In the raging debate among Somalilanders about President Rayale’s decision to arrest and imprison QARAN Party leaders, the most frequently cited reasons for the President’s action are:
- The president believed that he needed to act to maintain peace and order, and was certain that he was legally justified in doing so.
- The president got bad advice.
- The president was testing the waters and plans to take more drastic steps against his adversaries to improve his chances of holding on to power.
But regardless of the reason behind his decision, it’s a bad decision. It’s a bad decision because it has heightened the atmosphere of discord in the country (the very thing that he was ostensibly trying to prevent). On a symbolic or emotional level, the president’s action goes against the Somalilanders view of their homeland as a free and democratic country with no political prisoners and where political differences are resolved through negotiation and compromise. As a matter of fact, one could go even further and say that the president’s decision is even bad for the president himself, since it can bring no benefit to him and only tarnishes his already battered image.
From a purely political standpoint, everyone knows that the president’s electoral fight will most probably be with KULMIYE, the party he narrowly defeated in the last election. Instead of preparing for that fight, the president has chosen to engage in a side-show with a young unregistered party, unnecessarily alienating potential supporters.
The fact that UCID party leaders sided with the president is not difficult to explain.
Being the weakest one of the three registered parties, UCID is afraid that it may be eliminated altogether if QARAN or any other new party is allowed to participate in the coming election, hence their vehement opposition to QARAN.
Rather than seeing QARAN party as a threat as the president’s party (UDUB) and UCID have done, KULMIYE saw it as an opportunity and welcomed it. This was an astute political move that won KULMIYE a lot of goodwill among QARAN supporters without costing it anything.
As things stand now, QARAN has already done a great favor to Somaliland in that it forced open the issue of whether citizens can form new parties or only the three existing parties can operate in Somaliland forever and ever. This is what we call the forever and ever question or abad al-abidin question. What we mean by it is that if you ask Somalilanders should the country have three parties or more than three parties, most will reply that three parties are enough. But then if you ask them should the three registered parties (UDUB, KULMIYE and UCID) be the only ones that exist in Somaliland forever and ever, or should more parties be allowed to compete and then the three parties with the highest vote should become national parties, most Somalilanders would choose the latter scenario. In other words, most Somalilanders don’t want more than three parties, but they also don’t want UDUB, KULMIYE and UCID to have a monopoly over political life in Somaliland forever and ever.
The government’s complaint against QARAN, that it has engaged in political campaigning even though the campaigning season has not yet officially started, has merit, but this complaint is offset by the fact that the government has disbanded the committee that was supposed to register political parties and has been giving QARAN the run around.
QARAN has moved the debate about the configuration of party politics forward. But there are still important constitutional issues that have to be tackled. For example, if a new party is allowed to compete in the municipal elections and wins, thereby taking the place of one of the registered parties, what should be done with members of parliament who belong to the party that was eliminated? Are they going to be allowed to stay in parliament or would they have to give up their parliamentary seats? Is the new winning party going to have to wait until the parliamentary election to be represented in parliament?
One obvious answer is to move the parliamentary elections closer to the municipal elections, but there are many other constitutional questions that need to be answered. Somaliland will not be able to find answers for these thorny issues by throwing the people who raise them in jail. Instead of jailing QARAN leaders, they should be thanked for starting this debate and should be invited to contribute to finding a solution.
QARAN leaders must be immediately set free.
Source: Somaliland Times
http://www.somalilandtimes.net/sl/2007/289/16.shtml
