Indeed I know all of my clans MPs are voting for Abdiweli, which means Mooge's facile allegations are baseless then. But my real clan is HiilQaran, not Big foots! Mooge, in his warped mentality, can't think of a somali thinking beyond clan. he seeks answers from why is he against our clan type of questions, never outside that harebrained frame .

If that helps to deflect some attention from your candidate, so be it! The truth is many of my friends are close to Abdiweli and there is no hostility towards him. But I don't think he is the man to lead Somalia. Simple. If the pirates can't take that, then what about if we agree it is just because I don't like the oil-finders-who-got-saline-water clan!! By the way, if he is elected, I can live with it, will even support it personally assuming I can be of any support (which is unseemly). The bigger cause of getting Somalia right is what matters, not my preference of one individual over the other.

"Amisom, Mahiga, Kenya army and Ethiopia are the leaders of Somalia and therefore strides made towards defeating Alshabab, which is the only meaningful achievement, come from external forces, not from the pretenders in TFG, including the President. which one is it ninyoow? one time they are oppressors, one time their progress is meaningful. you are one confused soul ninyoow. Adiga halke lagu racaa." I didn't say they are nice guys, I said they run the country and they did get those results. To like or hate or to analyze their prons and cons is a different discussion. I think you like to see things a bit symplistically in A vs B or if A is B then B is A kind of view. The rest of your opinion on me is your opinion. I cannot change it, I cannot lose sleep over it.

"according to your earlier logic, ONLF will never credit for running the region in the future because they came at a good time when there is development and peace." Mooge, Yes indeed. Unless they have real power and spend sufficient time on power to demonstrate their added value. By the way, I credit Meles for the economic transformation of Ethiopia. But Not Abdiweli for the ratification of the constitution or the capture of Marka. if that is a contradictio, so be it.

What? the spelling error? Why is that an issue? Pedantic.

Mooge;864020 wrote: you lack basic logic. if we can't give credit for people doing their job and producing results, then why do we blame leaders when times are tough and nothing is accomplished? Except that you are saying he is a leader and I am saying he is not! Amisom, Mahiga, Kenya army and Ethiopia are the leaders of Somalia and therefore strides made towards defeating Alshabab, which is the only meanigful achievement, come from external forces, not from the pretenders in TFG, including the President. But of course natural stu.pid.ty can sometimes override articifical intelligence acquired from wikepeida and the web and may conceal these details from you. On the statement, since when has playing beachball on the coast to get timeout from scorching bunker offices become synonymous with widsom, selflessness and vision? Is such act not utterly banal? The good thing is I am not too worried about living with Abdiweli PM-ship. Nor do I want Sheikh Sharif. Somalia needs and deserves a better intellectual, and most of the other candidates are good enough.

Fiqi, your facts are roads and schools. You do not see facts when they relate to jails, torture,displacement and the many tragedies we face. On those issues, you not only look the other way, you excuse the perpetrators by blaming the victims. That is my problem with you.

^ Maskax-yare, the rise of the region is our rise. The roads built are ours. The school opened are ours. Minus oppression, we have no problem living and developing our region. Like the man who console the widow and in the process endeared himself to her by talking about the dark and the dead, your things are all about ONLF but soon you will need to talk about yourself once what we sought is achieved and we all return to our lands. In not so distant future, you will not be talking about the somali region in this glowing terms because ONLF will be ruling it, whether you like it or not. We are happy with the development (which should even be more). We are not happy about the oppression. The latter will stop once a lasting comprehensive peace deal is done and we shall enjoy the fruits of the development in a far more freer and peaceful somali region. Then, you will have to explain what happened to the oil wells that suddenly turned into saline water. The widow will want to hear about who you are and not the tributes you pay to her dead late husband!

The perils of fake pundits! My testicles! How confused human beings can get. Iley's reign is over whether he spoke after the acting PM or before him. This is the story in Addis and Jigjiga and those with access can call and confirm. I will not divulge more details. Just ask the young ministers he saked and openly chewing in Addis and happy to pass few more weeks before they make a triumphant return to Jigjiga. Ina hebeliyo, miyaan sheegnaa dee! Just because Iley campaigned in a manner that disgusted the other regional leaders to be given the opportunity does not mean this move symbolizes the rise of his political star. In fact, it is a desperate attempt to defy the odds and survive politically. Let us wait and see.

The fraudlent claims that Abdiweli deserves credit for all the things that went well in the last few years is just that - fraud. He is the proverbial puny man who just because he was born in great times pretended to be the reason for the monumental changes of those times. He is a misfit explaining his own petty life by way of the the substantial achievements of the times which merely coincided with his term in office. As if Merka and Baidoa would not have fallen if Abdiweli was not a PM! As if the constitution would not have been ratifies if the man the muddled face and saggy stomach was not "His Excellency"! This mask craving for glory that he hasn't earned should be stopped. You check his past and it is nill, nothing. No liberation wars fought by body or word when his country was occupied. No selfless deeds. No worthy contribution in either political doctrine or policy framework. In fact, lots of bad deeds including acting like the side-kick of ignorant Faroole in Minnesotta and belonging to the antithesis of HAG which is convivently known as PDF (Puntland Dispora f.**ing something). And redundunt soundbites, media campaigns, open letters, tolka-ized twitters are doing the rounds to make this empty man big. Abdiweli is the most clanist among the running candidates and it will be really bad for Somalia to have him as a leader. N.B:- The foolish Mooge by now should know that I am a member of HiilQaran and we have a horse in this race. The Ina-Sheikh Hussen guy is nothing for me, nor do i care If Abdiweli lynchs him today.

Marka ugu horeeysaa, haduu Cabdiweli madaxweyne noqdo eey eey dhalay oo ay iska dhaleen Faroole iyo General Duke iigu yeedha!! Marka Xiga, waxaan wacad ku marayaa inaan timaha iska xiiro, oo aan cidiyaha la baxo haday taasi dhacdo. Losers! Kolba qabyaaladiistaaba naloo soo mas masixi sidii qof quman! ...........

Bir iyo laydhbaa ii hilaaco Waxbaa baalahayga yaacay!! General Duke's jubilation tonihght invokes this. :D Wayna kaa!

Is it normal if there is a persistent correlation clan-wise between the candidate endorsed and the endorser? That is my point. I did not see a D- block guy saying Dr. Baadiyow is competent. Why? Yet, he is 100% better qualified than Abdiweli and Farmajo combined togather. Let us not dismiss a valid concern with a hogwash like this. Denial is not the way out of this quagmire. Ngonge- It is my heart. Abdiweli is not the right man. Baadiyow, or few other candidates are better. Just because you do not know about them doesn't mean we do not know about these candidates. Get a grip waryaa.

He is better than Abdiweli. And the Mogadisho'ans can take him but not an Abdiweli PM-ship! This is not analysis, it is information.

:D and then I will vote Abdiweli for PM. As long as we are back to the old clan ways, I mean as intellectuals, I can take this. But seriously, I am sad. How a whole country cannot produce a handfull of intellectuals free from clan disease in 20 years is a curse. It can't be anything else.

And where is Abdiweli's CV bigger than Badiyow, Samatar or the other candidates? Where does his achievements surpass that of Shariif or Farmaajo? Do you want us to credit Abdiweli for the capture of Marka? Do you want us to extol Abdiweli for the finalization of the constitution as if we do not know it would have happened even if Xaaji Xundjuf was a PM? ElPunto, I respect you, please don't disappoint me. I thought you are different. Abdiweli is a tribalist and in that sense in the same league as Madoobe and Qaybdiid. Getting diplomas doesn't absolve you of tribal labels if you are one.

Yes I know he is not running, nor is he a member of the parliament. But even the creme of somali intellectuals in SOL have forsaken all intellectual responsibility and have turned into cheerleaders of clan candidates, maybe it is time I pick mine too. Abwaan is campaigning for either Faramaajo or Dr. Bidaar or something along that line simply because he is from the same clan. General Duke and all the Puntlanders (as usual- as I said before because their plurality is singularity) are for Abdiweli. Ooba Hiloowlow is for Sheikh Sharif, but the south guys are at least a bit more reticent in showing their clanishness openly. Maaddeey is for Abdi Qaybdiid. So, what is the use of debating who is supporting who in the impending election? So, having seen all the drama, the ugly somaliness, I hereby endorse His-Ignorance-AlHaji-Terrorist-General Axmed Maxamed Islaan (Axmed Madoobe), also known as General Aar-goosato, for President of Somalia. Viva Tolka! Somaliyeey toosoo for hoodwinking! Abtigiis

By the way, I oppose Farmaajo too. Does that also mean I am against Gedo community? I am talking to Farolites! Aaliyah iyo Somalia, fadlan this is a big topic, sheekadan aad ku dhex wadaan naga joojiya, gaar ahaan Somalia. Let us discuss important issues at this important day in Somalia's politics.

Abwaan adigu adeer, GB for Abdiweli. Miyaydaan xishoonayen nimanyahow. Ma sidaas baad aqoonyahankii Somaliyeed ku tihiin. War isku xishooda oo bal in dad aan qabiilkiina ah oo fiican jiraan fiiriya. On the one hand you do not outgrow this clannishness on the other you always whine about the demise of Somalia.

General Duke;861807 wrote: I know Abtigi's, Abwan, Che and others hate the man because they detest a certain clan. However Abdiweli if elected will tame Mogadishu and Somalia... In few minutes I am going to see Osman, a cousin of yours, in Buraale house of Qat (Mafrish). Precisely what he has been sayin all this week. So hates so, that one don't like our oil nonesense. Do you have anything new GD? I know people very close to Abdiweli and have even met him recently. If anything that is close to personal self-interest or clan agenda is involved in my decision, I would hve supported Abdiweli. Afterall, all the long-foots have unanimously said they will vote for him. But I heard few things that are unbecoming of him from his confidantes. The man believes he is D, and if he can be a D, he can be an M, and if he can be an M, he can be an O-M. We do not need any divisible somali. We need a full S, but if we can't find that in Prof Samatar or Badiyow or Hassan or the otheer more inclusive Somalis and we have to stick to a sub-Somali president, I prefer an H. Period. Somalia needs reconcilliation, not rapacious greed for power or chest-beating for a nonesensical clan grandeur.

I didn't know about this video when I said Abdiweli is a dangerous tribalist. We have inside info on him. And being from a D-clan, that is what people say we are, we are privy to some of the things he says in private. I will NEVER support this person even if he becomes a president TONIGHT. Somalia doesnot need tribalists. Prof Ahmed for me. Or Badiyow, or Hassan something etc. If all fail, let the evolving cleric sharif go on. No way should Abdiweli be allowed to become a somalia president.

Unless we are foolish politically, Sharif Sakiin has more incentives to vote for Sheikh Sharif than Abdiweli. Let us not forget that he will no role in a future government if he backs Abdiweli. Anyway, Ngonge as a novice doesn't know that the man who matters for the Disco and Maringue (D&M) clan is Jawaari. Sharif Sakin is no more. Abdiweli is a D- clan activist and I don't wish that D-H rivalrly to continue. For a learned person, the PM is very clannish. Sharif is netter.

NO Abdiweli, No D-blok president. It is between the H-block and Dr. Samatar. Somalia is not a D-enclave. We need reconcillation. The last thing we want is a Mogadishu insurrection six months down the line. The worst outcome for Somalia will be for a side-kick of Faroole to win.

:D great JB. I am in Nairobi and wiiwaa is here with me. I just told him this poem.

Minotaur Politics The exigency of belonging to this and that camp at the same time fathers grotesque ideas and actions. When puppet politicians try to espouse noble principles, they become a modern Minotaur: half bull, half man - that unsettling imaginary creature in Greek Mythology. Minotaur politics has been in display in Somali Regional State of Ethiopia for some time, but reached comical peaks this week when the President of the Region announced that a Statue will be erected in the middle of Jigjiga for Somali nationalist Sayid Mohamed Abdille Hassan. Sayid Mohamed deserves statues in all Somali lands, for he fought for the dignity and integrity of the Somali race against marauding British colonizers. There can be little dispute about the aptness of a Statue in Jigjiga for Sayid Mohamed. But when Sayid Mohamed, a valiant fighter against occupation and slavery is honoured by a quisling coward, when those who kill their own people on behalf of their Tigrayan masters erect monuments for heroes who defended their land, the irony is not only stark but excruciatingly traumatic. When the incomparable Somali poet Ahmed Ismael Diriye (Qassim) intoned “Allow yaa Darwiishkii farriin debecsan gaadhsiiya”, the message that collaborators of colonialists are holding vigil for the immortal nationalist is not what he wanted the Sayid to hear. That would have given the Sayid a second death inside his grave. It is an insult - not only to the Sayid but to the entire Somali nationalists and freedom fighters –dead and alive, that a thuggish criminal in the payroll of Ethiopian oppressors is eulogizing their national hero. It is also an insult to our intelligence. After all the mayhem and oppression Abdi Iley and his ilk caused us, you and me must feel repaid through ornate empty recognition of past heroes, through loud protestations of recalled Somalinimo (most of the time Oga.den.imo), said against persisting persecution against the same race by these puppets of its historical enemy. And the notion of honoring a “dead anti-colonialist” is meant to expunge culpability for contemporary sins against living freedom-fighters. We are expected to love yesterday’s liberation icons, while at the same time cursing today’s freedom-fighters. We are compelled to remember our elders who were killed by the British hundred years ago, so that we forget the one’s Iley and his Tigre masters are killing today. We should cry for the dead, we should forget the pain of the living! That is the taunt. The story of Abdi Iley as the sculptor of Sayid’s monument is a crazy tale of a man so providentially exempted from scrutiny, a desperate man whose “admiration” for old heroes owed more to a mendacious political gimmick than to a real sense of veneration for Sayid Mohamed. It is the era of cross-fertilizing causes to make them politically marketable. Hating the “Blue”, Borrowing the Sayid Let us disregard my outrage and see if President Abdi Iley’s decision makes sense from an objective syllogism point of view. Few years ago, Abdi Iley actively campaigned against the “white star in the blue layout” in the flag of the Somali Regional State. He eventually removed the star and the blue colour from the flag and replaced it with a yellow. The message was not implied but rather loudly articulated. The move was marketed at the time as a move away from the “Somalia” connection and a step into “Ethiopian” identity. Logically, if you do not like the “blue and the star”, you do not like Somalia. If you do not like Somalia, you cannot like its heroes! There is also another dimension. Sayid Mohamed Abdille Hassan is not an Ethiopian, has never been, and has never expressed any wish to be one in all his poems. The Sayid said his country is Somalia, and Somalia says the Sayid is its son. So, if President Iley, through his rethoric and actions, has been jettisoning any “Somalia” connection, to jelly with “Ethiopian” distinctiveness, why borrow the Sayid from Somalia? Why vandalize the honour of the nationalist hero by trying to fit his frame into a political system and national identity he would never have fitted into? Is it because he cannot speak from the grave and denounce this defilement? Is it because Somalia is too weak, too fragile to demand sole ownership of its hero? Trimming a national hero into a clan celebrity Or is it an attempt to reduce a Somali national hero into a clan celebrity by emphasizing his Oga.den lineage? This sadly seems to be the intent and effect of the erection of the Statue for Sayid Mohamed. Add all the excessive Dhaanto chants on the “Ethiopian Somali TV”, the fervent promotion of the heavily accented “Nogobi” lingo - “way dhalaali”, “ma I maqli”, “Kobtan-tada” (an accent nastily upgraded to symbolize power, privilege and hegemony), and it is easy to see that the attempt is to portray the ****** clan, who is marked for extinction by the Tigrayan rulers, as the primary beneficiary of Ethiopian benevolence. It gets nearly oxymoronic when one thinks of the “****** clan” as the dying and ruling class at the same time! It is a cheap tactic, one that should not be allowed to flourish. When praise becomes insult If President Abdi Iley cares about his people, erecting false Statues, from which he will benefit financially by taking kick-backs from contractors who win the tender, is not the way to demonstrate it. It is by stopping his marauding Liyu police from killing civilians, by investigating the massacres of Guna-gado, Gashamo, and Birkot. It is a pointless appeal, for he is not in charge to protect his people but to do the bidding for the oppressors. He can only kill his people; he has no mandate to spare them. The ****** clan – like the rest of the Somali clans in the region, need freedom, equality and voice more than Dhaanto chants, fake Statues and false hegemonic posturing which alienates fellow Somalis in the region and serves the divide-and-rule tactics of the occupiers. President Abdi Iley’s populist Sayid Statue is therefore useless because it is akin to a harlot’s praise of the local Imam. The Imam can only reap embarrassment and affront from the good words of the prostitute; he can never enjoy her acclaim. The right course of action for the relatives of the Imam would only to be to go and give the wicked woman a severe beating so that she no longer speaks of their holy man in good way. The onus is on Somali nationalists to decry Iley’s abuse of Sayid Mohamed. President Iley has no moral authority to speak about Sayid Mohamed and Somalinimo, when he works day and night to bury the ideals of liberation and pan-Somalism the Sayid fought and died for. How to tell a Pig Like the Minotaur of the ancient Greeks, Iley gives the impression of a half-nationalist-half-traitor; half-killer-half-saver; half-Somalian-half-Ethiopian; half-*Oga.den*****-half-sub-**Oga.den****. This image is unreal like the Minotaur. In reality, he is nothing but the reincarnation of Moses Tshombe of the Congo; the same Moses Tshombe who cut the body of Patrice Lumumba into pieces to please Belgian occupiers. Iley is not made of halfs. He is a full traitor. Iley constructing a statue for Sayid Mohamed is like a living Tshombe building a museum for Lumumba. And Iley does not have to say he is not a traitor for us to know what he is. After all, they say a pig never advertises its pig-ness, it merely wallows in mud. A pig does not become a peacock and shun filth because it is brought to a swimming pool for a vacation. It is easy to tell political pigs even when they are saying pretty things! On a concluding note, Iley’s move to increase tax on ‘Qat’ to make it less affordable, is a good move and commendable. The cynic in me tells me that the “revenue” imperative overrode “the health” considerations of the directive, but to the extent it cuts addiction rates in the region, it is a positive step forward. http://www.wardheernews.com/public_html/Articles%202012/August/13_Sayid_Mohamed_Mukhtar.html