By Abdisalam Issa-Salwe

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

Mr. Prime Minister, are you ready for the challenge?

I have no doubt about your qualifications and abilities in being a good prime minister. I congratulate you for the new job.

In the real sense, since late 1980, we did not have a ‘functioning’ Somali state. There cannot be a ‘government’ (the soul) without a state (the body).  As you are trying to represent the soul (government), you need a body (the state) to fit.

You need to start a process which can help transform the Somali ‘non-functioning stateliness’ into a functioning state. The scheme of the process should advocate a process and not just one event (not only for your term). The process should define a means to an end and not an end in itself. It requires a vision which considers the rehabilitation of social fabrics so to lay down the rehabilitation of the state.

A simple definition of a state is that: it has to have a territory with internationally recognized boundaries, people who live there (governed); a government which provides public services and police power; have sovereignty (and in modern time the recognition of the UN). A government should have some kind of legitimacy to have power the governed.

There is a secessionism in the air (Somaliland), a divided people (different regions with different systems and stages), a ‘non-functioning’ federal government, non-existent sovereignty (external states having power over the country’s territory and people), the state security maintaining by external bodies, thus resulting a ‘stateless’ (bodiless) entity.

I hope you will start with building trust, reconciling different Somali regions (groups), focusing on the appropriation of properties and creating social trust.

Decentralization is not a trend but a reality.

The idea of giving priority to the formation of the central government without first creates its essential component advocates a top-down approach. This perspective may also contradict the natural trend in which Somali regions have moved since the collapse. The task of recreating the Somali state leads to the need to establish a body, which could represent the central authority of the Somali nation. The logical conclusion is that such a body could stem out from the sum of its parts. Instead, we are focusing on to form an ‘externally driven body’ without parts or limbs. This ‘bubble body’ depicted as the central government is at odds with itself, let alone functioning with its ‘would-be-component’ (the regions).

Following the civil war and state collapse a situation was created that forced people to return to their clan ‘areas’. Once in their safe area, these people began to feel the need for some other essential requirements or services. Thus, these requirements and the underpinning social intercourse could not be possible without a regulating body or institute. It was this need which brought the creation of some administrative bodies in some parts of the country. It is this same feeling which has pushed Somalis towards decentralization.

Adding to the above reason, there are other motives which strengthens this course: I) The memory of the dreadful fratricidal war, which is still lingering on in the minds of the Somalis, ii) the failure of political cohesion which advocated the top-down approach and, iii) the loss of confidence of the Somali population in their political leaders.

A decentralization mechanism is possible when there is a system based on regional autonomy. The principal based on this system is a bottom-up approach, which maintains procedures built from the grass roots.

Obviously, decentralization may have both pros and cons. Despite ‘regional’ feeling can create some form of social cohesion, it may also hinder any attempt to the rehabilitation of the Somali state. It may hold back the very process and goal which is supposed to aim, as the utility of the traditional Somali political characteristics hardly reconcile with a view of a state.

I hope you will represent a transformational leadership, a leadership which can adapt change. Transformational leadership is the key to success and it can help the Somali nation to survive and thrive.

I wish you will not end up in the list of those Somali leaders who thought for themselves rather than the national interest.

Abdisalam Issa-Salwe
TaibahUniversity
Email:binsalwe@aol.com