Election observer expelled from Somaliland

The government of Somaliland expelled the representative of the organization called Interpeace from Hargeysa, amid a row over election registrations, on Thursday.

Mr.Samoro, the representative of Interpeace in Somaliland, was escorted from hotel Mansoor, to Hargeysa Igal Airport by several policemen. The eviction of the single international election observer in Somaliland, comes days after a new row erupted over the election registrations.

Interpeace, which also represents the international donors of Somaliland’s election, was working closely with the Somaliland election commission.

The election commission, accused Mr.Samoro of deliberately leaking crucial information to the opposition parties, without the commission’s consent.

The accusation is related with the registration of the voters, who are allegeable to vote, which was saved in an unique computer SERVER.

On Tuesday, the electoral commission of Somaliland, announced that the “server”, was still not operational, missing the latest deadline of 27th of July. According to the commission there were many voter registrations missing in the system, and the server was not correctly matching the id’s, thus could not be used for the coming election, on 27th of September 2009.

The election commission nullified the voter registration results, and announced that the up coming Presidential elections in September, people will vote without registration.

On Wednesday, Mr.Samoro, the representative of Interpeace, who was working with the election commission as advisor and an observer, told the media, that the Sever was operating correctly, adding that all the duplicates were taken out from the voter’s list.

Mr.Samoro invited all three political parties in Somaliland and shared the information about the voter registration. The opposition parties Kulmiye and UCID welcomed the results of the voters registration.

But this was condemned by the ruling party UDUB and the election commission, both accused Mr.Samoro of intentionally causing tensions between the political parties.

“…This man was causing insecurity in the country, we tolerated him for a long time…” said Dahir Riyale Kahin, the president of Somaliland in an interview with BBC Somali Service.

When asked President Riyale, if expelling Mr.Samoro, will anger the international donors and harm the democratization process in Somaliland, he said “….The international Donors do not rule us, they can help us, but they can not tell us from top how to work…”

The opposition parties of UCID and KULMIYE, have refused to accept the election commission’s decision, to annul the voter registration. Both parties also condemned the expelling of Mr.Samoro, the Interpeace representative.

The opposition accused Riyale’s regime of derailing the democratization process in the self declared republic of Somaliland, Northwest of Somalia.

Source: Horseed Media