Garowe (PP Editorial) — Last week, Puntland State of Somalia successfully concluded a voter registration process expected to transform Puntland political system. Some political stakeholders question the integrity of the voter registration exercise. There is a fear that organised mobs could disrupt voting, a tactic used in 2013 by the forces that opposed the multiparty system unsuccessfully introduced by President Abdirahman Farole.
The political association he founded, Horseed, called for a review of the registration process, a relatively conciliatory positon. With only 8 months to go before the tenure of President Said Abdullahi Deni ends, his detractors accuse him of mishandling the voter registration process to give certain political organisations an advantage over others. President Deni has an obligation to address those concerns publicly; he should not rest on his laurels— the successful completion of the voter registration and security reforms that weeded out phantom soldiers.
A consultative summit to thrash out those issues will facilitate the planned political transformation. A set of principles will have to guide the consultative summit to affect an outcome that will protect political and economic rights of citizens.
1- All political stakeholders must endorse the voter registration as a fundamental part of the democratisation process and agree ways to rectify any anomalies in the process. 2- Puntland State Government must present how decentralisation will be applied to make the legislature and the judiciary independent, to grant districts powers to manage budgets, and to establish an independent auditor general’s office. 3- All stakeholders must support the privilege Puntland State is seeking to have a status similar to the Special Arrangement that the breakaway Somaliland Administration was granted in 2013. Puntland did not get a similar deal despite its lead role in state-building initiatives and an unconditional support for the Union. 4- All political stakeholders must agree a mechanism through which an incumbent administration can be held accountable for flip-flipping (Puntland State opposed the dubious production-sharing agreement with Coastline Exploration, and the federal directive on fishery licenses, but came out in support of the agreement and the directive after President Deni visited Mogadishu). 5- Puntland State does not oppose the calls for lifting the arms embargo on Somalia despite the country’s exclusive nature of security forces dominated by soldiers of one clan. A clear position of the embargo should replace the ambiguous position of Puntland. 6- The Federal Government of Somalia’s policy to consider talks with the breakaway administration of Somaliland as North-South pushes Somalia to the brink of statelessness; Puntland has federal a jurisdiction in parts of the ex-British Somalia claimed by Somaliland, an administration waging a secession war in Northern Somalia. Somalia-Somaliland talks of 2019 resulted in the forced displacement of Somali citizens in Laascaanood after the former Federal Government of Somalia allowed for the inclusion of a “free movement” clause in the talks thereby giving the secessionist administration to forcibly displace Somali citizens.
Those principles will inject an element of political accountability into the soon-to-be-replaced tradition-bound political process of Puntland State, and ensure that Puntland State will not endorse unilateral policy decisions of the Federal Government of Somalia whose leaders are illegally using the bicameral legislature to change the presidential term of office.
Through decentralisation Puntland State will be able to set a good governance example in the Federal Republic of Somalia.
© Puntland Post, 2023
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