By Ismail Warsame
As a Keynote Speaker at PRDC TALKS event, former Puntland President, Abdirahman Faroole and Senator of the Federal Upper Chamber, spoke candidly on many Somalia’s political issues of the day and during his Puntland Term in Office.
The topic was Puntland transition to multi-party system of governance, or the process known here as democratization in Puntland, and hinted that it could be implemented in the country, given a genuine commitment on the part of the government of the day. He has rightly claimed that as he left office, all legal Framework and the Electoral Commission were in place for the next Puntland Administration to carry on and implement.
Unfortunately, the following Administration of Abdiweli Gaas never tried to consider the project moving foward, a lost opportunity. The former Chairman of the Transitional (Temporary) Puntland Electoral Commission, the TPEC, Mr. Mohamed Hassan Shimbiro-laaye agreed with Faroole’s take of the political situation now and then. Shimbiro-laaye had asserted that multi-party elections couldn’t be held in the absence of commitment from the government.
Neither President Faroole nor Shimbiro-laaye, had acknowledged the fact that, despite their great attempt at Puntland Democratization then, the trial failed at end because of their partial approach to holding the election and enlisting all government employees and resources into the political party of the establishment, the Horseed, and that eventually contributed to an atmosphere of suspicion and political violence as the Faroole Administration was publicly perceived to be manipulating the election to its own electoral advantage.
At event, there was a consensus that timing was an important factor in making the necessary security and logistics preparations early on, rather than last minute rushing on the process.
The event was well organized and attended by a wide spectrum of politicians, intellectuals and women groups. The event got started with a series of visual documentary films on the milestones of the democratization process during President Faroole’s mandate before it hit the rocks. The films showed the process had secured the full support from the International community, the European Union (EU), in particular.
Ismail Warsame
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