For Somalia, another new warlord has just started taking his first baby steps — wondering around — and yet not fully knowing where he is headed. To take on a mission as risky as this, one must have the skill and resources so that he surmounts the hurdles that are to come on his way. Ali Mohamed Gedi has got them all.
The seven-country regional development organization, Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), based in the city of Djibouti, sponsored a Somali peace and reconciliation conference, which eventually produced the transitional federal government (TFG) after two debilitating years. But Gedi wasn’t a party to any of these. It was others who were throwing the stones to all directions in order to set a parameter for their hunt in the nation’s top jobs.
Aside from the individual financial and status losses inflicted during the procession of the conference, the regional and perhaps the international interest groups also exerted tremendous effort to get things right — according to their preferred or perceived end results. At all cost, Ethiopia avoided delivering Somalia to a clandestine group that operates in the dark. For it, it was an issue of high national stake and it stood beside its reliable friends to the end.
The brotherly and self-sacrificing support of the Ethiopian government to the TFG and to the people of Somalia is still as vibrant and lively.
To make a long story short, the transitional federal government didn’t come into being arbitrarily. It consumed a lot of time, wealth, intellectual worth, and gigantic human sacrifices. Basically, there were two opposing political camps already formed when Gedi was handpicked by the new president-elect and inaugurated as a prime minister. The president’s choice took many by surprise, because in the Somali political arena, this name of Gedi was unheard of. The people of Somalia unanimously repeated two deserving comments. One said, “Mr. Gedi is not someone, who participated in the clan fighting that brought Somalia down to its knees, so he is good”; the other counterbalancing comment was: “A job like this one requires an individual with proven success history that is stunning and traceable”.
At his first public appearance, Gedi sounded someone aloof. People weren’t so impressed about him. Neither they saw the charisma, and the engaging presence of Abdirashid Ali Sharmaarke, nor, they saw the sophistication and command of Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Igal.
He gave out an image compatible with a construction worker who put on a borrowed black suit and a bowtie for a friend’s wedding. What was missing was stature, along with authenticity and persuasion. Many wished that behind this uneasy and distant persona hides a soul guided by principles, good morals, and national pride.
Today, after three years, we know it all. We know that Gedi has made a fortune out of the donations meant for the Somali people. His ministers lack offices to execute their daily work, the uniformed men and women who protect the government and enforce rule of law in this chaotic society do not get their daily basic meals regularly, and the security of the nation still faces great risks, but the prime minister threw the party of the year for his son’s wedding.
All this while his government is depending on the neighboring countries’ troops in order to survive one more day.
Can anyone tell me what Ali Mohamed Gedi is good for? For God’s sake! How did they find him? Gedi is not only dishonest, and out of character, but he is also indescribably arrogant. Gedi is not the elected leader of the nation. He is a handpicked appointee. In this government, he is not the boss. The president is the elected head of state and the PM should obediently and honestly execute his policies and report to him. The president is the one who is accountable to the people of Somalia and to the rest of the world, not the prime minister.
Gedi’s real self has finally been revealed, when he realized that his show is to end. He has become a warlord in the full sense of the word. Just recently, while talking to the BBC radio, he said, “We will go back to the 1991 civil war if I am discharged”. How can he lead a government of reconciliation if he himself is prepared to dive into a civil war?
Ali Mohamed Gedi must go. He just doesn’t fit. It is not enough he quits office; he should also answer charges that he bankrupted the government. Just like the way other senseless notorious warlords are treated, this man should be placed under scrutiny for he has great appetite for operating in the underworld.
— Abdul Hassan is a Somali journalist based in Houston, TX. E-mail: [email protected]
