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Muse returned to Garowe on June 5 and, on June 13, failed to show up at parliament to answer questions about security, the economy and his alleged overriding of laws. On the same day, he fired the governor of the Nugal region, Abdullahi Isse, who had reportedly leagued with the parliamentary dissenters. On June 14, Muse made his ill-fated attempt to freeze the value of the Somali shilling and, on June 16, he assumed direct control over Puntland's security forces, a move that baffled observers, since Puntland's constitution stipulates that the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Muse also remained steadfast in his rejection of a question session in parliament.
That Muse's initiatives and responses were defensive is evidenced by his delay of an expected cabinet reshuffle meant to consolidate his control over his administration. Local media attributed the delay to the resistance of powerful ministers and pressure from Yusuf who feared that a shake-up would increase instability.
On June 17, Muse gave his keynote address to parliament, focusing on health, education and economic development. Hashi replied to Muse's speech with an alternative agenda, including irregularities in the budget, consideration of agreements with foreign companies and the transition from a non-party to a multi-party political system. The stage was set for confrontation.
The slide toward instability became steeper on June 19, when the mayor of Bossasso, Khadar Haji Mire, was hit by a vote of no confidence of 19-0-2 from the city's district council, which accused him of abuses of power and of selling off public land. Refusing to accept the decision, Mire showed up at the mayor's office with two battlewagons and 30 militiamen. Muse reacted quickly, declaring the council's action illegal because neither the mayor nor an official from the Ministry of Local Government was present at the vote.
On June 21, Muse attempted to deflect growing dissent by accusing the political opposition to the T.F.G., which is based in Eritrea, of trying to undermine his administration, blaming "the Asmara group" for the Somaliland raid into Sanaag and for the district council's action against Mire, claiming that the council members had been bribed by the opposition.
Thrown into a defensive posture and bowing to pressure, Muse, accompanied by several of his cabinet ministers, acquiesced in a question session in parliament on June 24. Amid questioning on the export of natural stones and the counterfeiting of Somali shillings, the proceedings broke down into acrimony and Hashi brought them to a close before legislators had a chance to put forward all of their concerns. Local media noted that the wave of dissent was unprecedented in the history of Puntland's normally acquiescent parliament.
On June 27, another round of questioning cut deeper into Muse's performance. Legislators demanded explanations for why government workers went unpaid when the budget had been increased by 12 percent, complaining that they had been given no accounting of how funds had been spent. Muse reportedly left the session in anger.
The looming confrontation erupted on July 4, when -- on a vote of 25-16-6 -- parliament sent back the administration's 2006 budget review to Muse without approving it, citing "discrepancies" in which some agencies -- the presidency and the Ministry of Finance -- had been given more funds than parliament had allocated to them, and others -- the security forces, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Interior -- had been given less than had been allocated.
Reacting to his first political crisis, Muse met with his ministers on July 6 to discuss the administration's relations with parliament and its positions toward the reconciliation process, the folding of Puntland's security forces into the T.F.G. and the T.F.G.'s opposition to agreements with foreign companies and states. He promised to set up a constitutional court that had been provided in Puntland's 1998 constitution, a move that observers marked as a means to allow him to override parliament.
Tensions remained high through the second week of July, breaking into the open on July 16, when Hashi revealed that he had been given a copy of a letter from the chief justice of Puntland's High Court, Ahmed Said Abdi, requesting Puntland's attorney general to bring charges against the speaker. On July 17, Abdi resigned, only to retract his resignation on July 19, reportedly after being pressured by the administration to do so.
On July 20, a cabinet committee met with a parliamentary committee appointed by Hashi to discuss legislators' accusations that Muse, Afqura and Abdi were attempting to "silence" the speaker. The ministers apologized to Hashi and promised that Muse would issue an official apology shortly. Garowe Online reported that the attorney general had refused to press charges because he had no case against the speaker.
On July 22, Muse issued a formal apology, in return for which parliament would reinstate his ally, former speaker Osman Dalmar, who had been ousted for misconduct. That move sparked opposition from elders in the Sanaag region who accused Muse of interfering in the region's choice of its representatives. On July 23, Muse fired his security minister, Ahmad Abdi Habade, from the Sool region, who had reportedly urged the attorney general not to bring charges against Hashi. Muse also fired Puntland's auditor general, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan, from the Sanaag region, in order to gain control over his increasingly fractious administration.
On July 25 and 26, dissent burst into the streets, with demonstrations in Garowe against Puntland's hyper-inflation that ended with stones being thrown at the president. On July 28, an autonomous authority was set up in the Sanaag region, which has become a base for politicians who had been marginalized by Muse's shake-ups and policies. On July 29, a Somaliland delegation visited the Puntland-claimed parts of the Sool region for the first time since the 2002 annexation.
Meanwhile, Yusuf and Muse held discussions in Garowe on "political and security issues," with Muse promising that Puntland was ready to help the T.F.G. On August 1, Muse announced an agreement to fold Puntland's security forces into the T.F.G., giving Yusuf what he wanted and, perhaps, gaining external support to prop up his administration. In his speech on the ninth anniversary of Puntland's autonomy, Muse said that there is a "need to deal with people who oppose the administration of Puntland."
Conclusion
Although it is far too early to project the results of Puntland's unprecedented slide toward instability, it is clear that the sub-state's presidentialist system has been weakened and that Muse is on the defensive -- with each move that he makes to consolidate his power, he narrows his machine and alienates more political and social forces that become actual and potential power centers. If that process continues, Puntland will be subject to the same devolutionary cycle that PINR has repeatedly described in its accounts of Somalia's southern regions.
The causes of Puntland's current instability reside primarily in fundamental structural factors and secondarily in Muse's "performance failure." Those factors can be presented in a series of questions.
What is Puntland's juridical and political status in "Somalia"? Does Yusuf have the power to get his way and control Puntland through the T.F.G. and use it as a resource to achieve his broader political aims? How will a weakened Puntland administration cope with the problem of negotiating the tightrope act of defending Puntland's particular interests in the context of broader national reconciliation? Will internal opposition to Muse lead to the fragmentation of Puntland and the appearance of the decentralized politics characteristic of Somalia's southern regions, or will the oppositions coalesce and shift the balance of power between the branches of government relatively peacefully? How emboldened will Somaliland become in the pursuit of its territorial claims? To what degree will the political opposition to the T.F.G., which includes Jama Ali Jama among its prominent figures and is slated to hold its own national conference in September, attempt to intervene in Puntland's politics? Will nonpayment of civil servants, deployment of security forces in the south and hyper-inflation continue; and will interests disaffected by Muse's policies and investment and trade agreements harden their opposition, setting the stage for a popular movement aimed at removing the president, which can be achieved by a two-thirds majority of parliament? Will the T.F.G. and its Ethiopian ally attempt to rescue Muse if his authority collapses?
All of the preceding questions are open and they do not exhaust the relevant possibilities. They show, instead, the complexity of Puntland's political situation at the present moment. As events unfold, it appears that the underlying structural tensions shaping Puntland's politics were subdued by Yusuf and his machine, and that they have now come to the surface because Muse lacks Yusuf's political skills, military resources and power base -- he simply does not have the clout that is necessary to keep a machine functioning and, therefore, he has not been able to make a presidentialist formula work.
Occupying one-third of the territory of the original Somali republic and with one-quarter of its population, Puntland's stability is crucial to the success of broader reconciliation efforts and to stability in the Horn of Africa. If Puntland enters a devolutionary cycle, any national accord will be more difficult to achieve; if major armed conflict breaks out between Puntland and Somaliland, there will be a threat of instability spreading through the Horn of Africa.
None of the possibilities offered here has a precise probability attached to it. What is clear is that Puntland's relative stability can no longer be taken for granted by international political actors and foreign investors. Puntland has come into play.
Report Drafted By:
Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
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