Matina Stevis reporting for the WSJ writes:
George Ayittey applauds these efforts to include indigenous aspects in their developing democratic process, he states:
..Somalia— Abdiweli Ibrahim Ali Sheikh Mudey reclined in his plastic chair inside this war-torn city’s fortified perimeter and cracked a smile behind his Ray Bans. He had just been elected, unopposed and unanimously, to Somalia’s new Parliament.More here
“I will do my best,” the former regional minister said, as ululating supporters whisked him away. He had secured the votes of a handful of delegates—in turn handpicked by clan elders—who cast ballots in front of a coterie of United Nations officials and journalists.
George Ayittey applauds these efforts to include indigenous aspects in their developing democratic process, he states:
“Somalia’s Crooked Route to Democracy,” (Jan 17, 2017) missed an important ingredient in the Somali struggle. When Thomas Jefferson made this statement in a letter to Edward Carrington in 1787 that people who live without government enjoy infinitely greater degree of freedom and happiness, he was probably referring to stateless societies, such as the Igbo or the Somali in Africa. The Somali, for example, took the concept of liberty to its most radical limit. They are fiercely Republican in their traditional society. Born free, they take orders from no one, except their clan elders. They see the state as necessarily evil and have no centralized authority – no kings, no chiefs or political leaders. They detest government, which they deride as “waxan” (the thing). Correspondingly, the Igbo have this expression ezebuillo (the King is an enemy). Hence, the term “stateless.”
When the colonialists imposed a waxan on the Somali, they fought it to gain their independence in 1960. The incoming African liberators tried to impose a socialist waxan on them; they fought it and chased General Siad Barre out of the country in 1991. The Islamists tried in 2005; they were defeated. The chaos in Somalia is not due so much to their inability to establish democracy but rather to misguided attempts to impose a waxan on them. After more than 14 such unsuccessful attempts, they should be applauded for going back to their roots to extract workable principles, not denigrated as taking a “crooked route to democracy,” which, by the way, may be incompatible with the setup of their society referred to as kritarchy (rule by judges).
George BN Ayittey,, PhD President, Free Africa Foundation, Washington DC