In response to the letter of the Prime Minister of Somalia
by Nur Bahal
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Your Excellency, Mr. Prime Minister,
I am a member of the Diaspora that zealously supports the TFG whose Prime Minister you are. I support it not because it is doing a fantastic job, but because of the alternatives out there, it is the only one that can be supported with a semblance of good conscience. With that Diaspora, I share the hope and desire to see a peaceful and prosperous Somalia in our lifetime. I also have a lot of respect for the responsibilities that you have taken upon yourself to see that such can be achieved. Yet, your letter on the New York Times has left a bitter taste in my mouth.
It is propaganda rhetoric, similar to those written before by Oulad Abdalla, designed to anesthetize the diaspora and extinguish their wails for a proactive government that harvests the goodwill of its people and leads them from dejection and abject poverty to stability and prosperity.
Allow me to shed light on a few points. To begin with, it has been confirmed that the man from Denmark was not the one who dressed himself like a woman and exploded himself at the graduation ceremony. Pictures of him sitting at the ceremony dressed like as man have been found. And Pictures of his dead body still dressed in the same clothes have been found. Your government in its first news release has circulated the pictures of the dead body of the young man.
Did your government follow up on the information? Frankly, I doubt it!
This is an indication of how your government has failed to implement a consistent information network which will not only save your government from embarrassment but will also help it in decisions against the evil groups you say to be fighting. Your government has often resorted to reckless announcements and fishy press releases. It does not go the extra mile to get the factual, correct and reliable information. And you know what, Mr. Prime Minister, unreliable information comes from unreliable sources. Is that what your government is? Unreliable? Well after so long on the job, it has yet to proof itself of reliability!
Your Excellency, it was the government’s responsibility to ensure the safety and security of the graduation ceremony. So far, neither you nor the President has taken any responsibility for your shortcomings. Instead, you are constantly pointing the finer at the opposition groups in utter disregard for the fact that your government’s fault and failure to guarantee the security of the few blocks in Mogadishu that you control.
You have said that the TFG’s principle purpose is to “… prepare the way for the establishment of legitimate and accountable public institutions. (We have already taken the initiative and hired Price Waterhouse Coopers to ensure the accountability of international donor funds.)”.
First, hiring a firm that tracks the accountability of the international donations has absolutely nothing to do with your government’s ability and capacity to establish legitimate and accountable public institutions. The legitimacy and accountability of public institutions is a result of the efforts of the government and the efficiency and knowledge of the staff that run these institutions. I am sorry but a foreign company tracking donations cannot create such an atmosphere.
Secondly, of all the international accounting firms that your government could have hired, Pricewaterhouse Cooper should have been the least to be considered for the job. Take a look at how many scandals and lawsuits they have been involved in and you tell me, Mr. Prime Minister, if that polished image that you give of PwC is still intact in your eyes unless you are wearing tainted glasses.
Below are a few of the legal troubles that PwC was involved in in the last few years. I left the reference numbers in there intentionally so that they could be cross-referenced. These same events have been widely reported on many rebuttable media. I also left the reporting language the same and hereby give credit to Answers.com, kycbs.net, Reutors, New York Times and knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu
Legal Troubles of Price Waterhouse in the 1990s and 2000s
1. A protracted battle over the company's audit of Bank of Credit and Commerce International ended in 1995 with a payment of $200 million, significantly less than the $11 billion sought by the creditors of the collapsed bank. In addition to hefty settlements, the suits led to soaring insurance costs for the accounting firms. By the mid-1990s, many insurers refused to even cover the auditing practices of the Big Six firms, forcing Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse to set aside money to cover themselves.
2. In July 2007, PwC agreed to pay $225 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by shareholders of Tyco International Ltd. over a multibillion-dollar accounting fraud.[38]
3. Recently, PwC was criticised[39][40][41][42][43][44], along with the promoters of Satyam, an Indian IT firm listed on the NYSE, in a $1.5 billion fraud. PwC has written a letter to the board of directors of Satyam that its audit may be rendered "inaccurate and unreliable" due to the disclosures made by Satyam's (ex) Chairman.[46] PwC's U.S. arm "was the reviewer for the U.S. filings for Satyam."[47] Consequently, lawsuits have been filed in the U.S. with PwC as a defendant.
4. India's accounting standards agency ICAI is investigating partners of PwC for professional negligence[40] in the now-defunct Global Trust Bank Ltd. case of 2007.
5. PwC was also associated with the accounting scandal at DSQ Software[54] in India.
6. In July 2006, PwC’s Japanese affiliate Chuo Aoyama was handed a two-month ban[40].
7. Following the Satyam scandal, the Mumbai-based Small Investor Grievances Association (SIGA) has requested the Indian stock market regulator SEBI to ban PwC permanently and seize its assets in India alleging few more scandals like "Ketan Parekh stock manipulations."[55]
- The Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board, which regulates the profession in the UK, announced an inquiry in July 2009 into PwC's auditing of Cattles, the struggling sub-prime lender that failed to keep track of its bad debts.[56]
- PricewaterhouseCoopers agreed to pay $97.5 million to the state of Ohio to settle a class-action lawsuit on behalf of investors in troubled insurer American International Group, which uses PwC as its independent auditor.
- PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has made an out-of-court settlement with shareholders of e-district who alleged the accountancy giant had failed to discharge its legal responsibilities.
Should I continue Mr. Prime Minister? I think you get the picture. Companies do make mistakes. However, mistakes rarely fall into as regular a pattern as the above cases clearly indicate – auditing designed to perpetuate fraud and malpractice. My question to you is; who introduced your government to PwC? Was it Oulad Abdalla? Or was it the managers of Project Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya? Excuse me but I am only taking a wild guess! I know that our nation has been used as a project for the last 20 years and I have a premonition that the PwC audit contract is a continuation. But it is sad that your government is implicated in this. If you like, Mr. Prime Minister, you can claim ignorance. But, then, I too will claim that through ignorance you failed your duties by taking gratification in ignorance over the prudence of hard work and caution. Your government, in all honesty, should have done the leg work. The shady signature of the sea pact with Kenya and then this? Sir, with all do respect, your government may be the wholesaler in Project Somalia.
PwC is not the only telling sore spot of your government. Lately, I was wondering if you and the President are on the same page at all. You signed a deal with Puntland only to be repealed by the President. You and the President are outside the country more than you are in it, often traveling expensively with a large entourage. Your government has yet to do anything for the displaced unfortunate Somalis who look up to you for help. Whether it be Mogadishu or Beletwein, your government is not visible in helping its unfortunate subjects. I have to mention Beletwein, specially, where the current war with the forces of the devil has caused an unthinkable suffering, your government is invisible. The people of Beletwein, who welcomed your government after it was elected in Djibouti so that the President could show the world that there is a spot besides a few blocks of Mogadishu where he is supported are now bearing the brunt of bloodshed without your government, yet again.
Your government lacks vision and foresight and you look to foreign organizations to translate the culture, the cries and the besieged sentiments of your own people into dysfunctional political strategy. Your government depends on foreigners more than it depends on the resource, the social might and the good will of its own people. Your government has disenfranchised its own society because you have no plans to move the nation forward. They do not support Shabab or Xisb – the fellowship of the devil- but they search high and low failing to see anything tangible your government has to offer. Your government limited itself to survival in villa Somalia! So then, it begs the question, Mr. Prime Minister, why are you and the President always traveling? I’ill you why! Because that is the only thing your government knows – beg, beg and beg some more and take your people out of the equation.
Your government has failed to utilize the weaknesses of the opposition and speed up the recovery of a battered nation. Your government is always catching up and reacting to events driven by the opposition and I am sure you know the answer to this more than I do, Mr. Prime Minister. a government by the warlords, for the warlords; a government for the middlemen by the middlemen cannot be for its people.
Nur Bahal
Toronto, Canada
E-mail: [email protected]