Rayale’s Corruption Is A Threat To The Country

EDITORIAL

Having already discredited the CID, the Police and the Ministry of Interior when he used them to carry out his illegal attack on Haatuf, President Rayale is dragging more and more institutions through the swamp of his machinations against Haatuf. Early this week, his ministers brought together a few people who shared the same clan lineage as some Haatuf journalists, then released a statement in which they claimed to apologize to President Rayale on behalf of Haatuf. Apologizing on behalf of fellow clansmen is part of the traditional Somali system of conflict resolution, but it was clearly misused in this case. For one thing, Haatuf Media Network (which is composed of Haatuf,al-Haatef al-Arabi and the Somaliland Times) is a national organization, not a clan organization, and its staff belongs to different clans, so an apology in the name of a single clan won’t be representative of all the people associated with Haatuf.

Second, the apology did not come as a result of serious and impartial evaluation of the dispute, but was orchestrated by the president himself who used his position and influence to get some people to issue the apology in return for favors from him. This blatant abuse of the Somali traditional system, prompted other members from the same clan in whose name the apology was made, to issue a counter statement, in which they denied that the clan had apologized to President Rayale.

The CID, the Police, the Ministry of Interior, and the Somali traditional system are not the only institutions that have been dirtied by President Rayale and his flunkeys. The legal system, too, seems to have fallen into Rayale’s clutches and is blindly fulfilling his wishes. How else can one explain the fact that (1) the court did not throw out the case against Haatuf journalists given the illegal way in which they were arrested; (2) the court’s denial of bail to the journalists although the chance that they will jump bail is almost non-existent; (3) the court’s decision to try the journalists according to Somalia’s penal code instead of Somaliland’s press law.

Haatuf blew the whistle on Rayale’s corruption. Instead of disproving Haatuf’s charges, President Rayale’s reaction only showed how corruption is part and parcel of his very method of operation. As a result of Rayale’s corrupt practices, so many of our public institutions are rotting from the inside. Rayale’s corruption must be stopped before it brings down the whole country.

Source: Somaliland Times

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