 |
do relevant research in all of these areas; |
|
document the results of this research in forms relative to the goals of
the Somali Civic Organization; |
|
integrate these results into a unified body of relevant knowledge; |
|
use these results to creatively design either whole systems or at least
components of systems as proposals for consideration; |
|
discussing these proposals for components of systems and complete systems
within the Somali Civic Organization; |
|
conducting polls of Members of the Somali Civic Organization on such
proposals; |
|
conducting polls of non-Members of the Somali Civic Organization on such
proposals; and |
| developing proposals for actually implementing the most-desired proposals |
will involve a considerable amount of serious work by a large number of
Somalis collaborating cooperatively with one another. This is the main reason for
creating this Somali Civic Web -- as a dynamically-growing set of resources,
tools, and intermediate results that facilitate effective collaboration among a
growing number of Somalis dedicated to developing their own Somali solutions to
Somali challenges.
Different Members of the Somali Civic Organization may choose to focus their
attention and energy to any one of these areas of their own choice or may prefer
to work at the level of integrating the results from these different subtopic
areas into workable solutions for further consideration.
Private preliminary discussions with many individual Somalis in 1993 led to a
tentative initial conclusion that the majority of Somalis want to live under a
new form of governance meeting the following 3 criteria:
-
it must be based upon Somali traditions and models of governance;
-
It must reflect the fact that nearly 99% of all Somalis are Moslems while
remaining a secular rather than a religious form of governance; and
- it must integrate recent successful experience with governance from around
the World as long as such experience does not replace or interfere with the
two criteria above.
The order of priorities for these 3 criteria seems to generally be the order
in which they are stated above.
Another general pattern of Somali views seems to involve criticism of
|
the colonial period for having divided Somalia into 5 different
geographical regions now within 5 different "nation states"; |
|
the colonial period for having blocked normal political development within
Somalia in parallel with political development in non-colonized countries; |
|
the so-called "democracy" upon independence from 1960 to
1969 in the integrated Somaliland and Southern Somalia, for having been
based inappropriately upon the European/Italian model of governance without
reflecting either Somali traditions or local needs and requirements for
appropriate governance; |
|
the so-called "democracy" from 1960 to 1969 for its inherent
corruption and ineffective implementation of democracy as a foundation for its
model of governance; |
|
the socialist dictatorship from 1969 to 1991, based upon the principles of
"scientific socialism" (as also practiced in similar ways by Pot
Pol in Cambodia), for its brutality, corruption, and complete
incompatibility with the private entrepreneurship and democratic foundations
of Somali nomadic society; |
|
the so-called "warlords" in Southern Somalia for
allegedly placing
personal interests and greed above the Somali people they tried to rule
over; and |
|
the international community for having tried to impose different forms of
governance since 1991 upon the Somali People without the consent of the
Somali People and without taking the factors of:
 |
traditional Somali
methods of governance, |
|
traditional forms of nomadic democracy already
existing in Somalia; or |
| the realities of the local political situation in
Somalia into account. |
|
As a general observation of other governments in Africa, there seems to be a
pattern of corrupt governments that encourage a younger generation to revolt and
place themselves in power based upon principles of integrity, good intentions,
etc. But, whenever they succeed in doing so, without changing the basic
structure of governance, the new generation of uncorrupted leaders quickly
becomes equally corrupt and oppressive as the generation they overthrew and
drove from power.
The suspicion arises that these forms of government are in
themselves corrupting -- and it doesn't matter how pure and well-meaning the
people are who form or work within them, these forms of government ultimately
corrupt whoever is in power. Perhaps we need to be more cautious in simply
copying any form of governance, that is successful in another country, into a
new country with a different set of starting conditions. There appears to be an
inherent symbiosis between both the accumulated experience of a people with a
form of government and how that form of government changes and evolves in
gradual steps over time. When a government is overthrown and any attempt is made
to install a radically different form of governance with which the people have
no strong prior experience, the result often seems to be failure.
The International Community refused to admit errors on its part in Somalia
and hence did not learn from its errors. Having just overthrown an existing
government in Afghanistan, and trying to quickly install a different government
there, they may face long-term failures in Afghanistan, like in Somalia, because
they have still not learned from their failures in Somalia. If the USA does
attack and overthrow the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, it will
certainly not be easy to quickly replace that dictatorship with any semblance of
democracy quickly. Perhaps the Somali
People can now learn in parallel from the errors that the International
Community may repeat in Afghanistan and possibly Iraq as well.
Governance:
/
Areas: Goals /
/
/ Governance /
/ Culture
Resources:
/
/
/
/
© Somali Civic Organization (in formation) 2002
Author: Jack L. Davies - Version P-1 1 October
2002
