After failing to galvanise other Members of Parliament in Mogadishu, a group of MPs calling themselves…
After failing to galvanise other Members of Parliament in Mogadishu, a group of MPs calling themselves Horusocod ( Progressives) have now settled on a plan B: to table a parliamentary motion against the Berbera Port deal between the SomalilandGovernment and the United Arab Emirates. The sponsors of the motion want the federal parliament to use the sovereignty card against Somaliland. The motive of pro-motion MPs is to divert the attention of President Farmaajo and Prime Minister Kheire from the political programme of the government. Somaliland already enjoys Special Funding Status attained through two decades of institution-building, parliamentary and presidential elections.
At the London Somalia Conference in May, the Federal Government of Somalia committed itself to the security architecture and economic development plans of action. The Federal Government cannot afford the luxury of seeking relevance in procedural arguments with Government of Somaliland.
President Farmaajo of Somalia and Prime Minister Kheire ought to remember that people do not hold the government accountable through MPs because MPs have no connection with their constituencies. When the Speaker of the Parliament, Mr Jawari, urged MPs to visit their constituencies during a recess, roughly 100 MPsgathered in Nairobi to lay out an agenda for using accountability to pressure the governments into appointing some MPs as ambassadors or ministers when the PM will have reshuffled the cabinet.
Giving in to the pressure of some unscrupulous MPs will derail the Somaliland-Somalia talks. If MPskeen on railroading the President and the Prime Minister into enforcing a hastily tabled motion against Berbera Port deal succeed, they will find a pretext for tabling a motion of confidence against the government formed by the Prime Minister less than three months ago. Many MPs allied with the former, corrupt government have had their interests damaged after the Minister for Finance, Dr Bayle, introduced tax revenue collection system at the Mogadishu International Airport and the Port of Mogadishu. Only 10% of the tax revenues had, in the past, gone to the government coffers before the tax collection policy introduced the new government had identified loopholes such as cash handled by revenue officers, and fraudulent tax exemption schemes for businessmen.
The parliamentary motion against Berbera Port deal is a stratagem devised by MPs to test the waters with the government whose popularity keeps growing due to anti-corruption measures. The aim of MPs is not to undermine BerberaPort Agreement; their aim is to drag the Federal Government into a pointless political dispute with Somaliland known for its maturedemocratic processes. The parliamenrary ,motion is a bait for the Federal Government of Somalia.
Liban Ahmad
LIBAHM@ICLOUD.COM
