An Open Letter Regarding the Deteriorating Situation of Somaliland

An Open Letter Regarding the Deteriorating Situation of Somaliland

To: House of Representatives- Somaliland

House of Elders- Somaliland

US and EU countries

We, the undersigned Somalilanders in the Diaspora, do hereby call for the two Houses of Somaliland's parliament to impeach and remove president Dahir Rayale Kahin from office immediately because of his complete and utter failure to discharge his responsibilities under the mandate given, despite an additional eighteen-month extension of his original term of office.

We do strongly believe that president Dahir Rayale Kahin believes that he is above the law and acts repeatedly on that belief by deliberately violating the constitution and the Law of the Land as he pleases.

In particular we strongly support the growing chorus of the progressive forces in the country, Members of the Parliament and the Somaliland Diaspora calling for his immediate impeachment and removal from office due to the following litany of treasonous offences, which he committed and continues to commit against the Somaliland state:

• That he has made endless procrastinations and continual zigzagging for the past six and half years to hold a free and fair presidential election which was supposed to take place in April 2008, and now obsessively and doggedly pursuing to hold the forthcoming presidential election on his terms rather than as the Electoral Law of the country stipulates.
• That he has knowingly and wilfully breached the Somaliland Electoral Law and defiantly reneged on what has been agreed upon by the three major Somaliland political parties including his ruling party, UDUB, by rejecting to accept the final voter registration list produced by Interpeace, the agency charged with the digital voter registration process, in a bid to conduct the presidential elections planned for 27 September on his terms (i.e. without voter registration list, in which case the election will be prone to violations and vote rigging).
• That he is defying key demands of donor countries to replace the "corrupt and grossly inept" commissioners of the National Electoral Commission by shielding and protecting them from dismissal thereby creating conditions that gave rise to endless cycles of argument and petty squabbling between the government and opposition camps.
• That his government has begun a vicious campaign to clamp down on independent media outlets in an effort to silence critical and dissenting voices against the government ahead of the presidential election in September. The arrests and subsequent detentions of Horyaal Radio, Horn Cable Television, Somaliland.Org, Warya TV, HAATUF journalists without due process are just few examples of how far Rayale's government is prepared to go to muzzle the media in a desperate attempt to snuff out support for the opposition parties.
• That he so wantonly and callously disregarded the rule of law and the constitution of the country by deliberately and calculatingly rejecting to honour any legislations/resolutions passed by the parliament that are not serving his selfish political ends.
• That he is constantly and treasonably undermining the democratic institutions of the country in an effort to advance his devious personal agenda. His adamant refusal to co-operate with any of the constitutional bodies of the country including the two Houses of parliament, the opposition political parties is a clear testimony to this fact.
• That he has repeatedly and wickedly rejected any attempts to bring agreements signed with foreign countries and business deals or commercial pacts struck with foreign companies before parliament for ratification.
• That he has seriously undermined the values of the people of Somaliland such as, honesty, candour, compassion and generosity in that he and his government indulge in excessive and unlimited corruption to the extent that the civil servants and other government employees have now succumbed to moral decay.
• That he is constantly engaged in either degrading or demolishing the democratic institutions of the country in an apparent attempt to dismantle the country's fledgling democracy and replace it with dictatorial rule of his own. His recent attempt to single-handedly repeal a parliamentary act, the Electoral Law, is a clear example of this fact.
• That he is operating under the directives of foreign leaders including the president of the City State of Djibouti, Omar Guelleh, in a diabolical project designed to undermine the independence and sovereignty of Somaliland so as to weaken the country stealthily and eventually return it to the fold of pseudo Greater Somalia.
• That he has now made it the rule rather than the exception to blatantly lie to, humiliate and embarrass the traditional leaders of the country- the highest moral authority of our nation- by walking out of meetings whenever an attempt is made to discuss with him issues of great national importance that are not to his liking or fail to meet his selfish ends.
• That he has sold out our country by granting exclusive monopoly license, without the approval of parliament, to Egyptian fishing companies employing illegal fishing methods that had devastating effects on the coral reef ecosystem; and that he has offered exclusive monopoly license to a Saudi millionaire regarding livestock exports while deliberately denying the same rights to the citizens of Somaliland as enshrined in the constitution of the country.
• That he so unabashedly and shamelessly steals from the national coffers by setting his salary at the staggering sum of $450,000 per annum while his people live in the most grinding poverty imaginable on the face of this earth; let alone the other millions of state revenue that is deposited in the Central Bank before the treasury takes account of it and from which he draws as he pleases.
• That he is constantly looking for ways and means to conspire against the democratisation and electoral processes of Somaliland by deploying armed policemen to disrupt routine parliamentary proceedings and to challenge the decision of the Speakers the Lower House through the use of force. Such a move can only be seen as an attempt to advance his devious plan to stop Somaliland's democratisation and electoral process in its tracks.
• That he has consistently weaved, without fail, a web of lies for the Somaliland people by setting up, from time to time, fictitious enquiry commissions whenever an incident involving bloodshed or scandal crops up in the country; the result being that none of these commissioners have ever produced a single report or recommendations. However, if they produce a recommendation report at all as in the case of El-Bardaleh, he never acts upon it.
• That he has made it a routine business to incarcerate politicians and journalists who either disagree with him or disclose his unabashedly shameless wrongdoings without even bringing them before a court of law.
• That he has destroyed the port city of Berbera, which represented a conduit for trade and economic prosperity of Somaliland since time immemorial to the extent that it is now a deserted ghost town.
• That he has intentionally exceeded the original people's mandate of five year term of office, despite an additional eighteen month extension of his term, and is now poised to derail the whole electoral process unless his wish be realised.
• That he has now brought the country to an explosive point where it is teetering on the brink of abyss.

In the light of these circumstances, we call upon members of the Somaliland parliament to impeach and remove president Dahir Rayale Kahin from office urgently in order to save the nation from slipping into political turmoil.

We also call upon the international community especially the USA and EU countries to impose visa restrictions and personal sanctions against President Dahir Rayale Kahin and his inner circle and to freeze and return all stolen financial assets invested abroad to Somaliland including those deposited in the names of their children or other family members. Further, we call upon the EU member states and the US to send an unambiguous signal to Rayale that it is not business as usual to repeatedly defy the will of the Somaliland people and trample upon the Constitution and the Law of the Land.

If Somaliland is to be saved from the jaws of Al-Shabab extremists and its ilk Rayale MUST be impeached and removed from office NOW rather than later.

Jamal Madar

adammadar@yahoo.co.uk