Somalia H.E. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre, Deputy Prime Minister Salah Ahmed Jama, Senate Speaker Abdi Hashi Abdullahi, the Acting Speaker of the House of the People Sadiya Yasin Haji Samatar, Members of Parliament, the Banadir Regional Governor and Mayor of Mogadishu Dr. Hassan Mohamed Hussein (Muungaab), security chiefs and the officials who organised the week’s events attended the ceremony, which closed a week of celebration that drew historic turnout across Somalia and among Somali communities around the world. Artists performed patriotic works throughout the evening, drawing warm tributes from the leaders who spoke.
Delivering the final address of the night, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud thanked everyone who took part in planning Independence Week and reflected on the crowds that filled Taleh Junction in the capital, people who had come to Mogadishu from every corner of the country, some serving in government, others working in the private sector, and who stood together as one nation.
The President then turned to the fight against Al-Shabaab and made the announcement that will define the coming period. The government, he said, has a clear plan to end Al-Shabaab and will launch a final push to remove the group from the country, with the plan to be shared with the Somali public once it is finalised. Marking 66 years of independence, he called on the fighters of Al-Shabaab to end the destruction of their country and return to their people and their government, and he once again announced an amnesty for any fighter who lays down his arms and surrenders to the government and the security agencies.
On the question of Somaliland, the President extended an open invitation to dialogue. He asked the people of Somaliland to come to the table with their grievances and said the government is ready to do what it takes to address their concerns. The path of division they are seeking is not a solution, he said, and Somalis are not separable.
The President was equally direct on the question of Israel. Somalia cannot have any form of relations with Israel, he declared, and there is no place for Israel in any part of Somalia. He warned that Israel holds no benefit for anyone who deals with it, saying it leaves behind a trail of destruction.
At the heart of his address stood a promise on the country’s democratic future. The era of personalised politics built around individuals is over, the President said; the politics of Somalia has been organised, and anyone aspiring to lead the people must belong to a political party with a clear manifesto. Clan-based politics belongs to the past and the future is merit-based, he said, urging respect for the constitution and the institutions that every community endorsed through its representation under the old system. He assured the public that they will never again be led by a person they did not directly vote for, and that after 58 years the citizens of Somalia will have the opportunity to take part in a democratic exercise.
The President also confirmed that the Federal Government will deliver on the commitments set out moments earlier by the Prime Minister. He recalled the government’s pledge to hire 10,000 teachers and to unify the national examinations, noting that while the full number has not yet been reached, a significant share has been recruited. The main setback, he said, has been the administration of Puntland, which refused the recruitment of a first round of 700 teachers and blocked the construction of a teacher training college by the Federal Government. He also rejected as a blatant lie the accusation by the Puntland administration that the Federal Government has deployed new forces to the state, explaining that the unit in question consists of national forces that have been based in Puntland for the past seven months, are officially registered, and have been earning a monthly salary. The Federal Government in Mogadishu, he said, works for the unity and progress of its people and is not a place from which to divide Somalis or incite them against one another.
The President’s remarks on Puntland followed a forceful address by Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre, who spoke of politicians who stand against the unity of the Somali people. “There are politicians who reject the coming together of the Somali people, and who have turned the areas they control into a prison for those living there,” the Prime Minister said.
The Prime Minister told the story of a Somali soldier who walked from Bosaso to Jowhar, on to Baidoa and finally to Mogadishu in pursuit of a national cause, swore an oath to defend his country, and lost colleagues in the fight to protect it, only for someone to take away his freedom and treat his membership of the government, his salary and the rank he earned through outstanding service as a crime. “When did it become a crime for a Somali soldier, denied his salary by those who confined him, to receive a salary and a promotion from his own government?” he asked, telling the ceremony that such logic is upside down. The Federal Government leads and represents that soldier, he said, and it will pay him
Whether the Puntland administration likes it or not, the Prime Minister continued, the government will pay that soldier and tens of thousands more it intends to employ, and every new intake of the national armed forces will include a section drawn from Puntland. He said the Federal Government will not allow the isolation that Puntland’s leadership seeks to impose on its own people, denying them their livelihoods. The obstruction, he added, goes beyond army recruitment: the Puntland administration has also refused the recruitment of teachers from the region by the national government and turned away federal development projects for its people, including roads, politicising the progress and quality of life of the region’s population.
Earlier in the evening, Deputy Prime Minister Salah Ahmed Jama set the tone of the night with an address on unity. “The unity of the country requires organised politics,” he told the ceremony, thanking the artists whose performances carried the patriotic spirit of the week. He recalled meeting a Somali farmer who had settled in Togo, a country the man chose for its peace and trustworthiness, and drew from it a simple conclusion: if Somalia delivers peace and strong institutions to its people, Somalis are among the most productive communities anywhere and will achieve great things.
The Deputy Prime Minister cautioned that the celebratory mood should not obscure the threats the country faces, from actors working hard to divide the nation to the dangers of climate change, with heavy floods forecast in the period ahead. The Somali people, he said, remain among the most resilient communities in the world. He paid tribute to the men and women in uniform whose work made the week’s peaceful celebrations possible, some of whom paid the ultimate price, and said that when a country is evaluated, it is judged first on whether it has a constitution, which Somalia, he noted with gratitude, has in complete form, and second on whether it is democratic, a process the country is now firmly within, moving toward party-based politics and one person one vote like the rest of the world.
Speaking as a politician from the northern regions, the Deputy Prime Minister said elections and democracy are the foundation of complete unity and a necessary step that will bring the country together. He reminded the people of the north that they were long the fabric that held the Somali community together but have lately been isolating themselves, and he urged them to stop, to take their share in power sharing, as his own position demonstrates, and to take part in state building and leadership. Somalia, he said, is for everyone.
The ceremony closed an Independence Week that ran from 26 June, the anniversary of the independence of the northern regions from British rule in 1960, through 1 July, the day the northern and southern regions united to found the Somali Republic. Organised under the national committee chaired by the Minister of Interior, Federal Affairs and Reconciliation H.E. Ali Yusuf Ali Hosh, the week brought celebrations to every part of the country and to Somali embassies and communities across the world, from Algiers to Beijing, in what officials and observers alike described as a turnout without precedent in the modern history of the national day.
