Your Excellency: When history books are written, your name could appear as the leading character of the Tragic Demise of the Somaliland Project.
Your Excellency, with 40% support in your first attempt for Presidency, your party was a winner way back in 2017, but you have returned the note upside down and read a loser. This time, all you need to do is to turn the note 180 degrees and save Somaliland from looming self-destruction.
Your Excellency, I am an admirer of your performance as first-time successful contenders in Somaliland political chessboard. You founded Waddani Party in 2012, engaged in your first municipal elections, and succeeded in having Waddani Party registered as one the three National Political Parties.
Secondly, you have run for the presidency of Somaliland and took the second position with a remarkable 40% of the nation choosing Abdulrahman as the nation’s future leader. This performance should have been rated as remarkable by any reasonable standards. The expected logical response from you and your party was to celebrate the results that you have achieved. You should then have embarked on nationwide Champaign aimed at motivating your party cadre to strive for 60% landslide victory in the next round presidential elections.
But on the contrary, it appears, your Excellency has read to victory note of your new party the other way around. Instead of conceding defeat and showing the credentials of statesmanship, you launched a series of never-ending, unconvincing arguments and frustrating conditions that brought our political apparatus into a total halt. More seriously, for some obscure reasons, you refused to resort to the nation’s constitutional institutions in order to resolve the dispute with your opponents, namely, the Kulmiye and UCID Parties.
The most sticking point in this political dispute was the legality of the Electoral Commission and right they have to oversee the upcoming elections. Over the past year, your party contends, without any concrete evidence that the Commission is flawed and should be disbanded.
The other two parties disagree with your conclusion. But, UCID party has proposed two meaningful and practical solutions to the stalemate. They recommended increasing the commission members from 7 to 9. In addition, they also recommended that the new Commission should be nominated by August 2019, ahead of the deadline of November.
On the other hand, your Excellency and Waddani Party have failed thus far to come up with one and only one meaningful and worth respecting concession to demonstrate that you care about the wellbeing of your people. Your position is as follows: “ I should get my way or this nation should be brought to its knees”. This is not acceptable.
Finally, your excellency, the grievances that you have could be genuine, but you should seek justice and remedy via the country’s Constitution. The first option at the disposal of Waddani party is the parliament and/or the judiciary system. If you are not convinced with the impartiality of these institutions you may go for the last resort and call for peaceful demonstrations. These actions may or may not demonstrate that the nation is on your side against your opponents. In the final analysis, your Excellency you need to capitalize on your diplomatic expertise and seek for a WIN-WIN solution, no matter what!!!
Finally, I would like to remind your Excellency that any action that your party might pursue outside these parameters in resolving the current minor political skirmishes could be disastrous. Consequently, when history books are written, your name could appear as the leading character of the Tragic Demise of the Somaliland Project.
Hassan Abdi Yousuf,
Geopolitical Analyst,
Hargeisa, Somaliland
