Jean-Jacques Cornish
Hargeisa, April 14, 2003 (Independent Online)- Somaliland has taken a further step down the democratic road with a presidential election that is expected to be closely fought but peaceful.
South Africa has the largest observer team for this event, which was due to happen today.
Dahir Riyale Kahin is asking his largely nomadic people to return him to the office he assumed when President Mohamed Egal died at 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria in May.
The other contestants in the three-way contest are former guerrilla leader Ahmed Muhammad Silanyo, who fought the dictatorship of Mohammad Siad Barre, and Faisal Ali Warabe, one of the 200 000 who returned from the diaspora to rebuild the country Barre had reduced to rubble.
In terms of the new constitution endorsed by a 2001 referendum, the presidential race is restricted to candidates from the three parties that came out on top of municipal elections held in December.
This is designed to filter the effects of the clan system that has paralyzed neighboring Somalia, leaving it with a government that controls little more than a few blocks of the capital Mogadishu.
Having borne the brunt of Barre's military repression, Somaliland ended its 31-year union with Somalia soon after the dictator's fall in 1991. The country remains unrecognized by the international community and has rebuilt itself without international loans or aid.
The economy is based on livestock trade, remittances from the diaspora, and local taxes.
Somalilanders take pride in their self-sufficiency, and the one issue uniting all three parties is the rejection of any notion of reunifying with Somalia.
"We wish them no harm, but we also wish them to leave us alone. We have forgiven the genocide of Barre but we have not forgotten," said Edna Adan, the only woman in Kahin's government.
Adan and other women have said they will want a greater share of governance whatever candidate is successful.
The minimum voting age is 16, and voters will have to be identified by village elders because they have no physical form of identification. - Independent Foreign Service
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