Rayale, Please Steer Straight

Hargeisa, 13 July 2009 – “Please, steer straight.” This was the most frequent phrase of my driving teacher, I remember him as I had felt that he has overused and repeated; “why doesn’t he find another phrase to avoid this overuse,” I thought as I had run down the way of a busy highway.

I think that is enough of an excuse for the repetition of this word for president Rayale as I had read very similar words on the news pouring from the pens of Somaliland citizens and intellects–all sharing the unique hope that he might get well along with their messages and perhaps steer the poor nation towards peace, prosperity, education, and to a freer world that they deserve.

Please, Mr. President, I say it for the last time, let the people enjoy their rights, let their voices be heard, let them compete with the rest of the world, let them device their mechanics and administer themselves, let them captivate and appeal to their future, let them enchant and induce for themselves the recognition you failed, let them be in the driver’s seat that you have been so long fruitless.

With these words above, I am not reproaching or denouncing of Rayale’s achievements and all his well beings, but as a Somaliland citizen I here by address that our beloved president had made some degrading mistakes that will be very difficult to recover during his long term of presidency. From the issue of not securing the nations’s territories, to the larger and current ever-growing government spending habits and corrupted policies that resulted less or no social works and essentials that his administration introduced, to an extreme indulgence, injustice, unethicalness of land dispute, to an increeasing effects of deforestation and environmental erosion, and less water implementations with chunks of the public already dying for thirsty; the list is endless with an adversity of ailing economy, widespread famine and starvation. And now, he is here agian seeking re-election! shameful and embarrasing it is for him and for the larger honorable family he is from, and most importantly for the so called democratic party of UDUB, it is beyond contempt for a leader with a record of that failings to stand again for re-election.

Indeed, he has some bright pages in history, he is the first democratically elected president of Somaliliand and to this he is one of the founding fathers of this nation, he had organized and bestowed several elections in a politically unsettled region, showed a policy of patience and much more. But, honestly it is his failings that exceed his success, and better to quit this time. I solemnly support him to move, move to elitism, just out of politics and watch, just let the realm select who they think is best for them, who they can entrust their lives and their children’s lives.

In the other hand, I do believe rough political environment of Somaliland doesn’t utterly fall into Rayale’s responsibilities, but to the contrary there are some deep rooted, fundamental origins planted deep by the mass groups of politicians and the upper administrational personnel that firstly introduced the existence of free Somaliland from the war torn southern Somalia. It is obvious that they owe us for distinguishing and saving our people from the intense animosity and man slaughter of the south of Somalia. It is the unschooled, uneducated administrational bodies that dominate our two-house parliament, ministry cabinet, and the entire political atomsphere.

It is due to the clan-based shares of positions that resulted to appoint ignorant, illiterate laymen to positions such as planning, commerce, finance, education, health and labor that would otherwise being in the hands of the freshest, highly educated brains that are wide awake and keenly vigilant of the world affairs and international community: those indeed deserve to pertain such fields. There should have been strict rules in the constitution measuring a candidate’s educational qualifications, experience, and personality. With this type of qualified political atomsphere we might have achieved for what we had failed for so many years, sure by this time we might have enjoyed the sweet sense of success and achievement.

And to those governing bodies who do not understand even the slightest meaning of administration, I say, governance is not to coin large sums of cash but to work for the well being of the societies, for the triumphing of communities that are well below your rule.
Today, the population is not in need of your help in terms of governmental administration, you are not in need in these fields that you fill in crowds such as the parliament, ministries, and agencies of the state. Dear fathers, and fellows you are not in the right path, perhaps your are lost. You are supposed to help in the times of disputes, and reconciliation…….you dare not hold postions you don’t have the slightest ideas or expertise of how to manage and run. You are already failures in more than a dozen times. No reason you be there anymore.

Somaliland needs some new faces, someone that has never been in the somali politics for the last forty years, someone capable of preserving and recreating their integrity, someone who is able attaining goals, and winning hearts of the public so that they can entrust him/her the burden of their leadership. We need a president that can designate the beams of democracy into the holes of the region, a president that is himself/herself an indication of democracy.

Hassan Deri,
xasan008@hotmail.com

Views expressed in the opinion articles are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the editorial