Haatuf once again assumes its self-declared role as the ‘singular protector’ of Somaliland from its ‘enemies’ hiding in very nook and cranny:

In its latest editorial on December 18, 2005, Haatuf news paper criticized the visit of the newly elected speaker of parliament, along with one member of the parliament, to the neighboring republic of Djibouti. The visit came immediately after the ‘resolution’ of the tense confrontation that resulted from the election of the speaker, from a coalition of the two opposition parties of UCID and Kulmiye.

Before his departure to Djibouti, the speaker shared his two deputies with the nature of the trip. Irrespective of this, Hatuf newspaper, the ever protector of ‘beleaguered’ Somaliland bounced on the trip and made mountains out of it.

Haatuf insinuated in the editorial that the newly speaker of the parliament, Mr. Cirro, and his companion with the trip, Khadar ambassador, were engaged in malicious conspiracy against Somaliland’s Berbera port use agreement with Ethiopia in cahoots with Ismail Omer Gelle of Djibouti.

Haatuf also linked the trip of the speaker with another trip that the chairman of UCUD party, Fiasla Ali Warabe went to Djibouti. The editorial maintained that the trip of the speaker, the accompanying member (Khadar ambassador) and the UCID chairman 'who all come from the same sub-clan' can not but be suspicious and malicious in intent.

The editorial did not come as surprise to many people who are already familiar with the reasoning of the owners of Haatuf and their grand delusion to be the sole protectors of Somaliland.

That is the independent media we speak of today in Somaliland . oops!

Parliamentary election campaigns in Somaliland

September 26, 2005

Since the party candidate campaigning season was declared open by the Somaliland electoral commission, candidates have been campaigning very hard to win the support of their various clan constituencies in the different regions of the country.

While this parliamentary election campaign has not been different much from the previous presidential and municipal elections campaigns, the newly introduced government television added flavor to the candidate campaigns. Unlike the private TV in Hargeisa, the government TV is free of charge and the majority of households managed to connect to the service.

Prior to the establishment of the TV channel, the government owned media was comprised of radio Hargeisa and a newspaper with English and Arabic editions.

The old government journalists took over the new television as expected and kept entertaining the public with their inexperience in television broadcast. Candidates were interviewed prime time on the only worthwhile government TV programme, Masraxa Musharaxa, which great number of people in the city watched to know more about party candidates.

The government employed media workers behaved embarrassingly funny on camera. In one instance a candidate from UDUB political party spitted on the ground, while being interviewed on camera. Many people thought that the candidate was flushing out the remains of Buuri Dambas from his mouth. While the candidate had every right to use the Buuri as he liked, the TV people should have had the decency to edit the programme and cut the part!!!

Another amusingly regular occurrence has been how one of the TV interviewers shook the hands of interviewees so up and down ( ilaa suxulka ) with the words of Asalaama Calaykum both at the beginning of the interview and the end. Many people will remember this interviewer with his unique way of shaking hands, long past the election campaigns.

Nor many of the questions asked by these interviewers were sensible to many people. With questions like Ma dhowr hebel ayaad noqondoontaa mise hebel hadii lagu doorto? Maxaad qaban doontaa hadii labada natiijaba soo baxaan? (i.e. you win and lose at the sometime! ), the TV interviewers revealed their lack of experience in posing the relevant questions.

The candidates interviewed on the Masraxa Musharaxa were very mixed in terms of their educational background and experience. And if the claims of the many candidates on the programme is anything to go by, many had advanced degrees, Kulmiye and UCUD party candidates scoring high in this regard, compared to the ruling UDUB party candidates.

All the candidates were assigned to various election symbols, which will appear on the ballots in the voting day. Candidate symbols are important in assisting illiterate societies to cast their votes for the candidates of their choice, while it also helps the candidates in campaigning among their supporters. TV interviewers repeatedly asked party candidates to interpret for programme viewers their respective election symbols, as if every symbol assigned to a candidate had intrinsic meaning to it.

How the candidates interpreted their election symbols has been an interesting watch on the TV.

Candidates strained every nerve to put a positive spin on the assigned /selected symbols such as a wooden spoon (fandhaal ), a kettle, a camel, and an elephant. In one case, a candidate was asked to share with the viewers what his symbol was and what it meant for him. He started by telling the viewers that his election symbol was a kettle, and then proceeded to glorify the kettle by enumerating its many uses by the people now and in the past. The way the candidates interpreted these symbols did not help in the eyes of the people, as some of the candidates put forward incredibly absurd explanations of what the symbols meant for them.

A very unfortunate development from this election campaign has been the renting of rooms by candidates to serve as Merfishes for their supporters. Candidates furnished Kat to their supporters in those Marfishes and this lured many young party activists to start chewing the leaf. One of the candidates told a friend of mine that he opened over forty of such Merfishes for his supporters. This will have an adverse side affect on the society, which will remain with us for a long period of time.

Many of the candidates rented cars and buses, which roam the streets with microphones blaring out songs from the ex-military regime revolutionary times, and other songs tailor-made for the candidates. This created a serious noise pollution in the streets. It seems as though candidates and their supporters believe that over-shouting the other candidates and their supporters wins them additional votes.

One of the strangest and the funniest campaign statements, so far, was made by the minister of interior, while on a campaign trail in Gabilay district. The minister said that the opposition does not ‘have a president, a vice president, and ministers like the minister of interior (himself!), and even if the opposition wins the majority of seats in the parliament, we pay their salaries'. Did the ‘minister' know what he was talking about?

The same statement was recycled by the first lady while in Borama. However, the lady forgot to include in her statement that the opposition parties lacked first ladies as well!!

Otherwise, the election campaign is approaching a climax and candidates and their supporters are waiting the day of final reckoning at the polls.

The tribal factor in the selection of parliamentary candidates in Somaliland

After a lot hassle and bustle, the electoral commission of Somaliland finally posted the total list of candidates in the upcoming parliamentary election. Now that the party lists are finalized, lets pause a moment and reflect on how the candidate selection process had been accomplished.

Long before the finalization of party lists, candidate hopefuls organized numerous meetings for their sub-clans and Jilibs, maneuverings for intra-clan confidence and support in their bids to parliamentary seats. Tribal elders cashed in on the opportunity and many candidates competing for the confidence of the tribal elders had to dish out to the latter an amount of money ranging from 500 to 1000 payable in US dollars. As a result, candidate hopefuls with cash in their pockets won the tribal confidence over those who lacked it, money becoming an important intermediary in the struggle for party lists. This development was further encouraged by the three political parties which gave priority to candidates who enjoyed the confidence of a Sultan, a Boqor or even a tribal chief, over those who were not so fortunate.

Party membership, discipline, and merit suffered in the selection of parliamentary candidates. Rank and file party hopefuls were thrown out of the window, while brand new candidates were recruited into party lists. This is symptomatic of the mismatch between modern parliamentary democracy as it is practiced in the West and how it would fare in traditional parochial systems dominant in many developing countries.

It is no secret that the majority of parliamentary candidates coveted a place in UDUB and Kulmiye party lists; two parties which secured most of the votes in the previous presidential and local council elections held in the country. Candidates queued up to UDUB and KULMIYE parties under the assumption that the two parties will win, this time round as well, the majority of the seats up for grabs in the election. Given the constant shifting of tribal allegiances in the system, this assumption is problematic at best. Nevertheless, tribal elders stepped on each others toes to put their candidates in Kulmiye and UDUB part lists.

Conversely, UCID party list was less competitive, where candidates managed without much ado to secure places in the list on first come, first served basis. Nonetheless, UCUD has taken UDUB by storm and captured some traditional UDUB constituencies in Togdheer and Sanaag regions.

When the party lists would finally be issued, the finite nature of the number of candidates in the lists was bound to disappoint many candidates, no less than their sponsoring tribes. As soon as the party lists were issued, candidates who failed to appear in the lists sounded the clarion call, denouncing political parties that failed to include them in their lists. It has become commonplace nowadays for one tribe or another to appear in the local papers, condemning this or that political party for rejecting their candidates. In addition, tribes declare the withdrawal of ‘their collective tribal confidence’ from one political party, while pledging their allegiance to another.

UDUB has been on the receiving end of the wrath of many tribal groupings, while Kulmiye was not spared either. UDUB was accused of badly mismanaging Hargiesa region party list. At the behest of UDUB leadership, the total number of parliamentary seats was divided initially on arbitrary regional basis, without factoring in the varied population statistics of the six regions in the country. Irrespective of this, UDUB leadership inserted in its Hargeisa region party list candidates coming from other regions in the country, while it excluded from the list candidates who considered themselves as belonging to Hargeisa region. No group complained about UCUD party list selection process.

The clearest example, by far, of the tribal factor in operation of the party list selection processes was provided by ex- minister of air transport and civil aviation of the government. In a dramatic decision, the minister resigned from his post, condemning the President strongly for interfering in the selection of Hargiesa region party list and causing a candidate of the same tribe with the Minister to lose his place in the list. In today’s Somaliland, there exist plenty of reasons for a Minister in the UDUB-dominated government to resign from power, tribal fidelity coming last in the list.

One wonders how a parliament selected and elected on the basis of ‘the tribal blood type’ could be different from it is predecessor, which was disbanded chiefly because it was selected on the Beel system?

A few nights ago, I watched on the new Somaliland TV Hargiesa municipality councilors in session. The councilors were shouting about, not debating over, a certain plot of public land which some of the councilors claimed that the mayor of Hargeisa gave illegally to his brother. While the councilors have the right to raise such an important issue, the way they were raising it left a lot to be desired. It was uncivilized, unethical, and clownish. I slept that night with a heavy heart, regretting ever voting for these political clowns.

What does all this say about the fledgling ‘democracy’ in Somaliland?

During its short period of existence, Somaliland has been progressing towards some semblance of democracy, albeit in a perverted form. Somaliland managed to conduct municipality and presidential elections and will soon conduct parliamentary elections in the country. However, traditional governance structures have been deliberately superimposed on the incipient democratic institutions in the country and the clan is the basis of all political action and a point of departure.

The proponents of traditional governance maintain that the system was espoused in order to reduce clan frictions and take maximum advantage of conflict resolution mechanism of traditional governance. Nonetheless, traditional governance failed miserably to deal with insidious malaises afflicting the system and seem to have seamlessly fused with it. Corruptions, nepotism, human rights violation, economic stagnation, and lack of accountability are some of the dominant feature of the political system in the country.

All that the clan based governance structures managed to achieve is to set up a system of ‘clan balance of terror’, which resulted in a fragile peace, punctuated occasionally by serious upsurges of violence and ruled over by a bunch of unrelenting kleptocrats.

Democracy in Somaliland, to paraphrase Clausewitz’s famous dictum, seems to be a continuation of clan warfare by other means.