Mr. President, it’s time you stopped toadying to foreign leaders and focused on fixing real Somali problems

By The Star Editorial Board

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has a shameful habit of going out of his way to please foreign countries and organizations at the expense of Somalia. He is often seen toadying to foreign officials and humiliating himself on national and international stages and, in the process, sullying the name of the nation.

His tendency — apparently emanating from an inherent low self-esteem — to confer the highest attention on a low-level foreign official is well known. His gush about the achievements of other countries – “great” nations, in his words – is unparalleled. He is always grateful to those who help Somalia — in his view, a hellhole unworthy of praise — without mentioning the fact that what others, in particular the European Union and the U.S., provide are crumbs, and that Somalia loses billions — yes, you read that right — of dollars to European and other countries’ boats and ships fishing illegally in Somali waters.

To the annoyance of Somalis, President Hassan is not a creative problem solver. Whenever he’s confronted with a challenge, his first instinct is to cry out to others for help, even though he’s elected to come up with homegrown solutions that can bypass the roadblocks enemies of Somalia erected on the road to peace and prosperity.

In a word, President Hassan is, as former Information Minister Dahir Mohamud Gelle would have quipped, a “short range patriot.” He no doubt loves Somalia, but he respects other countries more. He seems that he’s only proud of his country to the extent that it bestows upon him the pride of traveling around the world and consorting with foreign dignitaries.

Examples of President Hassan’s unsuitability as a leader for an ailing Somalia abound.

In his entire seven-nation trip recently, with the exception of Turkey and Eritrea, the hosts — Mohammed Bin Zayed of UAE, Geulleh of Djibouti, Samia of Tanzania, El-Sisi of Egypt and Uhuru of Kenya – played him. And annoyingly, President Hassan appeared contented and still worn his signature smile publicly, as if he came from the safest and most prosperous country in the world.

The foreign leaders played on the president’s self-doubt to squeeze what they wanted out of him.

President Uhuru, for example, secured a deal that would practically help poison Somalis and impoverish their country after Hassan acquiesced to the resumption of Kenyan khat exports to Somalia. This scourge has ruined many families, laid many men and women to waste and continues to drain the country of hard currency to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars each day.

President Hassan had in the past spoken out against the Qat’s damage to the nation’s well-being.

“The problem [Qat] poses to us is bigger than its benefit for us or for the families that trade in it and get income from it,” the president once said.

“Economically, hundreds of thousands of dollars leave our country daily just to buy Qat and bring it to us. It’s a very large economy,” he said. “It’s also a social problem, as it’s said the chewer of the Qat is either high on the leaf or looking for it.”

Why the president and his prime minister don’t want to salvage their people from this harmful drug from Kenya and Ethiopia is mind-boggling.

As if that wasn’t bad enough trouble for Somalia, the president is stirring up a hornet’s nest.

Thanks to his obsequiousness to President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Egypt is now free to set up a military base in Somalia to launch attacks on Ethiopia, something that would erode Somalis’ aspiration to live peacefully with their erstwhile enemy.

El-Sisi said on Monday, during a joint media briefing with President Hassan, that he and his Somali counterpart “talked about the danger of unilateral decisions through establishing projects on international rivers,” a reference to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

The two leaders “discussed the latest regional developments of common interest, particularly with regard to the Horn of Africa region, security of the Red Sea, as well as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam,” said El-Sisi’s office in a statement posted on its website. “The two Presidents agreed to strengthen coordination and joint intensive consultations to follow-up on these developments, in support of regional security and stability.”

The explanation by President Hassan’s office that the two leaders “didn’t talk about” the Ethiopian dam hasn’t convinced many Somalis who believe that Cairo’s aim is to play both ends against the middle. (Egypt is a big supporter of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front that dominated Ethiopia when Addis Ababa invaded Somalia in 2006.)

Of course, the president’s apologists would say that it is Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed who is to blame for the fast-deteriorating relations between the countries. Rumor has it that Hassan wanted to fly to Addis Ababa from Djibouti, but Abiy asked for a delay. The truth of the matter is, President Hassan had made up his mind about his policy toward Addis Ababa long before his recent whirlwind tour, and his decision to appoint Hussein Sheikh-Ali, a critic of Abiy, as his national security adviser was a well-calculated move.

When 214 parliamentarians elected Hassan on May 15, Somalis, tired of a prolonged political instability in the country, were willing to cut the new president some slack, even when they knew that his first term was nothing short of disastrous.

But the old Hassan doesn’t seem to have changed one bit. A leopard never changes its spots. To say that he has disappointed Somalis since his reelection is an understatement. In every passing day, he proves that he has no vision for the country. Even his mantra of “Somalia at peace with itself and at peace with the world” turned out to be an empty rhetoric, as tensions between him and regional administrations and between Somalia and Ethiopia, Eritrea and Turkey are increasing by the day. Worse, he’s not offering solutions, nor is he allowing the new prime minister to step in. As a self-anointed strongman, he tries desperately to hog the national limelight and usurp the powers of other government institutions.

Gallingly, the president has opted to openly ignore the requirements of his job description. As a ceremonial figure, he has no business of furtively cutting deals with other countries, when able ministers in charge of such portfolios are alive and well. He either has no trust in other Somali officials or has an insatiable appetite for having a finger in every pie.

President Hassan is aware that by acting as the head of government he’s breaking the country’s Constitution that confers the powers of running the government on the prime minister. But sadly he doesn’t care about the rule of law, as doing so would mean, in his selfish worldview, undermining his influence. He’s indeed undermining Somalia. How else would one explain the president’s decision to squander a badly needed money on unnecessary trips and antagonize a country Somalia shares a 1,648 kilometers border just to please Egypt, a faraway country. What would the president tell millions of Somalis — nearly half of the population — who are in need of aid as a result of the ruinous drought that is already killing children and the elderly.

Instead of going on a traveling spree, the president should have helped the new Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre in forming a competent Cabinet that would attend to the country’s pressing issues. (On Monday, Hamza asked for a 10-day extension as the time constitutionally allocated to him to appoint his ministers has elapsed.)

We’re not saying that President Hassan’s immediate predecessor, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed “Farmajo”, didn’t put a foot wrong in his more than five years in office. We would have only liked to see the incumbent improve on Farmajo’s achievements and go even further. But that is not what President Hassan is doing.

In the two and a half months he has been in power, President Hassan has done little to indicate that he had learned a lesson from his failed first term. He’s is still as markedly divorced from reality as he was when in 2012 he vowed to eliminate al Shabab misfits in two years’ time and miserably failed.

In fact, the president’s shortsightedness and his real inability to distinguish between Somalia’s enemies and friends are well documented. In his recent trip to Tanzania, he officially requested the East Africa Community to accept Somalia’s membership bid, a nonstrategic move as far as Somalia’s national interest is concerned. “We need to join this great community,” the president said.

Speaking from his seat among the audience (!), he, the ever meek, yet oleaginous Hassan, heaped praise on Kenya, Uganda and Burundi for sending troops to Somalia, oblivious to the fact that Kenya first invaded Somalia before worming its way into the African Union’s so-called peace mission and that Ugandan and Burundi forces are just guns hired by the European Union and the US to keep Somalia under the thumb of the West.

The real objective of president’s weird letch for the East Africa Community seemed to be an attempt to jettison the more advantageous alliance that Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea formed in 2018.

It’s painful that the president didn’t appreciate a basic fact that private citizens have already internalized: Somalia’s instability is a well-paying job for foreign countries and their Somali quislings, and that for Somalia to stand on its own feet it has to put its act together, fix its security problem and kick out foreign mercenaries masquerading as helpful African peacekeepers.

We’ve strong doubts about President Hassan’s capacity to haul Somalia out of the morass it’s in. He has shown no political foresight to prove us wrong. His promise of becoming a servant of the people is all hot air. If he had genuine empathy for the country, he wouldn’t have frittered away his prime time on foreign trips that were not worth the candle. A leader whose country is being devoured left, right and center by foreign countries and organizations doesn’t waste a second on silly pursuits.

Despite our frustration with President Hassan’s early political and security blunders, we still have high hopes for Somalia. For, Somalis, who’re now informed more than ever before about the schemes of their enemies, are determined not to allow no-accounts to keep their country wallow in lawlessness anymore.

It’s up to the Somali leaders — in this case President Hassan and Prime Minister Hamza — to get that message and start believing in their country and in their people and working hard on how they could turn Somalia around.

After decades of chaos and suffering, the Somali public is not ready to tolerate a feckless leader who likes to undersell himself, belittle his country and denigrate his people on the international stage. Proud Somalis want to have brave and confident leader who can deliver on his promises and stand up for their cause.