Somaliland election

In order a government to be democratic, it needs to fulfill some basic requirements. It should contain collective representatives that came into power through fair elections. It should have defined time of regime. Its citizens should have the right to participate equally through representatives or directly in making the laws of their lives and they should have freedom of political expression, freedom of speech and freedom of the press.  Somaliland government has tried to fulfill all these requirements and succeeded fulfilling most of them. However, it failed to hold its elections properly.

Most of the Somaliland citizens had faced huge difficulties in voting the last election. Despite the fact that Somaliland is an unrecognized country which has tried and almost succeeded to hold fair elections, there have been some corruptions in the last election.  The system of marking the people who voted was not effective and could be easily deviated.  As a result, many irresponsible people washed the marks their fingers off and voted more than their fair time. This corruption brought about many problems.  When the people who had voted went back into the line repeatedly, the areas of voting became overwhelmingly crowded; in return these areas became instable and even the guards started firing when people squashed into the entrance. Furthermore, many eligible citizens did not get an opportunity to vote because the voting areas were over crowded or run out of voting papers. Consequently, this damaged the rights of those citizens, and the reputation of Somaliland.

There were also people who did not vote because they did not care about the election or had no idea who to vote for. In democratic governments citizens play big role in the politics. They give power or enable the government through elections. When they are electing their representatives they deeply scrutinize the candidates. They listen the plans of candidates. They then compare their proposals of the candidates and finally vote for the one who most speaks to their interests. In Somaliland, this is different, clans and money play big role in the elections. Citizens choose their leaders in terms of his clan or his pocket, and whoever has the most of one of those ones gains the power. This caused many eligible citizens included me to not participate in elections. Moreover, this caused unsuitable, corrupt candidates to come into power, and furthermore, made the candidates look like businessmen who are competing for manipulating the market.

Somaliland has overcome most of the hardships that it faced since it seceded from Somalia, which is still in chaotic situation. Somaliland succeeded abolishing the militias that existed during 1990s, maintaining its security and providing the basic services, like education, for its citizens. However, it had one barrier to get through in order to pursue its rapid developing, to end tribalism and hold fair elections.