Is Saylie (Saylici)
Silanyo’s Sarah
Palin?
Just as US voters have asked
whether Sarah Palin is ready to become president so are
Somalilanders about Silanyo’s choice. In the US Presidential
elections, Senator John McCain stunned even his closest allies when
he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate for Vice-Presidential
candidate. Sarah Palin was the little-known governor of Alaska, a
state with just three electoral votes in the US Electoral College of
538.
She has been a governor just two years after serving as the mayor of
Wasilla, a small town of just over 5000. Sarah Palin, 44 years old,
was thought to appeal to a narrow group of conservative voters, a
group cool to John McCain. She had very little national appeal and
no experience outside of Alaska.
It quickly turned out that her worldview was also limited. She
received her first passport in 2007 in order to visit an Alaskan
National Guards contingent serving at the Kuwait-Iraqi border. In
spite of these shortcomings Sarah Palin energized the conservative
base. Her rallies dwarfed those of her boss. Women, including some
supporters of Hilary Clinton, suddenly found an alternative to
Hilary in the attractive, self-described hockymom. Many of these
women activists were looking for a female to break the glass-ceiling
in politics. Only one other woman, Geraldine Feraro, a Democrat ever
appeared on a national ticket, but she lost.
Soon after the initial euphoria, people started asking serious
questions. Sarah Palin, initially shielded from the media flunked
her first interviews. It became clear that she knew very little of
foreign affairs and was clearly unprepared for such a high national
office. Many of Hilary Clinton’s women supporters soon found out
that they did not share many of Palin’s conservative ideals. John
McCain, if he wins the elections, would become the oldest first term
president in US history. He is 72 years old now and has had three
prior incidents of the skin cancer melanoma, a disease curable when
caught early.
Even Republican supporters of John McCain started asking "what if"
questions. Is Sarah Palin ready to become the commander-in-chief of
the most powerful nation in the world? The answer turned out a
resounding "no". Joe Klein, a respected journalist who had known
John McCain for a long time said that McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin
destroyed his faith in the Senator’s judgment. He is not alone in
that critique even in Republican activist circles.
Somaliland appears to face a similar dilemma. Our veteran
politician, Ahmed Mohamoud Silanyo, Chairman of Kulmiye, has
selected the young Mr. Abdourahman Saylie (Saylici in Somali) as his
running mate. From a look at his bio, Abdourahman Saylie has even
less experience than Sarah Palin, who could at least boast that she
is the governor of a very rich State with a budget in the billions
of dollars. He has had no national experience whatsoever and not the
world experience required to move Somaliland forward in a
historically critical period.
Like Sarah Palin, Saylie was chosen to fulfil a simple arithmetic in
the forthcoming elections; to split the clan base of the incumbent
president. Saylie who hails from the same clan family as the
President was expected, the logic went, to split his sub-clan from
that of the President, thereby weakening the president’s Awdal
region support. Even the likelihood of that scenario turning out
true is doubtful. Many people point out that at the end Awdalities (Awdalians?)
will not be dumb enough to dump an incumbent president for a
constitutionally powerless vice-president.
As they say in Somaliland, would you pick 50 cents when you can get
a dollar? More importantly, the rest of the country is asking
questions quite similar to what US voters are asking. The veteran
Ahmed Silanyo is not a young man, older than John McCain some say.
Would Saylie be able to step up to the plate if needed? He has
spoken only of the fact that he has support within his own sub-clan.
He appears to care little about pressing national issues. His sole
reason for claiming the high post of Kulmiye’s VP nomination has so
far been his insistence that he can get more votes in Awdal then Mr.
Abdourahman Aw Ali, the veteran SNM fighter and former VP of
Somaliland.
Up to now Saylie has shown no interest in national issues. The
verdict of Somalilanders appears to be similar to that reached by
many US voters. Saylie is not a man who should be a heartbeat away
from Somaliland’s presidency in this critical period. Silanyo, who
may have destroyed his party in insisting that Saylie be accepted as
his running mate has never explained to the public why he chose a
neophyte for that post, but analysts understand that he was only
concerned with political expediency without thought or care to what
happens to the nation.
The irony of it all is that like his predecessor the late Mohamed
Ibrahim Egal, Silanyo is picking an untested political neophyte to
bulldoze Muj. Abdirahman Aw Ali, a man who was for many years the
only Awdalite fighting with the SNM. Egal could be excused because
he was not in the SNM, but Silanyo, the former chairman of the SNM,
who once boasted that he will die with other SNM veterans is a
different matter altogether; and the reason many SNM followers have
so vehemently protested Silanyo’s pick of Saylie over Muj Aw Ali.
Both John McCain and Silanyo may have made the same calculation or
perhaps miscalculation.
Omar Darood Hassan
Norway - Askim
Email:
darood2@hotmail.com
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