About These Old Men……. A Reply To Ali Marshall‎

Our man from San-Jose doesn’t want to grow into a man of the Guurti, and, here I was, thinking that sagacity and coming close to Solomon’s virtues were what men sought after, as we all move towards that final betrayal – old age.

Being a man of finance and accounts, as well as a pundit, we suffer, from Ali Marshal’s punditry as well as benefit from his neatness of our political accounts as our man from San-Jose continues to pursue the purity of our political ledger. I have thought him to be a wrong headed democrat, yet, always a democrat, even though wrong headed about the vision of this country and the political dispensation we are looking for. Let me say at the outset, and as a democrat, that debate and dialogue on our urgent political issues remains the only way in finding our way in a global historical moment littered with failures in state making and in institutionalizing values and terms that are now being used to cover more sinister intentions by that bizarre and ignorant man George Bush, the younger: freedom and liberty.

Ali Marshall recently told Somali Landers that the Guurti is at the core of our social and political problems; they represent the past; and, they are in league with the camels of Somaliland in sending us back to pre-historic times given that these geriatric men and their cultural propensity to do as they “culturally see” profoundly injures our road map towards the rule of law. [Please see “Kulu Fidna Cindal Guurti Maxkamadda Sare iyo Xeer ilaaliyaha”]

First let me say where I do agree with our man from Hargeysa, via San Jose. The man sitting at the Supreme Court is screwing up and ought to distance himself from our man at government house Hargeysa, and that problem is the same problem that we had between the Executive and the Parliament. Now that this strain has been fixed the next step is to fix the judiciary and the parliament has a job to do here by giving tenure to who it wants and then they can do their job without fear!

On the substance of Ali Marshal’s invective, I say this: we are not white men, and since white men cannot jump the Guurti must do the jumping for us. Put another way, social relations or political relations in our society – given our transition – are about rooting our legal and constitutional ideas into institutional bulwarks so that they can mediate our social and political relations. Now, while in the transition from traditional politics to constitutional politics we will have hic-cups, set-backs and retreats and from these experiences we will build laws and traditions that will mediate and anchor our political traditions for the next crisis or political situations. Here is an example, the next time this parliamentary faupa happens I don’t think we will need the Guurti simply because there is precedent now and things would be self-evident. Given our fragile but improving political situation I believe Ali that you are amiss in raising the mantle of purity.

Constitutions and laws are created by men to guide us and I believe them to be sacred, however, we must understand that the Guurti was designed precisely because our constitutional and legal traditions are in the first trimester, forget about the hundreds of years that countries, historically, have needed to make these laws and traditions central pillars of their political existence.

There is also talk in the legislature about creating a bill on how to elect the Guurti. I think this all premature, and the parliament of Somaliland ought to put a stop to that bill for the time being. In a year or two we will have a whole slew of new elections from the local councils to the President; we cannot include the Guurti in this until we have exchanged Presidents one more time. Too many elections cause the issues to look like a lottery machine we have urgent and more pressing issues to consider. Selebaan Gaal, the head of the Guurti is opposed to this according to news reports; he says he wants elections because the Guurti is patently subject to the will of the people. He is right on principal and wrong on the strategy and political context of the country –strategy and vision being the litmus test of all principles.

I agree with the Vice-President, [again according to news-reports] however much I am loathe to, given the Vice-President’s political aspirations, this posturing may have something to do with opposing the elections: as a contender for the Presidency when the time comes it would be handy to have the Chairman of the Guurti busy with legislative issues as opposed to seeking the Presidency. That strategy has one loophole – the Chairman of the Guurti may simply resign and contest the elections for the party and the Presidency: so all bets are off in this huge and dark cloud in judgment. Leave those old men alone for the time being, for the debate about what ought to be done cannot be the purview of the House of Representatives alone, it involves the whole country and much re-reading of what ought to be re-written in the constitution.

I have often argued in these pages and elsewhere that the Guurti should include the Sultans of Somaliland. Botswana – a great democracy in Africa –and Malaysia among others have similar systems of sultans that endeavors to incorporate its traditional structures into the political system in order to bring to the open political beliefs that hold sway in the ebb and flow of political life in un-evenly developed post-colonial societies. In other words, and in cruder terms, Somali Landers loath their psychological and physical dependence to what a group of old men some hundreds of years ago did – assign clan stations to a horde of people living in the desert. They are committed to leaving it in the dust, they know it does not produce a political and economic philosophy to govern their lives: yet just in case, just in case, it is that confounded dagger in the back sheath of their posterior and they ought to use it “in a institutionalized way; in a political way; when, interests in the parliament don’t see the country before their own primordial instincts”. – More on this in a subsequent letter.

We ought to institutionalize the Sultans Somaliland by making sure that each of the communities in Somaliland are represented in a traditional way so that this institution can have representation in the country; can have its day in the Senate - but that is to anticipate, indeed, an issue for another letter and another time. Suffice to say we want to debate this issue and any draft bill ought to be GAZZETED for the country needs to add its two cents worth.

In the end, the Guurti solved this crisis and pointed towards what should be the next task of the house – the urgent writing of laws and statutes that will help towards making our system more transparent and more accountable and, more importantly, deliver bread and jobs to the people of Somaliland.

POST SCRIPT: By the way, Ali, dear friend and comrade, I still believe its “Kulu Fidna Cindal Geela! And it was the Guurti and the Xeer ilaaliye of old that solved all those problems. We are lucky we do not live in that milieu can you imagine if I stole your camels and there was no Guurti! Smile your on candid camera….

dallo57us@yahoo.com

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