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| Last Updated: Apr 23, 2011 - 2:27:50 PM |
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Somalia: Can TFG Prime Minister address his credibility gap?
21 Jan 21, 2010 - 3:18:46 PM
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Writing in the New York Times, Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government prime minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke attempts to persuade the international community to support the ailing TFG. The approach he uses shows that the prime minister has not learnt from past political mistakes. He has tried to grab attention of readers by using a questionable evidence about who was behind the December 3 Mogadishu hotel bombing that claimed the lives of three TFG cabinet members, medical graduates and people who were attending a graduation ceremony.
“Last month, a Somali man who had lived in Denmark dressed himself in women’s clothes, positioned himself at a graduation ceremony in Mogadishu and then blew himself up. He killed 22 people, including three government ministers and many young medical graduates and professors, who had hoped to dedicate their lives to the alleviation of suffering in Somalia,” prime minster Sharmarke wrote. Pictures published in Somali websites showed that the alleged “suicide bomber” was among people attending the graduation ceremony. The published pictures challenged the government version initially proposed by the speaker of TFG parliament Sheikh Adan Madobe in an interview published in the Wall Street Journal on December 14, 2009. (Somalia Identifies Bomber ).
The TFG did not ask for outside help to investigate the “suicide bombing” to follow in the footsteps of Somaliland when it sought outside help from Britain’s Scotland Yard to investigate the murder of British couple Richard and Enid Eyeington nearly eight years ago. (Scotland Yard To Help Investigate Borama And Sheikh Murders)
Somalia’s TFG prime minister needs to address his credibility gap. In his New York Times piece he used Somaliland and Puntland as examples about peaceful parts of Somalia although Mogadishu, the seat of the TFG, is a war-torn capital.
“Over 100 Somali-led reconciliation processes have taken place at local and regional levels since 1991 — and they’ve proved the basis for stability in Somaliland, Puntland and Galmudug state in central Somalia,” prime minister Sharmarke wrote. However, his October 2009 speech at Chatham House gave him opportunity to share with his audience details about his government’s plan: “As I have recently written to your Prime Minister, Mr Brown, the TFG has drafted stabilisation plan that will begin the process of restoring peace to Somalia including Puntland and Somaliland, given support from the international community.” (Somalia: Building Stability and Peace)
In the New York Times, is the prime minister claiming his government restored peace to Somaliland and Puntland after his speech at Chatham House last year or is he proposing a similar, Somali-led reconciliation conference to breathe new life into the IGAD- facilitated TFG project? Prime minister Sharmarke has blown a timely PR opportunity in the pages of the New York Times. Once again, Somalia’s TFG prime minister has exposed himself as a prime minister keen on misleading the international community about the extent to which incompetence led the TFG to fail to protect its ministers and the public against deadly attacks like the December 3 Hotel Shamo bombing in Mogadishu.
Liban Ahmad
libahm@gmail.com
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