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by Abdulkadir Abow
Thursday, August 13, 2009
To conduct public inquiry about Prof. Dalxa’s serious allegations against the Somali ambassador in Kenya of how he was mistreated when the ambassador allegedly refused for him to go with the delegation that supposed to welcome the Somali president, is an opportunity for the president Sherif’s weak government to gain some public confidence. Silence and do nothing is not an option.
I heard myself the interviews of the professor himself about this issue, the opinions of some of the very respectable and credible advocacy groups and saw some comments on media sites and I find that the issue needs to be properly investigated and dealt with it in an expedited way. Here, there is well respected professor, vice chairman of the parliament and member of the minority groups against the ambassador of the Somalia’s currently most important embassy, who is from the president’s own tripe (As Amin Amir depicted on his cartoon regarding this issue).
This government should seize the opportunity and do the right thing, which is appoint an impartial and independent body to investigate this and give the mandate they need to fully consider both sides of the issue. Then, report to the public what has transpired on that particular day in Nairobi. After the investigation is concluded, if investigators find the ambassador violated any constitutional rules or mistreated the professor, he should be fired. On the other hand if the professor’s allegations are not true, the parliament should take the appropriate action against him and at least remove the title of vice chairman from him. This is also a very important learning opportunity for the MPs, other officials and public of what to expect from diplomatic offices in other countries.
However, silence is not an option and here is why. Now, the issue is between two high level officials of different parts of the government (legislative and executive), but if the government fails to deal with this and tries to avoid it, the issue will become incompetence, corruption, nepotism etc. We saw that before in the military and civil governments which were much stronger and how it played on the hands of rebel groups against them. The current opposition which is much stronger than the government and claim that they have higher moral values will definitely seize this as an opportunity to show that this government is not any different than those before them. Therefore, it is for the best interest of Sh. Sharif’s government to act on this as soon as possible with just and transparent process.
“Xeer Soomaali” hush-hush solution to the issue may satisfy the two parties involved, but the public needs to know what happened. Was there any violation of the constitution? Or, was there defamation on either side? Holding high standards for the public officials will help the government build credible institutions and raise the trust and confidence level of the public.
To all of you who in the interest of justice are keeping this issue alive and advocating for long lasting solution, I would say thank you. Please keep demanding Mr. Sharif to do something and if he fails, we should all be asking our governments to stop funding his government. Keep the hope alive!
Abdulkadir Abow
E-mail: [email protected]