Do Not Impeach the President

On Wednesday, August 12, 2015, about 93 Somali legislators submitted a motion to impeach President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud for a series of constitutional violations, corruption, impeding the formation of some regional states and later undermining them, and for not consulting with parliament. While all these accusations may be justified, the idea of impeaching the president now is not wise for the following reasons:

1.      The president has a year left of his term, which he should finish. Afterwards, he should never come back to the political scene because of his embarrassing record of authoritarianism and corruption. Removing the president now before his term is up is not going to solve any problems. In fact, impeaching him is likely to create more problems than solutions. The removal of Mohamed Morsi after the Egyptians had elected him president, was unconstitutional and counterproductive. It created havoc in Egypt and led to political turmoil that will take many years to unravel. General Abdifatah Al-Sisi, who toppled and replaced Morsi, turned out to be a dictator worse than Mubarak and Sadat. Even Morsi, who made egregious mistakes in his short tenure by acting in an imperial fashion, seems today to have been a better ruler than Al-Sisi. If Morsi had been left to finish his term, it is highly unlikely the Egyptians would have re-elected him. These precedents should set off warning bells for Somalia, which simply cannot afford to experience the havoc we have seen in Egypt, and which will likely ensue if the Somali president is impeached now. An interim administration would not be able to prepare the country for change in 2016.  

2.      The legislators who submitted the impeachment are equally to blame for the very transgressions they are accusing the president of perpetrating. In 2012, members of this body admitted publicly that they allowed themselves to be bribed to elect the current president, a man unknown to many Somalis, who, nevertheless miraculously trounced the incumbent president. Moreover, on several occasions, many of the parliamentarians were in cahoots with the president himself when he was violating the constitution and usurping power from his three prime ministers. Yes, President Mohamoud has had three prime ministers in the past three years, and this parliament sacked two of them. The third has only been in office for months. The MPs did not even give former Prime Minister Abdi Shirdon a chance to present his case before his dismissal. Now the legislators are crying foul. If the president has to go, so must the legislators.

3.      Two weeks ago, when President Mohamoud announced there would not be a one-man, one-vote election in 2016 for security reasons, the MPs did not ask him to come before them. There were no protests and no hearings. When was the last time this parliament held hearings to inquire about all of the president’s constitutional violations? There were no hearings. Did parliament discuss the status of reviewing the provincial constitution, the issue of graft in the executive branch, not paying the salaries of members of the armed forces for months, the assassination of some legislators, and the conflict with Kenya regarding sea boundaries? No.

The Somali parliament needs to do its job first before it shifts blame onto the president. How many laws has parliament passed since it convened after the elections in the fall of 2012? None. It will be in the country’s interest if both the president and the parliament simply own up for their failures. Thus far, no one has been honest with the Somali people. The president has yet to tell the nation he failed to prepare the country for a popular vote. There is a security problem in certain parts of the country, but the president does not mention what was in his power that he failed to accomplish. In a way, parliament enabled him to violate the constitution for three years.