I
lived more than half of his life in Hargeisa; I witnessed a lot of things that
changed my views towards politics. Unlike other African countries, In
Somaliland the elections are more fair and transparent. Ethiopia had elections in 2005, and the
former prime minister won over 9o percent of the votes. When I hear that kind
of news, I assume that there is something wrong with those elections. The National Electoral Commission is an independent
and works with other international election commissions. In 2010, the president
won 49 percent of the votes where as former president won about 33 percent and
the other candidate won 18 percent. This numbers make sense, therefore there is
no reason I couldn’t trust the NEC. I will argue that there is democracy in
Somaliland because of the peacefully gradual and exclusive elections.
I
voted in 2010 and I voted ones and most of my family members did the same.
Through my career I did not witness any cheating. Even though I did know about these
recent elections but I talked lots of different people. Some of them are saying
the counting was going really well and numbers are very convenient while others
are saying people where voting more than ones. I did not vote so it is hard to
prove, but some of our students told me they saw a bit of corruption even
though the security was tight. There were also international observers who were
carefully welcomed the process of voting.
It
was a huge debate whether it was democratic elections or not. However, I did not vote, because I did not
know the candidates nor did I listen to their speeches. On this Thursday, it
was excitement for some parts in Hargeisa whereas it was disappointment in the
other parts. Earlier this week, there
was a party who said, “The Election committee is messing up the results.” The election Committee asked them if they
could prove it.
There
were a number of NGOs and other European organizations who reported different
perspectives on these elections. Dr. Steve Kibble, the head of International
Election Observers in Somaliland said that most of the people were overwhelmed
how the elections were going on and that
there some problems in the voting process and sometimes people were running out
of ballot papers. The other problem was that people were showing their ID cards
and putting down their names on the list and not a lot of people had their IDs.
An officer of the NEC was asked about these issues and he responded, “We are
doing what we can.” He continued and said, “They’re obviously a bit overwhelmed
by the pressure themselves and…there’s not that many of them to respond to
these situations.” [1]The
international observers met earlier this week, even though some of the team
will remain in Somaliland to give out full report about the elections.
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