Somaliland Under New Management

In the interest of Somaliland’s public weal, the nascent administrations of Ahmed Mohamed  Silany o’s initial investment has been in the welfare and wellbeing of Somaliland’s public employees, an  ex igency to alleviate the worsening plight of an already impoverished public employees, who had not received their meager salaries for several months. There are wide array of revitalization plans bei ng implemented by the president that include civil service reforms, introduction of meritocracy, and more crucially the compensation and rewarding of public employees accordingly. At the center of the president’s robust revitalization plans are concrete measures that go beyond the symptoms  a nd seek to un-mantle the salient corruption that has preserved public workers in the austere  cond ition left behind by the previous administration. Somaliland stands to benefit enormously from the president’s investment as employees with an elevated morale and improved quality of life will be more tentative to executing their government duties while also inadvertently helping to avert the pervasive corruption in the public sector. The president’s hands on approach of being visible and accessible will enable a more sufficient and efficient government which is paramount and bodes well to attracting investment while at the same time eradicating all the residual effects of a venal pre vious administration, an administration in which its public sector was fraught with corruption and had relinquished its responsibilities beyond maintaining the security of the country, ended up being nothing more than a proxy for bribe generating.

One has to understand under the conditions in which president Ahmed Mohamed inherited the  rei gns from his predecessor, concurrent to setting up his transition team, the president had to form and deputize a committee to safeguard the remaining government assets from being looted by the previous government officials, that was to the degree which their self-entitlement binge of  deple ting national coffers reached, which is further personified by the dire state of the public workers who bared the brunt of the onslaught decadency of president Riyale’s venal administration. An administration that was a proxy for bribe generating sustained by government bureaucracy cogent with nepotism, where many workers were hired through patronage connections and in many  insta nces individuals showed up only to collect pay checks, and even worse some government agencies had bogus names on the pay roles collected on their behalves by management.

For the first time in a long time Somaliland has a president who has the interest of country at heart assisted by a competent cabinet determined with an honest approach to improving the lot of  Soma liland’s public employee’s .The president has made the investment in Somaliland’s government  emp loyees the bedrock to attaining his attested to agenda of development, and by initially addressing the necessities and basic needs of government workers will better help them focus on fulfilling their duties and worry less about their basic needs. A better cared for workers with higher morale will be essential to enabling the president’s development framework .The president has begun  institu ting reforms in the government bureaucracy system via civil service reforms that promotes  merit ocracy and pursues to compensate public workers accordingly, reforms that will increase the  suffi ciency and the efficiency of the government, under the jurisdiction of a limited and capable  minist ers, who are accountability to the citizens of Somaliland that they serve.

Accountability to citizens of Somaliland has been at the center and the driving virtue that has lead to the probity decisions of president possible. Accountability to the citizens of Somaliland has  proc eeded above all including the interest of president and that of his party, which is reflected in the personnel he has chosen to govern in his administration. The accountability the president demands goes beyond the governmental institutions under his aegis, but applies to all the agencies, indepe ndent, intergovernmental and NGOs operating in the country. He has been able to engage and  fos ter a cordial environment among the organizations by encouraging them to communicate with  can dor on issues concerning their capacities and to the effectiveness of their programs. On his part of keeping his government accountable, in the early hours of August 17th the president made  unann ounced visits to more than a dozen of his government ministries to witness first hand on their  cap acity of operations and to their actual work habits, furthermore the President announced on  Sep tember 28th subsequent to meeting with the chair persons of a diverse dependent and  indepen dent agencies, that he will continue to meet with them once a month in order to remain current to their plans for the country, and more importantly to ensure their successful implementations  ther eafter. The president’s stalwartness of protecting the interest of his citizens has been  demonstr ated by his contribution of sitting in with the heads of dependent and independent organizations alike to better monitor, coordinate and ensure the effectiveness the various programs that are cascading through the wide spectrum of the country. The president’s open-communication style with his bottom up approach has led to more cohesive panels, and has made participation and information sharing among the authorities more feasible. The president has stood accountable to his citizens by being hands on with the various organizations that are operating in the country by being visible and accessible to heads of those organizations. The president’s goal oriented agenda has empowered government managers to be more engaged and to be better able to associate their efforts to the overall goals of the president’s administration. Goals the president intends to reach by harnessing all the potentials of the country beginning with the human-capital of capable managers of the public sector along with leaders of independent organizations.

The president’s investment in Somaliland’s public employees is paramount to attracting investment, by improving the business of inspections, taxes, registration, and licensing under the sphere of  go vernment agencies, a prospect investor who might have been waned away by the obvious cons of doing business in none existent country and its lack of infrastructure might reconsider the same circumstance with a robust, coherent and a transparent government system with streamlined  lo cal, state regulation, furthermore in the post financial downturn, where funding are down for  phil anthropic charities and humanitarian organization, who are mainly undertaking ventures in which their cash will have the biggest impact and to be hampered less by red tape.

Capable public workers are essential to enabling Somaliland markets and making it an arena ideally suited for business, where business and property are safe and secure under the protection of  un impeded government laws, regardless of which administration is in office. The Finance Minister, Mo hamed Hashi Elmi who addressing the basic necessities of government workers was devolved to, further delineated the administration’s altruistic overhaul plan for the public sector in which he begun with the equitable monetary compensation for government employees that will be fallowed by the establishment of a pension plan. More importantly at center of these wide arrays of  revit alization plans aimed at public sector, are concrete measures that go beyond soothing the  sympt oms, but rather seek to un-mantle the salient corruption that has preserved public workers in the austere condition left to them by the previous administration.

The austere conditions in which president Ahmed Mohamed’s Administration found Somaliland’s public employees after assuming the reins aroused irascible emotions among his cabinet as the plight of the workers was unjustifiable, and only made worse by their exiguous government pay which mounted to no more than a hand-to-mouth subsistence was not even immune from being looted by the same of heads of government who were privies to the selling of government homes underneath workers for profit, a repulsive perpetuation by the previous administration whose corrupt endeavors permeated through every sector of its government especially down to the municipalities, which were rendered weak and were a proxy for bribe generating made possible by years of siphoned agency funds and mismanagement. This enticed the underpaid government employees to the pay to play bribery system, which afforded them the opportunity to cash in on their positions by speeding up the process of poorly run government programs or to attaining anything from a registration, licensing, up to getting judicial favor.

A system of bribery enticed and compelled underpaid public employees to sustaining it as a source of income, especially as the senior government officials entrusted to serve and protect the  intere st of their fellow citizens yielded to using government bureaucracy as a bribe generating tool for themselves and thus neglected their duties to the country by muting the prowess and jurisdiction of the law and allowing government supported corruption to thrive. Corruption like the local  pheno menon of land grabbing termed “ku qabso ku qadi meyside” which boomed in the corridors and  au spices of the government, where even the law-abiding citizens were incentivized and welcomed to formulate unsubstantiated claim to benefit unjustly from the scheme. A practice that opened the floodgates to the land grabbing which pursued as the entrusted gatekeepers impeded on the  gov erning municipal ordinances and national laws by allowing land titles and deeds with government seals in the solemn-forms to be forged and thus allowed the desired outcome of overlapping  own ership claims.

These Claims and counterclaims have overwhelmed and already a bogged down judiciary system to which bribery has been the only panacea to obtain a judicial favor. Alas, the judiciary system has been a source of funding for the cabal of individuals who had the effrontery to wantonly benefit at the detriment of judiciary system and at expense of the citizens of Somaliland. The anecdote of broken system and rampant judicial favors have been awash throughout and remained unabated in Somaliland under president Riyale, This president who could manage pots of land chose to  inaugu rate 6 more provinces.

In all the investment of Ahmed Mohamed in Somaliland’s public sector, by improving on the welfare and wellbeing of Somaliland’s public employees will pay greater dividends to Somalilander’s as a whole. The president’s quest to restoring honesty, integrity has begun by restituting the proper and just Sustenance for public employees and installing strong and pragmatic leaders at key  posit ions to help propel Somaliland public sector in par of dealing with the exigency of its inherent  probl ems by first eradicating the type of environment that has enabled the endemic corruption to be embedded in the roots of the public sector and secondly altering the mental state of mind of the previous administration that had relinquished its economic responsibilities to the private sector and dropped much of countries developments and social burdens on to door steps of UN agencies and NGOs. The president has been able to foist his vision down on to the public workers through his ministers and his inclusive leadership style of has made more participation and information sharing feasible as empowered workers with higher morale are more upbeat, engaged, and in lockstep with the president’s overall goal of development, a development that will only be attainable with a  suffi cient and efficient public sector that is guided by limited and capable ministers, who are  accountab le to their public foremost. The Streamlining and centralizing of the norms and protocols of the  gov ernment bureaucracy by introducing proficiency requirements and rewards based on meritocracy will increase the overall competency and capacity of government as well as help deter the  patro nage connection and nepotism that has been endemic throughout the public sector. The problems facing Somaliland are vast and daunting but a competent leader is not one.