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By Alas M. Jama
Monday, February 25, 2013
Since the new government was inaugurated three months back, we have been seeing and hearing rumours about its unusual modus operandi. In fact, there are less generation of sensational daily news and the armchair warriors are bored to death. The team work and the harmony among the different levels of the government proved to be unacceptable to some sectors of the society that used to benefit from the discord and developed persistent civil war mentality. The cyber blogs owned by different interest groups are not getting enough hits for lack of leaks from the highest government offices. The private TV channels are not happy reporting only about reconstruction and improved security. Some foreign interest groups who were political handlers of the previous transitional governments will do everything to torpedo the momentum, so they can maintain their relevance. The war merchants built upon the ashes of the destruction smelled law and order coming on the way and they will not hesitate to defame the major political players and sabotage the process. There is complex web of interconnectivity among those groups and they use the news outlets to give distorted images of the facts. Above all, people see the political landscape largely through the lens of the media.
In the absence of “sellable news”, some sources resorted to fabricate their own version of the events as they would like it to be. “They conveyed that the President in under the spell of a deviant cult and the prime minister is bound to execute their agenda while the Parliament Speaker is there to get parliamentary approval of the laws generated by those groups”. It is farfetched and is meant to create a rift between the government branches. That tactic has not worked and will not work in future.
The fact of the matter is: there is no government in the world that can embark to any meaningful agenda or reform for that matter without its members united as a team and without having one leader at helm. Western governments that are beacons of good governance and democracy have separation of power, but are united in the common goal. You can’t see the president at loggerheads with the prime minister and vice versa. There are opposition parties in the west that agree on the core principles but disagree with the methods used at times. In our case we don’t have such loyal opposition parties for the time being. Healthy dissent, however, is required in Somalia, so as different views are aired and debated, but this should not be ego driven and should not be contrary to the national revival program.
Successive transitional governments in Somalia since the year 2000 were mired with unnecessary squabbles between government agencies that paralysed the whole apparatus and rendered it prone to external manipulation. That resulted in the creation of extremist groups and in endemic corruption. The fact that we are in the bottom of the deck of the failed states is not only because we are in a civil war for over 20 years, but mainly our representatives were not united enough for the common goal and the international community labelled them as punch of corrupt medieval warlords. Reconstruction will never happen in the absence of transparency, rule of law and unity of purpose. To achieve the desired objective fair minded, decent diaspora elements have to be in the loop.
Today we have at helm a dedicated team of leaders that are singlehandedly devoted in taking us to the next level. They don’t compete but they complement each other. They don’t seek personal agenda but they are for the common good. They don’t adhere to tribal rules but they are bound to fulfil higher national agenda. At the end of their term, we can expect them to eliminate the extremist groups, to rebuild the infrastructure, to overhaul the judicial system, to complete the reconciliation process, to build democracy from bottom up and to take us to one-man-one vote status.
All newly liberated areas in the south are beaming with returnees who saw a light at the end of the tunnel and who are eager to invest and to participate in the general reconstruction. New class of diaspora will team with progressive politicians in the country and Somalia will find its place in the world of nations. Let the logic prevail and allow this government to create a room for advancement and fight corruption. The silent majority should not be silent anymore - It is now or never. The reverse brain drain that just started will be the engine of future economic growth. No more capacity building programs to be given by foreign NGOs, because now we have doctors, engineers and technicians of all sorts among the returnees. Add that to the natural resources that we are endowed with, and you can see that the sky is our limit in terms of possibilities.
There is a boom of private sector businesses all over Somalia and is growing. Foreign investments will come as soon as a conducive environment is created. Tax revenue will then increase covering our routine domestic service needs. Then we can be more assertive in the world stage and reclaim our pride.
Alas M. Jama
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