Somaliland Election problems/Interpeace; Friend or Foe ?

 

All indications are that the much anticipated Somaliland election will be postponed once again due to incompetence on the part of the Election Commission which by most observers seems to be unfit and unqualified to do the job.

Their failure is compounded by an administration unwilling or incapable to live up to its commitments to the people and the international community and contribute their portion of the funds necessary to undertake the elections.

In a recent visit to Hargeysa, Donor nations vowed to keep funding the election on the condition that the administration pays their portion of the funds ($1Million S/L -9Million Donor Nations). Anticipating the elections being postponed again due to the late hour and the lack of progress on reconciling the voter registration rolls Donor Nations insisted on full financial transparency and accountability from the administration and the Election Commission before they incur any more expenditure on their part.
This has all the hallmarks of a road well traveled where “something “happens that necessitates postponing the election yet again. The first time it was because we needed to register voters before we could have the elections (after being in office for five years the administration had an epiphany just as the election was to take place), the second time it was because we did not have enough time to register the voters, and yes while we are at it can we please also extend the president’s term long enough to stay in office until after the new election date? And now it is because……you can fill in the blanks;

a) More time is needed to purge the voter registration from duplicate registration.
b) The administration refuses to provide their portion of the funds necessary to hold the election.
c) Donor nations are making accountability a condition to further funds being released.

We are on familiar grounds once again and once again it is time to find a reason why it is not possible to conduct the elections on time and set a new date. The prospect of another crisis is assured, the difference this time is that the Guurti may not want to play ball with the president and grant him another extension.

Attempting to remove the chairman of the Guurti and failing to do so will most likely create a somewhat more hostile environment for the president to get his wishes (another extension) this time. And since the Guurti is the only body under the constitution capable of extending the president’s term, the administration may be in a pickle this time.

Of course this would be a problem if the law actually worked in Somaliland, but since it has been proven in the past that the law is only valid when it is in agreement with the president’s version of what is lawful and what is not, chances are that a new loophole will be created to fix the problem for the presidents and a new paradigm shift will allow him to stay in power until voters get the message that in Somaliland, one man, one vote, one time is the norm.

To add insult to injury it seems to a good number of people that the “help” provided by the Donor nations and administered by Interpeace is at a best a contributing factor to why the elections are constantly being postponed. At worst, Interpeace is enabling an administration that is not too keen in holding elections and giving them the very excuse they need to engage in delay tactics that bring the nation to a boiling crisis, where the alternative is either to keep them in place and extend their hold on power longer or the end of peace and stability as we know it in Somaliland will come to pass as the argument goes.

The difficulties cited by the Election Commission on why interested parties need to accept another election delay and possibly extend the president’s term is that the main server required a new “face recognition” software capable of removing duplicate registrations, and that the main operator was actually in India attempting to resolve the issue remotely. Now without getting into the lunacy of hinging the country’s election to the remote skills of an Indian (no matter how skillful), it is worth noting that if all the bugs are removed and this new software actually does everything that it is supposed to do, it will take this sever to run non stop a minimum of 30 days, 8hours a day of continuous operations before it resolves the problem of identifying duplicate registration. Of course if for whatever reason thirty days are not enough......more time may be required.

Now, the question is why change software and get one which will run much slower, less reliable and more complex than the one which originally came with the system that identified fingerprints? Why allow so many people to game the system and create the need to “clean” the registration rolls at this late hour? Why not start addressing the problem at the regional level before it got compounded into a national one? Is there a process where one can challenge the final result? Who is in charge of that process?

Since Interpeace is in charge of the actual registration process and is also in charge of handling all the ensuing technical issues, perhaps they can explain to the rest of us why they allowed this many problems to go unresolved for so long and bring the country back to the brink once again. It is one thing to improve the system, it is totally another when one makes perfect the enemy of good and the cure ends up killing the patient.

Somaliland conducted three successful elections without a single delay in any of them, now that we have Interpeace in the mix , elections are turning into something akin to mission impossible, and no one can say with much confidence when or whether election will come to be in Somaliland.

They say that the road to Hell is paved with good intention and it is time that Donor nations remind Interpeace that they are supposed to help the process, not hinder it and to get out of the way and allow people to vote and bring democracy back to Somaliland. Requiring one to pass a facial recognition software with a yet to be determined accuracy level before one is allowed to vote is simply outrageous.

 

 

 

 

Mahdi Gabose
East Africa Policy Institute
www.eastafricapi.com