Garowe (PP News Desk) — Puntland Minister for Interior and Federal Affairs Abdi Farah Said today shared with the council of ministers details about the second phase of local government elections in Puntland. The Minister said that the second phase of elections would “take place in 37 districts of the nine Puntland State’s regions”. The electoral plan contains district border delimitation and guidelines for selecting an election venue at a district.
The council of ministers resolved to submit the electoral plan to the Transitional Puntland Electoral Commission. Earlier this year, Said broke ranks with influential Nugaal politicians who expressed reservations about the decentralisation programme of Puntland State government. He called on politicians to seek mandate from voters, a position that had been interpreted as a call to end the heavily centralised political system of a Federal Member State that prides itself upon advocating and introducing the federal system of Somalia.
Observers have welcomed the clarity in the Minister’s electoral plan but criticised him for choosing to be reticent about the possibility that elections could diabolically legitimise the moribund political system that resulted in economic stagnation, weakened cohesion and the longstanding indifference to stealing from the public coffers.
Local government elections will not take place at three Sool districts — Las Anod, Taleh and Huddun — federally represented by Puntland State. Currently, Puntland regional budgets are managed centrally, a practice that brings Puntland Parliament under the control of the Presidency.
The three cardinal principles upon which the decentralisation agenda rests include independent judiciary and audit regime to empower districts to manage their budgets without interference from the Presidency. Without revising the local government law used by Puntland Government to disband district councils, the decentralisation agenda will strengthen the existing system that has outlived its usefulness, if it had any.
© Puntland Post, 2022
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