By Ismail H. Warsame
Garowe – October 25, 2025
Garowe is holding its breath again — or perhaps choking. Every time the Puntland House of Representatives convenes for a “session,” the city’s narrow arteries clog with Toyotas sporting tinted windows, pickup trucks overloaded with bewildered guards, and ministers who think parliamentary duty means parking diagonally across the road.
The show begins: 57th Session, another sequel in a long-running tragicomedy titled “Sessions of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing.” The plot remains the same, only the actors grow older.
The Road to Nowhere — Literally
The first victim of Puntland’s legislative tradition isn’t corruption or incompetence — it’s traffic. Every session paralyzes Garowe. Ordinary citizens, already suffocating in economic hardship, now find themselves trapped behind barricades manned by “honourable” Members of Parliament whose legislative output is inversely proportional to the number of roadblocks they erect.
It’s as if traffic congestion were the real legislative achievement — a perfect metaphor for governance in Puntland: immobile, noisy, and exhaust-spewing, with progress stalled at every intersection.
The Agenda Nobody Reads
Inside the air-conditioned hall, the Speaker clears his throat and opens a folder thicker than the State’s debt ledger. Inside lie the ghosts of unfulfilled promises: unpaid salaries, collapsing institutions, economic paralysis, demoralized civil servants, ISIS in the mountains, Al-Shabaab in the plains, SSC in political limbo, and the specter of the 2026 federal elections.
All are quietly postponed to “next time.” And in Garowe, “next time” means never.
Every session ends the same way — with resolutions so vague that even the drafters forget their intent. Puntland’s legislative record now reads like a museum catalogue of abandoned intentions.
The only sound that remains constant is the Speaker’s gavel — thumping desperately like a doctor applying CPR to a patient long declared dead.
And then comes the familiar ritual: the rubber-stamped budget.
Millions approved, millions unaccounted for. Not a single parliamentary committee has ever dared to trace where those funds go. In Puntland, oversight is heresy, and obedience is law. The House doesn’t legislate; it laminates. The so-called “people’s representatives” are not watchdogs — they are the government’s decorative carpets.
Lawmakers Without Mandate
Across Somalia, the legitimacy crisis has become a national epidemic. Presidents and MPs sit on expired mandates like old batteries refusing to die. Puntland, once the proud model of federal order, has joined the same club — clinging to legality not through constitutional principle, but through the noise of motorcades and the glare of sirens.
The 57th Session, therefore, isn’t a deliberative body; it’s a reunion of expired politicians pretending to govern a bankrupt state. Think of an orchestra where every musician has lost their instrument but still insists on performing. The result is not music — it’s noise.
The Great Silence Over Real Issues
Outside the hall, Garowe gasps. The price of food climbs like a thief in the night; the shilling has vanished from circulation many years ago. Teachers and police go months unpaid; insecurity grows like a weed in every district.
Yet inside, the “honourables” debate ceremonial motions of “solidarity” and “concern.” The irony is painful — the lawmakers live on allowances while the people live on miracles.
Even existential threats — ISIS, Al-Shabaab, SSC-Khatumo’s fragile status — are treated as casual afterthoughts. The House of Representatives, once envisioned as the moral compass of Puntland, has become a stage for procedural acrobatics — motions without movement, sessions without substance, and debates without direction.
Epilogue: Waiting for a Session That Works
The citizens have stopped expecting reform; they expect performance. The legislative calendar now reads like a horoscope of despair:
“Today, traffic will be heavy. Parliamentary discussions will be inconclusive. Hope will be postponed until further notice.”
And so the 57th Session will end as the 56th did — with applause, adjournment, and another round of unpaid salaries. When the convoy engines fade and the barricades lift, the people will sigh with relief, knowing nothing has changed.
Puntland will continue its slow march in circles, led by a parliament that confuses sessions for progress and applause for achievement.
WDM Editorial Verdict
A parliament that rubber-stamps budgets it never reviews is not a legislature — it’s an accessory to executive impunity.
In Garowe, progress doesn’t move — it parks.
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