By Hussein Soyan — The President of Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, Mr. Sharif – a former Madras a teacher in Mogadishu, came to power after Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah – the UN Special Representative to Somalia, had leveraged their parliament more than hundred percent, (equivalent to the size of India) to promote Sharif who became a national liability and whose policies resulted in a second wave of humanitarian disaster after his predecessor, Abdalla Yusuf.
Some were hopeful and truly believed that Mr Sharif would work to reconcile the feuding Somalis and rebuild their tattered nation. Unfortunately that hope was short- lived. Whilst the failure of Mr. Sharif’s tenure cannot be recounted here, it is worth highlighting some of the more deliberate and jarring ones:
Shortly after he was elected, Mr. Sharif wasted no time in seeking the help of the Ethiopian regime – a support for which he had previously criticised his predecessor, Abdalla Yusuf.
His opponents allege that President Sharif not only lacks effective decision-making skills to lead a government, but even worse, he has also been accused of being shamelessly self-serving, and therefore not be trusted.  A case in point was that when the President met the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, earlier this year, Sharif failed to observe a simple but requisite protocol for a visit of this nature and undiplomatically excluded his foreign minister from the meeting with Ms. Clinton. His befuddled, and soon to-be deposed, foreign minister was still lounging at the Embassy reception whilst the former Sheik basked in the glow of Ms. Clinton who could only make a disparaging statement that  “He [Sharif] is the best hope we’ve had in quite some time for a return to stability and the possibility of progress in Somalia”.
We can only speculate as to what transpired between Mr. Sharif and Ms. Clinton. What is clear from his short, but doomed presidency is that he is far from giving the beleaguered Somali people even the slightest glimmer of hope. In fact, the general fear among the population of Mogadishu is that whenever Mr Sharif leaves or re-enters his two mile protected areas, AMISOM continually shells the main Bakara market, the same area where 30 civilians were killed in a single day as a collective punishment for residing in an area controlled by his opponents.
The international NGOs reported that the AMISOM’s civilian casualty rate has reached more than five thousands since AMISOM came to Mogadishu, and yet unsurprisingly the President never spoke against the civilian casualties caused by his supreme Generals (AMISOM).
If shelling civilians and consorting with the dictator Meles Zenawi is bad enough, Mr. Sharif’s biggest crime to date is the selling of our continental sea-shelf to President Mwai Kibaki, despite the fact that members of parliament voted unanimously against this treacherous act. He, in turn, blamed the parliament for intervening in the government’s fundraising strategies!
In short, the above leadership assessment clearly proves that Mr Sharif lacks the experience, skills and patriotism needed for the reconciliation and rebuilding of the Somali nation. Those who know Somali history well will acknowledge that Somali people will never accept any imposed government, engineered from outside, as well as foreign interventions.
The political manoeuvrings of Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah had made Somali an experimental field for bad policies in order to advance his self-interest since there is a possibility of him standing for election in Mauritania.  I hope his questionable policy will not be transposed to another brother state.
Currently, there are allegations that Somalis have now inherited the most corrupt and incompetence government in their history and the two –mile President (Mr. Sharif) can easily win the Award for the Most Dishonest President in the entire world, and if not removed, could cause continuation of civil war in Somalia, and the replication of the Afghani situation.

By Hussein Soyan – The writer was formerly a candidate for president of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia – Nairobi, Kenya, where debates on reconciliation and mediation between warlords helped lead to the previous Transitional Federal Government of Somalia. [email protected]

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