Somaliland: Defeat is not the Worst Failure; Ignoring Your Mistakes is!

[Deeq A.]

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the president-elect, H.E. Muse Bihi, and the vice president-elect of Somaliland, H.E. Abdirahman Saylici, on the momentous victory. The victory came about because people saw that within your campaign are solutions to Somaliland’s economic and social problems. Now is the time that you implement those solutions and I pray for your success!

 

I have been getting many phone calls and emails about my campaign video for Kulmiye that was widely watched on you tube and on the Somaliland TV. Most Waddani supports were wondering why I campaigned for Kulmiye. And, therefore, in this article, I would like to take a moment to elucidate the reasons I did not choose Waddani.

Bear with me as I begin with the latest events – the defeat of Waddani – and go back in time to shed some light on the fact that the same reasons that I did not choose Waddani are also what caused Waddani’s defeat on November 13, 2017.

An opposition party crying foul after an election is not exclusively an African phenomenon. It is common around the world; from Africa to Europe and the US throughout Asia and Latin America, opposition leaders tend to be acrimonious after a loss. For them, an election is only free and fair if they win.

Somaliland’s recent successful presidential election is the latest example with Waddani’s presidential candidate declining a graceful acknowledgement of defeat. It is noteworthy that Waddani lost by 80,000 votes. In contrast, the presidential election of 2003, where Kulmiye lost to Udub by a mere 80 votes, draws a curious comparison to this election. The dignified manner that then presidential candidate and current president of Somaliland, Siilaanyo, acknowledged defeat is in diametrical opposition, both patriotically and morally, to how the Waddani presidential candidate reacted to the loss. Waddani’s candidate, in an apparent letdown, said that he is not conceding to “his opponent but to the people of Somaliland”. It seems patriotic and beautiful, however, exposes a policy recital prepared well in advance of that day.

There is a world of difference in the above numbers and in the reactions of the two candidates involved. But it also gives you a vista into the inner thinking of each candidate and how much each cares about the nation they wanted to lead. I beg you to close your eyes and Imagine what would have happened in Somaliland if Waddani had lost by 80 votes?

Bearing the foregoing in mind, why did Waddani lose?

To put it bluntly, Waddani never expected to lose. Yes, as ludicrous as that sounds, they really believed they will win and their wishful thinking will miraculously transform into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Personally, I believe there are four reasons for that derisory assumption the first being the confounding belief by most opposition parties that a country needs change – a famous and aptly correct slogan that gestated Obama’s first term as the first black president in the White House. Opposition parties fail to recognize what change entails and thus usually neglect to give careful consideration to the country-specific factors the can make change possible. This is where Waddani assumed that the average Somaliland citizen would buy into their controversial “change” slogan without providing a better, realistic and practical option to the voters.

The second reason has a causal connection to the first in that they also assumed the average Somalilander is ignorant of their country’s status quo and its practical developmental needs given Somaliland’s limited resources. Thus, Waddani campaigned on a platform of rigorous misinformation and disinformation that amount to abuse of social intelligence. Their campaign initiatives such as overseeing the “coast with drones”, increasing the budget from $362 million to “$5 billion dollars within five years”, “providing clean drinking water in every corner of the country” and instituting an “E-government” to combat corruption and so forth presented a side of Waddani that people rightfully categorized as incompatible with what is possible in Somaliland. These quixotically abstract and unrealistic initiatives are a manifestation of the absence of political propinquity between Waddani and the society of Somaliland. But above all, it is a measure of how removed Waddani is from actual conditions of the country whose government it wanted to form.

The third reason is probably why they still cling to the notion that they were robbed. Waddani believes that virtue is vice and vice is virtue.

Dwight Eisenhower said that “If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power”.

This is absolutely the case with Waddani. The failure to show concrete policies to advance nation and state building, ameliorate social welfare and cater to the realistic needs of Somaliland can be gleaned from the above impractical examples of Waddani’s platform; which in turn confirms its conspiratorial strategy to seize power. For Waddani and its future success as a political party, the elephant in the room is not losing this time around, it is the unflinching lack of self reflection within the party ranks and its impenitent failure to associate this lose and their own mistakes.

Waddani would be well served to have a sense of introspection to recognize that fairness is a universal attribute. It is not a trait that absolves you at your convenience and incriminates your opponents at your invocation. It cannot be morally binding upon everyone but exempt you. It is every body’s responsibility; a responsibility that Waddani has proven to intentionally squander multiple times in its very short history. Beginning with the immoral and fudged selection – not election – of its vice-president and the debauched process through which it was conducted, to the heinous and divisive clan politics it played throughout the campaign, Waddani has been a skipper for unmitigated corruption and moral degeneracy. And when it suited them, they blamed it on everyone else but themselves.

Those of you who followed the campaigns can remember the multitudes of people who abandoned the party because of corruption perpetrated by the leadership. Notwithstanding the corruption within the party, these members also recognized the inherent sanctimonious attitude in the party leadership.

A momentous example of this at a national level is when Waddani’s presidential candidate held a press conference to show case what he called “absolute tangible proof of corruption” and produced a supposedly forged ballot book. Upon closer examination, it turned out, and Abdirahman Irro willingly acknowledged, that the book was not a forgery, rather, and more importantly, it was stolen by a Waddani observer from a ballot station in Berbera.  Unfortunately, it did not do anything to change Waddani’s perception nor their daft belief in a rigged election.

In today’s Somaliland and its growing young population equipped with zealous national ambitions and political zeal, winning elections has proven to be a function of trust and campaign ingenuity. It means that parties must, above all, earn trust but also build discipline and train members showing that the party is entrenched in the values and principles that it wants to implement in the nation it bids to become its government. And so, to answer the question: why did I did I note choose Waddani? The answer is that for me it was enough to see the incongruencies in their platform, their behavior in the campaign trail and became convinced that the party has to learn that politics too has an element of trust and requires a mastery of the rough and tumble of politics.

Nur Bahal

Toronto, Canada

hildiid@gmail.com