Somaliland: UCID Candidate Alleges Conspiracy To Disqualify Him

Somaliland: UCID Candidate Alleges Conspiracy To Disqualify Him

Faisal Ali Waraabe, the chairman of UCID party, one of the three candidates for the Somaliland presidential election accused the NEC and President Riyale of conspiring to disqualify him on the pretext that Faisal holds a foreign nationality.

Mr. Faisal who was interviewed by the Somali language Wargeyska Geeska Afrika, said he found out the [secret] conspiracy by NEC chairman Jama Sweden and his deputy Ali Bikalo to disqualify him, the intended announcement date which he said would have been only few hours before the polls open on September 29.

He also accused the current chairman of the NEC of violating the electoral laws with his recent decision to sidestep the current voter registration list and declaring the elections to be held without requiring the voters to present a valid voter registration card.

Interpeace, the agency appointed by the donor nations to assist Somaliland on the democracy, on Monday July 27 presented a draft voter list to all political parties. The political parties could choose one of three options:

• To hold the election using the current voter list as it stands.
  With this option total voters will not exceed the 1.4 million who are already registered to vote.
• To do further clean-up of the voter list by adding new software on top of the existing one.
  The complicated software integration process alone may almost certainly postpone the election for 6 months or more.
• To hold the election without requiring voters to have prior voter registration card.
  This option raises the possibility of number of voters exceeding the number that were registered at designated voting centers. With this options no one knows how many people will vote at polling booths and there is no means to prevent multiple voting fraud.

Mr. Faisal's party  along with the other opposition party KULMIYE, agreed the election should take place using the existing voter list. He said sidelining the voter regeneration system and allowing non-registered voters to vote without any documentation will open floodgates for greater problems including voter fraud. He said allowing only the current registered voters will prevent such problems, and he predicted the actual number of voters will be smaller than the number who are currently registered since the voter turn out generally is below 100%.

Mr. Riyale and the chairman of the NEC want the voter list, which is the result of millions of dollars and thousands of hours of investment, to be dropped even though they have not given a legitimate reason for their proposal.

The NEC's decision making role in Somaliland is limited and allows it to make proposals and to try to convince the political parties of the merits of such proposals but it has no authority to make and adopt game-changing decisions such as this latest decision to drop the voter list, unless it has priorly consulted and sought the approval of all political parties. This decision together with the expulsion of Interpeace caught many people by surprise and was met with criticism and condemnations from both leaders of the Parliament.

UCID candidate is now one of the growing voices calling for the removal of the NEC chairman from the body.