IT IS ALMOST A CHECKMATE!

Farmaajo has cornered the opposition and used their political naïveté against them and as a result, he turned the tables to his advantage. Sadly, accusing Farmaajo of corruption and vote-buying will simply fall on deaf ears now as many of the presidential candidates injudiciously gave direct political, moral, and legal support to those who engaged in corruption, nepotism, and vote-buying in a broad daylight. Consequently, they lost whatever political and moral authorities they might have had.

Unless a direct violent military confrontation is staged, it is going to be extremely difficult to stop Farmaajo and his Qatar alliance from stealing the election. However, a violent military confrontation against Farmaajo has no legal, political, or moral justifications for the reason given above. In short, supporting publicly what Khadar Guled did and denouncing the selection of Yasin Farey as a federal MP is a colossal moral and political hypocrisy that will boomerang on them with a devastating political consequence.

For the opposition, as things stand now, there are few options with time-sensitive and very short political shelf life. The most plausible ones from a pool of bad options are as follows:

• Accept defeat and continue participating in the selection (election) process, grinding the teeth in despair, and praying for miracles along the way. This is handing victory to Farmaajo, plunging the country into an uncertain future, and betraying the Somali people’s democratic political aspirations.
• Boycott the entire selection (election) process because Farmaajo is not conducting the election in accordance with the provisional Somali federal constitution and political agreements reached by all stakeholders in the run-up to the selection (election).
• Call for an emergency national consultative conference as soon as possible whereby all the Somali political stakeholders are invited. Federal member states’ presidents, the presidential candidates, and prominent opposition leaders could unite on a political platform to organize this emergency national consultative conference with the sole objective of making sure that the the election takes place as soon as possible and the processes are democratic, transparent, and inclusive.

Allowing Farmaajo to steal the election is not an option. Hence, we must do everything we can to prevent the looming disaster from happening. The Somali people deserve a better future!

As the saying goes, “Ceelna uma qodna, cidina uma maqna!”