Education and experiences fail to condition our minds. Our minds begin to function in a groove. Our sense neither enriches our literature nor elevates our thoughts. We get stuck to what we know is right to do and begin to do what we know is wrong. Weakness and failures reverse our directions. Limitations of our conditioned minds dishonor Somaliland credibility as a state. The culture we use to hand down from one system to the next turns to evolve out of staggering thoughts. We then become victims of uncultivated culture, as things appear today.
Thoughts are reactions and responses to conditions. A desire comes from a condition. Fear comes from a condition. Inquiry comes from a condition that causes a doubt. People will not forget what makes them feel and puts them in a tight and terrible situation.
Staggering thoughts are what makes arrogance get into minds of Somaliland parliament members and despair to peoples’ hearts.
Observing how the ruling party and the parliament behave when national issues that need urgent ratification, one wonders why herd memtality that rules the minds of Kulmiye’s parliamentary members must not be in a state of planning, forecasting, calculating, caring, and preparing.
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct that always tends to reinforce ferocity toward those others who are not considered as members of the herd.
Opposition is a part of political life. Sometimes the incumbent leadership lets opposition demands get the better of him or her and find himself/herself succumbing to them. This means that there is always a way to bring light into the political differences that come our way.
The parliament’s decision to reject the agreement reached by the three parties is ironically a rehash of Kulmiye’s toxic political tactics, and in the meantime a cynical plot to deny Somaliland people of their rights to having elections in which new representatives are expected to be elected.
The agreement is a proposal for a change to the existing number of NEC members. It is not a law a government institution originated. It is just an agreement evolved out of a long political dispute between Wadani and Kulmiye, which only has come into conclusion after international donors intervened.
The true mark of a statesman is when public representatives can withstand fairness and tolerate the extremes of what is rightfully for all.
This week’s parliamentary decision to reject the agreement for a change to NEC members is a defeat and damage to Somaliland’s democratization process.
Lawmakers must understand that reform-oriented proposals or bills do not contain what can be referred to as intermediary or periphery agenda. Is it incitement to pass a proposal that is good for the country?
For this one to reject, there is fear that the agreement is seen as a tool to lessen the ruling party’s future influence over NEC.
Somaliland people must try to understand democracy. It is only understanding that dissolves herd mentality and discovers conventional wisdom. In turn it is conventional wisdom that helps Somaliland discover clarity. And it is clarity that gives Somaliland liberty amidst a life of duties, responsibilities, troubles and challenges.
A democracy without fairness is not a system worth living and it is this very fairness that eludes a conditioned mind.
Our ability to protect what we hold dear depends on our knowledge and understanding of it. If we value Somaliland state, we must know about its evolution. If we value Somaliland country and its existence, we must understand how it has come into being and what it would mean to live it and let it die.
If we fail to understand that, Somaliland might remain, however much we decorate, the cafe we live in, and will forever be a cafe, a psychological prison.
By:Jama Falaag
Hargeisa, Somaliland.