The Somali state collapsed in 1991 primarily in the hands of its own people. It’s reeling from destruction as its sons continue to shoot at each other ever since. Enormous devastation of public infrastructure and robbery of private property still persists with unrelenting proportions. Our collective failure to foresee and tackle internal differences makes addressing external intervention almost impossible.
As a matter of fact, Somali nationals already know enough of what happened more than I can inform in this article. So, inventing solutions to the nation’s turmoil are thus in order. The pressing issues must first be addressed in piecemeal. One such issue is to understand the Somali governance system and another is to, as a result, increase civic engagement. Both these matters are necessary precursors to resolving other more substantive political, economic and social issues.
First, the Somali people need to understand the structure and the workings of the Somali political system. We’ve experimented with every governance system there is, whether it’s democracy, autocracy, scientific socialism, Sharia-based but as it appears none has worked effectively and the average Somali has thus lost enough capacity to grasp the fast-changing systems. And for the last 20 years, the several interim governments born out of reconciliation conferences held outside the country all died before any could deliver effective results on Somali soil. To add fuel to the fire, the current transitional federal government has 550 extremely underperforming parliamentarians who unfortunately neither enacted laws nor pursued active public reconciliation during their term. As would be expected of informed citizens, no roaring protest, in words and deeds, has ever been organized against the bloated legislature probably because we don’t understand the inner working of the system.
Interestingly, Somalia has more parliamentarians than the 535-member bicameral congress of the United States yet again the U.S. has 34 times more population than Somalia. This is strangely an absurd number of lawmakers for a country, which depends on foreign aid for its national budget and has no control over its territorial land, sea and space.
Additionally, Somalia has unusually high premier and presidential turnover. Power wrangling has seemingly become an acceptable culture at the top with three presidents moving in and out of Villa Somalia the last ten years alone, and with each hiring a minimum of two prime ministers and firing when they disagreed on policy matters. Executive power struggles affect public service delivery but most of all threatens the political stability and civic understanding of the direction the country is headed.
So to understand politicians for who they are –politicians- is essential. Somali parliamentarians have proved, time and time again, that they care more about their positions and their power, much less about what the common man thinks and needs. We are aware that Somalia’s .SO domain name, a crucial internet infrastructure, has been auctioned off to a Japanese company, embassy buildings around the world sold to foreign investors and the nation’s airspace is, since 1991, run by U.N from offices in Nairobi. These are just but a few gross misappropriation of national resources. And this very much makes Somalis as people who abdicated their national responsibilities to monitor power. Inside knowledge of what happens between our politicians and other stakeholders are critical in order to hold them accountable for their acts, omissions and the wrongs they do commit.
To correct this botched system, educated Somalis must willingly come forward and with unyielding dedication to serve their country. They must come up with a system that works, inject fresh ideas into that political system and must also replace the old guards. This is the right moment. It’s the most opportune time to rise and answer the call of the bleeding homeland. There’s no shortage of a new blood save for structural disorganization. There must be overwhelming willingness to fulfill our duties toward our nation. The public must stand united behind leaders who serve the interest of the Somali people without regard to what region one hails from. In order to achieve this, we must unconditionally respect each other, disavow violence by all means and use clan differences as an opportunity to unite our countrymen and thus bring consensus to our political system.
Second, it’s essential to initiate civic campaign to inform the minds and engage the hearts of the young people. Warring factions have used the youth as a force for destruction for the past 20 years. We must now use them as a force for social change by first making them understand the real consequences of their actions. The youth must realize that, in society, no one is just a single person and should therefore learn to care about the impact of their actions. An individual’s acts can set a precedent (good or bad), reinforce a quality or undermine what others wanted to improve. So they must learn to avoid setting a bad precedent or emphasizing a negative activity that affects society unconstructively.
Besides, it’s important for Somalis to understand that social reform doesn’t just happen. Young Somalis need to learn how to manufacture change for a new Somali age. It takes one person to make a lot of difference. It takes the small example of a few and the deeds of the rest following the pattern to cause a significant transformation in the attitude and behavior of society. Of course, young people are more open to change but they need a directing, patient leadership to guide them to where they necessarily have to be. So those who have the opportunity should not just wait for someone else to create civic engagement and consequently, social change.
In the end, increased public understanding of the Somali political system and a more organized civic society can engineer an effective battle against the culture of political corruption, impunity and can certainly improve human rights and bring a lasting peace to Somalia.
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