By Abdirashid Khalif Hashi

Present-day Somalia has many political challenges. Some are unique to this country, while others are commonly found in other conflict-ridden societies and states emerging from civil strife. The most immediate challenge Somalia faces is trust building.

An environment where Somalia leaders trust each other and can be trusted by Somali citizens is a pre requisite, as is the trust of the international community for the survival of the transitional federal institutions. Without trust among the top leadership, co-operation, relocation, rehabilitation and reconstruction will be impossible, rendering peace in Somalia unattainable.

President of TFG Abdullahi Y. Ahmed and the Speaker of the Parliament Sharif Hassan

How can lasting trust be built among the Somali leadership? Recall the memorable night at Kasarani where Mr Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed won the presidency.Mirror this to the infamous evening at the Grand Regency Hotel where Somali MPs and ministers fought with their fists, walking sticks and heavy chairs, and experience will tell us that while trust can easily be formed, it could as well fizzle out within no time.

Somalia needs to forge ways and means where trust can be built and maintained over the next transitional five years. Somalia needs an impartial judge or referee to build, nurture, and promote trust, harmony and cooperation among its political elite. The current Somali Charter and the Constitution of 1960 seem to have both envisaged that the President of the Republic would play the important role of being a referee who is above the political fray and who mediates and reconciles the competing institutional, individual and communal interests in the country.

That is not happening now. The President comes across to his opponents and to many impartial or even opinionated observers as a partisan politician. He is seen as aligned with one section of the transitional federal institutions led by the Prime Minister.

On the other hand the Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister and prominent Mogadishu former factions leaders, now ministers, lead the opposing section, hence, the stalemate. To build and sustain trust over the next five years, Somali leaders, particularly the top leadership, have only two options: Either the President follows the Charter and the Constitution of 1960 to the letter and stays away from the political games brewed and played by Parliament and the Council of Ministers -- or an amicable, independent or impartial international mechanism is established for Somalia. This international body would act as a referee and builder of trust among the country’s politicking political elites.

The President should let the Council of Ministers (who by law has the mandate anyway) run the affairs of the nation.He should let this institution formulate policies, execute them and take the praise or blame for their political actions. So the prime minister and his ministers, without slight interference overt or covert from the President, should decide where the government should move to, from which country it should seek peacekeeping troops and other political decisions.

As things stand now, the President appears to be in collusion with one section of Parliament and the Cabinet. As such, he is part and parcel of policy formulation and policy execution. If the President accepts his role — which is the legal role as per the Charter and the prudent role for him now - then he would be like Aden Abdulle Osman (Aden Adde) Somalia’s first President who was the people’s all-time favourite politician. If the President acts in this capacity, he would not have any problem or difficulties visiting any part of Somalia, including Mogadishu full of sympathy and understanding.He would lead the clean-up process and the self-help rebuilding activities.

Were the President able to rise above the petty political squabbles, he would be in Kismayu and other cities reasoning with their rulers to help them rekindle Somalia’s glory days of 1960s while demonstrating the importance of national unity, forgiveness and reconciliation. If the President accepts this role, he will greatly reduce the prevailing political enmity; he would not be preoccupied with his personal safety and he would be in a position to pave the way for the executive branch to implement policies of national unity and reintegration.

Envisaged here for the President is a Nelson Mandela-like role rather than the Yoweri Museveni-like role he appears to have assumed. Both Mandela and Museveni are good African leaders, but their styles, roles and the political context in which they have operated are totally different.Mandela was a fatherly figure who consciously decided to focus on the reconciliation and establishing national harmony in the then fragile South Africa. Museveni on the other hand, is a political leader of a country that is not suffering a crisis-of-confidence as South Africa was then and Somalia is now.

Somalia is much different from any other country and most assuredly it is very different from Uganda, Ethiopia and other Igad countries which the Somali President might be thinking of emulating. President Abdillahi Yusuf has over 80 per cent chance of becoming the Mandela of Somalia and less than 20 per cent chance of becoming the Museveni of Somalia.

The Somalia President’s involvement in political gamesmanship would create fierce opponents who fear and loathe him. He must accept that Somalia of today (which is a country emerging from a long and brutal civil war) needs outside international referees to build trust, mediate and reconcile the interests of at least the two factions within the transitional federal institutions.

The propped impartial referees or peace guarantors might be a nine-member international committee tasked with helping build trust among the Somali leadership and prevent rapture and spoiling of the outcome of the almost three year-long Somalia peace conference. The members could comprise representatives from the five veto-welding members of the UN Security Council through their ambassadors to Kenya.The other members could be high-level envoys sent by the UN and Arab League, as well as representatives from the European Union and the African Union. Their would be to help build the peace, pacify problems or challenges that might crop up and to prevent menacing spoilers from plunging Somalia into another civil strife.

The Somali President would either play the role of detached impartial referee or the international community will force Somalis to opt for an international committee that builds the peace and instills confidence and trust in the fragile and nascent transitional federal institutions and its political leaders.

Abdirashid Khalif Hashi
E-mail: [email protected]