyo hit back
few days later
Referring to a book Awil wrote
sometime ago, Siraanyo mentioned a paragraph where Awil is alleged to be
speaking about the circumstance of his birth. Siraanyo recounts the
story of Awils’ father and how the father married nine women, but could
not have any children from anyone of them and then how the father
consulted a witch doctor that advised him to marry a woman from the Arab
clan, if he is ever to have children. Having being born under this
circumstance, Siraanyo concluded, Awil was a miracle child indeed,
putting a particular and ‘derogatory’ emphasis on the word ‘miracle’.
Siraanyo also mentioned
another paragraph in Awils’ book in which Awil is said to have confided
that he was dismissed from Sheik secondary school. Siraanyo then dwelt
on the reason that Awil was dismissed from school and queried if his
dismissal from school was due to ill-discipline on the part of Awil or….
Siraanyo continued with his
diatribe. He recounted the story of how Awil was a ‘camel-like person ’
before the British trained him for six months (unlike Xassan Kayd ,
Ismail Ali Abokor and Muuse Rabiile Good who were trained for two
years)and how Awil still calls himself an ambassador, while others who
were more experienced than him and who were posted to more prominent
countries like the US, do not use that title any longer…..and on and on.
Siraanyos’ recent spate of
insults was not confined to Awil. In the second anniversary of the
establishment of Kulmiye political party, Silaanyo called the speaker of
the house of the parliament, Mr. Ahmed Aden Qaybe a ‘lair’. Siraanyo was
referring to the controversy surrounding the legality of the Public
Order Law: No.21/63, which Qaybe argued to be a law that is still
legally in force in the country. Siraanyo rejected Qaybe’s argument and
stated that Public Order law was made null and void by the parliament
sometime ago and that Qaybe was lying about it.
As the chairman of a political
party and a presidential hopeful, it is unflattering for Mr. Siraanyo to
publicly exchange these lowly statements with ministers of an incumbent
government and other officials that Siraanyo’s political party is
striving to substitute with one of their own. Until now, Siraanyo’s
Kulmiye had occupied ‘the higher moral ground’ vis-à-vis the government
and Kulmiye could have done well with maintaining that position, at no
cost to itself.
In the post 1991 political
developments, politicians trading insults against each other as well as
against opposing groups in public has become a common phenomenon in
Somaliland. Indeed, the practices become, to paraphrase Clausewitz
dictum, the continuation of politics by other means. And, while this
muddy behavior is not uncommon among the politicians of developing/developed
countries, the extensive nature of its employment by Somaliland
politicians and the weight given to these foul words of dishonor by the
people in the country is beyond comprehension indeed.
A notable individual who was
an expert in using this technique was the deceased president of
Somaliland, Mr. Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal . Mr. Egal used to launch a
carefully prepared tirade against individual ministers whom he happened
to dismiss from office and whom, Egal was afraid, may speak ill against
his person as a result of their dismissal.
The deceased president, for
instance, insulted Musa Bihi and Mohamed Barud, while at the same time
dismissing them from the government. Egal recounted and imputed a
notorious Somali poem recited against a woman to the former and the
story of a man who raped a woman and, in attempts to deny the commission
of the act, betrays himself foolishly to the later.
Egal used the tactic of
insulting ministers at the time he was dismissing them to discredit and
humiliate them in the eyes of the people, before ministers had chance to
reflect on their dismissal and hit back Egal’s administration.
The recent upsurge of insults
and counter-insults between Kulmiye and UDUB officials set many people
wondering whether they have even the least credentials to rule this
country. And Kulmiye, in particular, should remind itself of the
futility of insulting one’s way into political power.
So far, Mr. Riyaale did not
show the tendency nor ‘rhetoric’ to imitate the ‘dismiss and insult’
tactic of his predecessor. But, there is no shortage of political
insulters in his unwieldy government, Mr Ismail of the ministry of
interior competing with Awil as the best insulter of all time in the
government.
Yussuf Abdillahi Mohamed,
Hargiesa, Somaliland.
Email: bulaale4@hotmail.com
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