Nothing goes smoothly when government leaders fight over governing issues. Now, it’s good news that Somalia’s president and prime minister have agreed on a plan aimed at accelerating the country’s underway elections and helping its institutions function well.
This is good news to glance at. Among other things, the two leaders’ agreement is diminishing Somalis’ idle talks circulated at “Fadhi ku dirir Sessions”. Fadhi ku dirir is a Somali word that means “fighting while seated at cafes and teahouses”. We Somalis are a nation of politicians. We breathe politics and live on it.
Every one of us profoundly speaks of it. No exception, men, women, young, and old. And usually, it’s not a healthy politics, it’s a contaminated one.
It appears that the Somali diaspora community is more obsessed with politics than those in the country. We pollute the country’s political landscape from afar. Yes, we partake in developmental projects in the country, but bulldoze what we build at times. What’s the reason? It boils down to clan politics.
Somalia must outgrow clan politics. The country is for all Somalis, so every Somali is a stakeholder. Here, I’m not blind to the reality of the country at the present time, but we ought to change course if we need to catch up with other nations.
Dividing the country’s governance into tribal lines (4.5) is our present reality, of course. Nonetheless, this tribal reality isn’t in line with the 21st-century trend. We need to rise above the ashes piled up by our embedded tribal preference.
We’ve to practice our homogeneity. Are we homogenous, by the way? That’s what they say. “Somalia is a homogenous country”. And what’s homogeneity? According to one definition by the Cambridge Dictionary, homogeneity is “the quality of consisting of parts or people that are similar to each other or are of the same type.”
I think this definition is true of us as we’ve everything in common, yet something is wrong. It’s our obsession with politics. It’s the one that pits us against each other and makes us part ways.
We shouldn’t aspire to get rich from politics. The aim of being engaged in politics must be to benefit the country, not to become a burden on it. Some of us think that the shortest way to amass wealth is to attain a political position, especially an influential one. Wrong. That’s not politics, that’s pilfering the public funds.
We’re a nation of politicians with biased perspectives. And we often blame our leaders, but who produces the leaders? It’s the general public. When the public is corrupt with biased attitudes, how do you expect to get pious leaders?