Abdirizak Haji Hussein was a role model of desirable, honest and trustful quality
Hussein died of pneumonia on 31 January 2014 in USA, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hussein was a career politician; Hussein is remembered for his emphasis on responsible leadership.
Most of his Cabinet members and director generals were educated, young and energetic professionals who had been selected on the basis of merit. Hussein was of high integral personality. Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. Mahatma Gandhi said that , There are seven things that will destroy us: Wealth without work; Pleasure without conscience; Knowledge without character; Religion without sacrifice; Politics without principle; Science without humanity; Business without ethics, have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.
During his tenure as Somalia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Hussein also signed a number of international agreements on the country’s behalf, including the International Convention on Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Openness, stability, fairness, anti-corruption and anti-nepotism, and good governance characterized his political career, particularly his tenure as Prime Minister.
There is no gift bigger than winning the hearts and minds of others that may not connected by blood. I myself being originated from Somaliland capital, Hargisa which is almost 1500 KM away from Hussein birth place, I acknowledge and recognize Hussein as only few Somali politicians distinguish esteem and truthfulness, admirable and high regard. a brief underline of his biography.
Hussein was born in 1924 in Galkayo, the capital of the north-central mudug region of Somalia. His family hailed from the. He studied the Qur’an under his father, Hajji Hussein Atosh, who was an authority on Islam. Hussein was largely self-educated and was fluent in both Italian and English.
From 1942 to 1949, Hussein served as an officer in the British Military Administration, including as an interpreter. He was also a clerk during the early periods of the trust territory of Somalia. Hussein joined the Somali Youth League. He subsequently became a Galkayo Councillor in 1954, during the nation’s first municipal elections.
In June 1955, Hussein was sent to the United Nations, where he presented a petition on the SYL’s behalf. He was elected the party’s Secretary General a few months later, and became a Member of Parliament for the Nugal District of the Mudug region in 1959. That same year, Hussein elected to the National Assembly in 1959.
During this period, he was also the president of the Higher Institute of Law and Economics and would later go on to becoming the president of the University Institute. In the first post-independence government of Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, Hussein served as Minister of Interior from 1960 to 1962, and Minister of Public Works and Communications from 1962 to 1964.
Countrywide municipal elections, in which SYL won 74 percent of the seats, occurred in November 1963. These were followed in March 1964 by the country’s first post independence national interest. . Again the SYL triumphed, winning 69 out of 123 parliamentary seats. The party’s true margin of victory was even greater, as the fifty-four seats won by the opposition were divided among a number of small parties.
After the 1964 National Assembly election in March, a crisis occurred that left Somalia without a government until the beginning of September. President Osman who was empowered to propose the candidate for prime minister after an election or the fall of a government, chose Abdirizak Haji Hussein as his nominee instead of the incumbent, Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, who had the endorsement of the SYL party leadership.
Shermarke had been prime minister for the four previous years, and Osman decided that new leadership might be able to introduce fresh ideas for solving national problems.In drawing up a Council of Ministers for presentation to the National Assembly, the nominee for prime minister chose candidates on the basis of ability and without regard to place of origin. But Hussein’s choices strained intraparty relations and broke the unwritten rules that there be clan and regional balance. For instance, only two members of Shermarke’s cabinet were to be retained, and the number of posts in northern hands was to be increased from two to five.
The SYL’s governing Central Committee and its parliamentary groups became split. Hussein had been a party member since 1944 and had participated in the two previous Shermarke cabinets. His primary appeal was to younger and more educated party members. Several political leaders who had been left out of the cabinet joined the supporters of Shermarke to form an opposition group within the party. As a result, the Hussein faction sought support among non-SYL members of the National Assembly.
Although the disagreements primarily involved personal or group political ambitions, the debate leading to the initial vote of confidence cantered on the issue of Greater Somalia. Both Osman and prime minister-designate Hussein wanted to give priority to the country’s internal economic and social problems.The proposed cabinet failed to be affirmed by a margin of two votes. Seven National Assembly members, including Shermarke, abstained, while forty-eight members of the SYL voted for Hussein and thirty-three opposed him. Despite the apparent split in the SYL, it continued to attract recruits from other parties. In the first three months after the election, seventeen members of the parliamentary opposition resigned from their parties to join the SYL.
Osman ignored the results of the vote and again nominated Hussein as prime minister. After intraparty negotiation, which included the reinstatement of four party officials expelled for voting against him, Hussein presented a second cabinet list to the National Assembly that included all but one of his earlier nominees. However, the proposed new cabinet contained three additional ministerial positions filled by men chosen to mollify opposition factions. The new cabinet was approved with the support of all but a handful of SYL National Assembly members. Hussein remained in office until the presidential elections of June 1967.
The 1967 presidential elections, conducted by a secret poll of National Assembly members, pitted former Prime Minister Shermarke against Osman. Again the central issue was moderation versus militancy on the pan-Somali question. Osman, through Hussein, had stressed priority for internal development. Shermarke, who had served as prime minister when pan-Somalism was at its height, was elected president of the republic.
Immediately after the military coup that overthrew the civilian government in 1969, Hussein became a political prisoner and remained in detention from 1969 to April 1973. In 1974, he was appointed as Somalia’s representative to the United Nations in 1974, and he held that position until 1979.
During the Somali civil war, Hussein was called on several times to help reconcile the warring parties. On May 6, 2001, an effort by the transitional national government (TNG) to create the National Commission for Reconciliation and Property Settlement (NCRPS), a 25-member working body, was stalled when Abdirizak Haji Hussein was named as its chief. The Somalia reconciliation and restorational council SRRC) and puntland’s then leadership opposed the bid.
On July 25 2001, Hussein resigned from the post. In conclusion, as mentioned above, Hussein died of pneumonia on 31 January 2014 in USA, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hussein was of high integral personality and his name has left a good legacy among the Somalis regardless of any part.
Integrity is one of the most important and oft-cited of virtue terms. Integrity’ refers to a quality of a person’s character. Integrity is also attributed to various parts or aspects of a person’s life. We speak of attributes such as professional, intellectual and artistic integrity.
However, the most philosophically important sense of the term ‘integrity’ relates to general character. Philosophers have been particularly concerned to understand what it is for a person to exhibit integrity throughout life.What is it to be a person of integrity? Ordinary discourse about integrity involves two fundamental intuitions: first, that integrity is primarily a formal relation one has to oneself or between parts or aspects of one’s self; and second, that integrity is connected in an important way to acting morally, in other words, there are some substantive or normative constraints on what it is to act with integrity.
A number of accounts have been advanced, the most important of them being: integrity as the integration of self; integrity as maintenance of identity; integrity as standing for something; integrity as moral purpose; and integrity as a virtue. These accounts are reviewed below. We then examine several issues that have been of central concern to philosophers exploring the concept of integrity: the relations between types of integrity, integrity and moral theory, and integrity and social and political conditions. Integrity is the power of truth. Finally, It is certain that his death has left a good memory among the Somalis. I beg from Greater Allah that his soul remain and rest on peace. Ameen.
ismail lugweyne. Rabasoro55@hotmail.co.uk