(qaransomaliland.com)-London-UK
From Lord Avebury P0726124
020-7274 4617
December 26, 2007
To Lord Malloch Brown
Minister Foreign & Commonwealth Office,
London SW1A 2AH
Dear Lord Malloch-Brown,
Further to my letter of November 2 about the situation in Somaliland, ref P0721112, copy attached, (to which I don’t appear to have had a reply), you will have been advised of the conditional release of the three leaders. I attach an article by Mahdi A. Abdi of the East Africa Policy Institute on the questions that arise from this decree by the President, and an article from the Somaliland Times of December 22 on this subject.
I understand that the Somaliland Minister of Finance is in Nairobi, where he was expecting to finalise details of the EU’s funding of the elections, as well as other aid projects. Whilst any humanitarian aid should continue, it would be wrong for the EU to subsidise elections which can’t be free and fair, since important players are still to be excluded from participation. I do hope we shall use our influence in Brussels to ensure that aid for the elections is suspended until the right to campaign and put up candidates, who may include the three leaders who were imprisoned for 144 days, is extended to the Qaran Political Assocation.
Yours sincerely,
Eric Avebury
Lord Malloch-Brown,
Foreign & Commonwealth Office,
London SW1A 2AH
.......................................................................................
One step forward, two steps backward.
Written by Mahdi A. Abdi
We find the news of the release of Dr. Mohamed Abdi Gabose and his vice chairs from jail (Mohamed Hashi Elmi and Jamal Aydeed Ibrahim of the Qaran political association) as a very good step toward Somaliland’s steady progress toward democracy and the rule of law. It is gratifying to see the president choose reason and good judgment and bring to an end the campaign of suppressing the aspiration of nescient political associations by detentions and threats. The recent statements coming out of the president which declared that the recently released politicians will not be allowed to run for political offices for the next five years seem to negate the initial positive action taken by him when he released them from jail. It also raises more questions than it answers:
For instance, without getting into the legality of the matter, does this mean that this presidential decree applies only to the three leaders or is it a blanket ruling affecting the whole Qaran political association?
The reason why no-one seems to know exactly what is going on in this president’s administration is that most everything is done through statements made by the president or his ministers, the courts and the judicial system are completely missing in action, and as a matter of fact the recently released Qaran leaders have yet to see any documentation from any governmental institution informing them of the terms of their release or even as to the reason of their release.
The difficulty for the president is that it is never an easy matter to rule by decrees and not clash with existing laws in a democracy. Having failed at getting the Qaran leaders to “ask” for a pardon and accept the ruling of the kangaroo court that illegally (in the eyes of the international and Somaliland communities) sentence them to a lengthy jail term, he unilaterally took the action of releasing them and now demands that they stop fighting for what they have been imprisoned for the last 123 days in Mandhera, or else…
There is very little chance that the leadership of Qaran and its supporters are going to cease and desist from what they see as their fundamental right to participate in the political process and veil threats from the president of future punitive actions to those who do not heed his warnings are not going to dissuade them from backing away from insisting on having access to all the rights and guarantees enshrined in the country’s Constitution.
Democracy can be a messy affair and it is by no means a perfect system, but the most important aspect of it is that it allows equal access to the process to those who adopt it as a system of governance. And Constitutional laws safeguard the rights of citizens so that no one is above the law (including the president) and equity and fairness are guaranteed to all the stakeholders in the country.
The question is not whether the country can have more than three parties, and Qaran is not making that argument, the question is whether political associations are allowed in the Constitution, and whether it guarantees the rights of the citizens to be elected into an office and to vote.
If the president insists that citizens are not allowed to form political associations and participate in the political affairs of the country, then how can he explain away article 22 of the Somaliland Constitution, which clearly states the following:
“Article 22: Political, Economic, Social and Electoral Rights
1. Every citizen shall have the right to participate in the political, economic, social and cultural affairs in accordance with the laws and the Constitution.
2. Every citizen who fulfils the requirements of the law shall have the right to be elected (to an office) and to vote.
The only legal manner in which Qaran can be denied the right to participate in the coming election is to amend this article (22) in the Somaliland Constitution and remove these fundamental rights it grants its citizens of Somaliland.
The president used the term "pardon" with deliberate care because it came with all the needed strings attached to make it possible for him to disqualify the "Qaran" politicians from running for any office while he is a candidate.
This is a direct translation of the release letter from the president:
“The president of the republic of Somaliland, having seen article 90/5 of the Somaliland Constitution, after seeing article 149 of the Penal code, having seen the judgment of the Hargeysa Regional Court MGH/DDL/424/2007, after listening to the advice of elders and Sultans, and taking into consideration the blessings of Eid Al Adxa has determined:
1. To extend a “special pardon” to erase the remainder of their jail term adjudicated by the Hargeysa Regional Court of said prisoners:
Mohamed Abdi Gaboose
Mohamed Hashi Elmi
Jamal Aydeed Ibrahim
2. I order their release before the celebration of Eid Day.”
According to a news report from the “Horn of Africa”, knowledgeable sources state that in order to diffuse the tense political situation in the country the elders who were involved in the mediation requested from the president an amnesty (Article 144 of the Penal code which grants no strings attached and all previous judgments to be vacated) for the jailed politicians instead of the partial pardon used by the president.
Furthermore Article 101/2 of the Penal code which was used by the Hargeysa Court which bans the Qaran politicians from voting or being voted for is inherited from Italy’s 1930 Mussolini’s Penal code and is in complete disagreement with Article 130/5 the current Somaliland Constitution which indicates that no law can violate Islamic law and the fundamental rights of the citizen. The Constitution being the supreme law of the land, it is clear that much of what the president has done so far goes against the letter as well as the spirit of the Constitution of the country.
The question remains whether the EU and other donor nations which have been instrumental in nudging the current administration to respect its own laws will continue to do so and insist on a full and a fair democracy to bloom in Somaliland and demand that the Qaran politicians be allowed to participate in the coming elections cycle by having the president vacate the odious Hargeysa Court judgment which is used to keep them from exercising their guaranteed Constitutional fundamental rights.
We urge all concerned communities, whether local or international to impress upon the president that the rule of law must prevail and checks and balances must be evident, the Media, all legal associations and Human Rights organizations must be free to practice their trade before democracy can be felt at the grass root level and Somaliland can rightfully claim to be truly a democratic nation.East Africa Policy Institute.
Mahdi A. Abdi.
http://eastafricapi.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=136&Itemid=1
QARAN Leaders Will Continue To Be Banned From Politics
QARAN chairman Dr. Mohamed Abdi Gabose (center) and his two deputies Mohamed Hashi Elmi (L) and Jamal Aideed Ibrahim (R), soon after their release in Hargeysa |
Hargeysa, Somaliland, December 22, 2007 (SL Times) – “The three top leaders of the QARAN political association will continue to be banned from politics despite their release from prison on Tuesday,” said Yusuf Tallabo, Somaliland's Deputy Minister of Justice.
QARAN chairman Dr. Mohamed Abdi Gabose and his two deputies Mohamed Hashi Elmi and Jamal Aideed Ibrahim were arrested on July 28 and sentenced on August 8, 2007 by a regional court to 3 years and nine months in prison. The court also banned the 3 leaders from politics for 5 years for founding an illegal organization and endangering public order through staging of political rallies.
The QARAN political association was proclaimed on April 2007. But the government has since been denying it registration as a political organization on the basis of a constitutional clause that limits the number of political parties in Somaliland to three QARAN's argument has been that whilst it true that only 3 political parties should exist in the country at any given time, it doesn't mean that those political parties should be UDUB, KULMIYE and UCID forever.
According to QARAN, the country's 3 national parties should emerge from the municipal elections which are contested once every 5 years and are constitutionally designed to produce the 3 national parties until the next local council elections.
Fearing that the formation of new political associations might endanger the existence of his weak UDUB party, Mr. Rayale responded by ordering the arrest and prosecution of Dr. Gabose, Mohamed Hashi and Jamal Aideed. Faced with countrywide protests against the imprisonment not to mention continuous international pressure, Mr. Rayale finally agreed to release the three QARAN leaders from the Mandera maximum security prison where they had been held for 144 days.
Mr. Rayale had repeatedly demanded that the prisoners petition him for clemency, but the QARAN leaders refused to do so saying that they had committed no crime and they were unjustly imprisoned for their political views. Presidnet Rayale’s release of QARAN leaders was in response to a request for amnesty by clan elders.
Around midnight Monday, the 3 men were informed by the prison guards that they were pardoned and were being taken to Hargeysa.
However on Thursday Mr. Yusuf Tallabo told a VOA reporter that the 3 QARAN leaders will not be allowed to exercise their political rights.
Until now, QARAN leaders have not been shown the text of the presidential pardon that ordered their release.
According to Dr. Gabose the government doesn't want to make the decree public so as to be able to write it down in the future as a conditional release that doesn't cover our ban from politics.
"Their plan is to invoke the order banning us from politics if we don't disband QARAN. In any case it's blackmail, and it's typical of the Rayale regime," said Gabose.
The QARAN leaders are expected to visit the Attorney General's office this morning to ask for a copy of the presidential pardon.
Under the Somaliland constitution, the president can pardon or grant amnesty to convicted individuals or a group of prisoners. But there are no bylaws or procedures for the implementation of the constitution’s article 90 regarding "pardon" and "amnesty".
In the QARAN case, the government’s prosecutor had utilized the Somalia penal code and criminal procedures code. According to that law, the Somaliland House of Representatives is to assume the power of granting an amnesty in the same way as Somalia's National Assembly was vested with such power.
Meanwhile QARAN leaders vowed to continue to exercise their political rights.
According to the Somaliland constitution (article 22), every citizen has the right to participate in the political, economic, social and cultural affairs; and every citizen has the right to elect and to be elected. Article 23 gives citizens the right for political association.
These two articles in addition to article 32 which guarantees freedom of the press, are among the articles in the constitution (bill of rights) that cannot be amended or changed by any branch of the government (see article 127 on amendments or corrections to the constitution).
Then there is law No: 14/2000 for the registration of political parties and associations. This law has not been annulled and therefore remains valid and applicable.
However the government had disbanded the registration committee in 2003 so as to avoid submission of applications for the formation of political associations in 2007.
Source: Somaliland Times
http://www.somalilandtimes.net/sl/2007/309/1.shtml
