The staged leaking of a conversation between Omar Sharif Jek (the former district commissioner of Hamar Weyne) and Abdirahman Sheikh Yusuf Al Adalah, the Deputy Information Minister, had backfired on both men.
What was intended to absolve the Prime Minister of Somalia of his manipulation to secure
nomination for Khadijah Mohamed Makhzumi rubbed salt on our wounds as the result of thirty one years of subjugation under militias of the Deputy Minister’s clan who captured Hamar Weyne district when Mogadishu metamorphosed into warlord zones.
The Banadiri traditional leaders and political leaders have made their stance clear about the misuse of the executive power by Mohammed Hussein, Roble, the Prime Minister, to collude with people who collaborate with our oppressors.
Omar Sharif Jek has since become a new MP under the heavily rigged selection process masterminded at the Office of the Somalia Prime Minister. As one of the most politically marginalized Somali groups Banadiris found no one to sympathize with them apart from their fellow underdogs under the 0.50 designation of the discriminatory and disenfranchizing 4.5 system. Our protestations against electoral fraud fell on deaf ears. Our right to elect capable MPs has been infringed on.
What makes this episode of electoral fraud more disheartening is the use of the powers of the Prime Minister whose distant cousin Abdikarim Guled is not only a Presidential Candidate but also a husband of the new MP selected under a dubious process. Thirty years are a long period of time in which a country can transform itself from a failed nation into to a functioning state. That we, Banadiris, are as powerless in 2022 as we were in 1992 says a lot about what is in store for Somalis indifferent to the injustice we suffer at the hands of Roble.
What Roble did to empower dishonorable members of the Banadiri clan to stuff the new Parliament with handpicked MPs is an infamy that will forever taint his reputation. Our struggle for equal political and economic rights continues.
A. S. Buwe is a Banadiri activist in Mogadishu.