Somalia: Puntland Fears assassinations amid election process

Recently, I have read an article news with the International Crisis Group. The piece entitled “Somalia: Puntland’s Punted Polls’” was showing a dark picture of warnings as Puntland, a semi-autonomous region in Somalia, prepares for presidential elections. While I was reading the article, I was skeptical that Puntland can witness such violent happenings: I was wrong: one of Puntland’s presidential candidates, Mr. Abdidahir Mohamed Yusuf, said about 48 hours ago that his life was in danger and maybe someone was going to assassinate him because his car was fired upon: in fact, the whole story is shrouded in mystique and mystery but it is quite clear that the candidate was in a genuine fear for his life. See a news article on the incident by Allafrica news site: http://allafrica.com/stories/201312230024.html

About two dozens are running for the Puntland presidency in the elections scheduled on January 8th, 2014.

Analysts say the biggest challenger incumbent president Abdirahman Mohamed Farole faces is Dr. Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, the former prime minister of Somalia. According to Al Jazeera, Dr. Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said there will be ‘a huge political, security and economic collapse’ if president president Farole is re-elected.

The people of Puntland need to wake up to this reality, a reality where where assassinations can be so mysterious that the whole election process can culminate in violence. And if that happens, it can put Puntland to danger beyond repair.

Peace is very important because common sense tells us that stability and the rule of law is indispensable and if peace is lost then there is nothing that can be done. In fact, peace is the mother of all situations, situations where it can be possible to build a prosperous Puntland free from wars and mayhem.

The process to elect a new president for Puntland has been going on for months. One of the fundamental things agreed by the candidates and incumbent president is to set up an entity that oversees the election. However, before you build such an entity, you have to ask yourself what kind of election you are talking about: paradoxically, the candidates and incumbent president also agreed that the clan leaders are the body that will pick the new parliament. Then the new parliament will pick the new president. If so, will overseeing be necessary? Will you need election observers to check for election rigging or irregularities?

The answers is quite clear: you will not need all of that: all you need, as a candidate, is that you somehow make clan leaders favorable to you by appointing parliament members that could be more likely to pick you as the new president of Puntland. If so again, how can you make the clan elders more favorable to you that they pick the right parliament members that will eventually pick you as the new president? Then all you need is the green stuff: it is where money comes in.

Kleptocracy is a very nasty disease in Somalia and Somalia is at the bottom of the list when it comes to the most corrupt countries in the world. Puntland is part of Somalia and kleptocracy is present in Puntland: that is where the Farole administration comes in: it is so clear that years of milking the international donors and Puntland’s port of Boosaaso, president Farole is the richest man of all candidates and he has the bribe power to buy the clan leaders to pick the kind of parliament members that will pick him as the new president.

The question is, if so, is Mr. president Farole better than other candidates despite his being embezzler? The answer is a big no. All other candidates are like him if you were monitoring their behaviors in recent months: their swaggering showed it all. The people of Puntland should start from scratch by scrapping the whole process while searching for honesty presidential aspirants in the crowd.

Ahmed Said (Abwaan kuluc) is a Somali American writer based in St. Cloud, Minnesota, United States.

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