By: M. Darod
Somalilandsun- The Somaliland Political parties registration and Verification committee-PPR&VC registration has supported the president’s decision to split the March 2017 parliamentary elections and presidential elections saying that holding those two elections concurrently would be difficult and entail many consequences for the country.
Speaking with the National Television SLNTV, Mr.Abdirizak Jama Omer ( Ina Ciyaale) said “ The most pressing issue is the allocation of seats for different regions in the parliamentary elections but there are about 20 other unresolved issues, we know the president decided not to compete for a second term and holding the presidential and parliamentary elections concurrently would have created serious challenges for the country.”
Mr.Abdrizak Jama Omernas well emphasized even technically it would prove difficult to hold the two elections concurrently “Considering the low literacy rates of our people voting on two different ballot boxes would require a lot of time, the least would be two minutes for each person to cast their vote on the two elections, meaning that 300 hundred would vote at each ballot station at the quickest where it is planned 500 to vote in the election day at each ballot station, many would fail to cast their vote, meaning fewer votes at each ballot station and hence creating more disputes for parliamentary candidates and even for the presidential race which would leave us in turmoil.”
The National Electoral Commission’s committee for political party registration’s chairman warned the serious security implications that this kind of potential election could have for the country which as he described could take the country back to the 1991 situation of chaos and anarchy, welcoming the idea of first having an elected president in place who can interfere and make sure that election disputes involving the 246 parliamentary seats are resolved smoothly.
The chairman for NEC’s political registration unit reiterated the foreign minister’s statement that Somaliland welcomes and recognizes the valuable contribution that its international partners and donors make to this country and its democratization process but that Somaliland is capable of holding elections on its own and that it won’t accept its international partners to dictate terms for the country.
Source: The Republican
