The Honorable Mayor of Hargeisa, Abdirahman Mohamoud Aideed ‘Soltelco’, addressed, Monday evening, the Somaliland Community in Stockholm and area, Sweden, and supporters of the sovereignty at a well-turned out function held in his honor and the Hargeisa Council delegation he led.
The Mayor’s speech, after proper greetings and expression of gratitude for the reception accorded him and his delegation, is copied below:
First of all, I would like to express my sincere appreciation for inviting us to this beloved city and country where we share many common good things and have a reputable Somaliland community, who positively and continuously participate the development of their country. Once again, thank you very much for give me the opportunity to address this meeting.
In 1884, the British have taken over from the Turko-Egyptian rule and established over our land the British Somaliland protectorate, a country which on the 26th of June 1960 had taken its independence from Britain as the Republic of Somaliland.
The people of Somaliland, then, in pursuit of long-awaited dream, to form a Great Somalia consisting of the five Somali regions in the Horn of Africa including; Djibouti, Somaliland, Somali Region of Ethiopia, Italian Somali Trusteeship and North Eastern Region of Kenya, united with Italian Somali Trusteeship, as a first step of unifying all the Somali inhabited parts of the region.
The dream of our people was to establish a Greater Somalia, a dream which have lived until recently, but become in vain, because of the opposition of the regional countries, and later on the treatment that Somaliland people got from their brothers, whom they voluntarily united with, and instead of welcoming and making them part of the country, treated them as a second-class citizens, alienated us, killed, displaced our people and destroyed our cities and forced our population to become refugees throughout the world, which then deterred other parts to join the union.
Somaliland reclaimed its independence in 1991, and since then, worked hard to establish rule and law, government institutions and lived peace with itself and its neighbors without terrorist cells, no pirates and no-safe-haven to any criminal or terrorist groups.
Somaliland does exist now 25 years and is a mature and de-facto country, where the refusal of recognition and being part of the international community, is equal and tantamount to us, as being non-existent for the long 25 years we were organizing our home and lived peace and tranquility with our neighbors.
Somaliland has proved to be worth acceptance by the International community and at long last, being fair to us to appreciate with what we have achieved and our long history and stop treating us a renegade and successions regions from the motherland, while we are a self-determined and a country with long history, with international demarcated borders and just reclaiming our independence.
Somaliland is now a democratic country with all the required institutions and have successfully conducted presidential elections whereby the incumbent accepted defeat unlike to many other African countries, parliamentarian and local council elections. Our cities are now governed by an elected council, including our capital, whereby, I was elected as a counselor and my fellow colleagues then elected me as the Mayor of the city.
Lastly, we would like to request from the government of Sweden and the management of Stockholm city, to continue helping us our country institutions, including the Local Governments whereby we have inherited a destroyed and neglected city, Hargeisa, where the population has tripled for the last decade and the available resources with the municipality is very meager and cannot cope with the required services.
I would also highly request and recommend to the Swedish community to invest our country as we have many sectors and area that can be invested and very potential to be exploited and benefited from them. These are included natural resources and other sectors.
Once again, thank you very much and I highly appreciate the reception we were accorded during this visit and our previous visits and we hope to have a fruitful and productive visit at the end.
Thank you very much
Abdirahman Mohamoud Ayidid
Mayor of Hargeisa
