Mogadishu (PP Editorial) — At his inauguration ceremony in Garowe last week, the President of Puntland State of Somalia Mr Said Abdullahi Deni shared his intention to host a national consultative conference for Somali political stakeholders. Given the threat to the sovereignty of Somalia posed by the maritime Memorandum of Understanding between Ethiopia and the secessionist administration of Somaliland, the controversial plan to change the political system in Somalia from prime ministerial to presidential and to effect opportunistic amendments to the draft federal constitution, the conference could provide a springboard for addressing political challenges that, if unaddressed, can tip Somalia into, the unenviable state collapse status.
It will be a lost opportunity if the consultative conference turns out to be an opportunity for elite bargain. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of a federal system for Somalia. While the formation of federal members states is commendable, the burning political injustices remain an albatross around the Somali nation’s neck: the 4.5, unveiled and promoted in Djibouti nearly 24 years ago to disenfranchise certain Somali clans, now known as .050, whose political rights have been reduced to z-class citizenship under a system in which four clans (Hawiye, Darod, Digil-Mirifle and Dir boast pollical visibility and economic privileges, stands in the way an effective, post-conflict state-building endeavours. Under the 4.5 system the 0.50 Somali clans also known as Others lack the proper economic and political rights. In Mogadishu, Lower Shabelle, Middle Shabelle, Lower Jubba the Banadiris bear the brunt of political marganislation that the 4.5 institutionalised, to mention just example of institutionalised political marginalisation.
The 4.5 was conceived to cement the ill-gotten properties and illegally occupied territories throughout Somalia. What we have in Somalia today is a tendency to conflate post-conflict governance with maintaining pre-state-building conquests. In 2012, when President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was elected, the United Nations called for transitional justice processes. Where President Hassan on this approach to addressing the impact of the civil war is not clear given his restricted doctoral dissertation that gives hints about his flawed worldview about the Somali conflict – a conflict amongst clans, not politicians. President Mohamud has not so far shown that he is committed to speaking for the politically and economically marginalised Somali citizens.
Puntland has an obligation to correct the course the federal system has taken, which now is as anti-citizenship and warlord-empowering as the post-1991 politically destructive, fiefdom-based anomie. President Deni should remind all political stakeholders that the four self-styled major clans have trampled the political rights of their fellow Somali citizens under foot. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” wrote Martin Luther King, Jr.
© Puntland Post, 2024