Riyale’s Term Expires On Thursday With No Solution In Sight For Somaliland’s Political Crisis

KULMIYE chairman, Ahmed Sillanyo	UDUB Chairma, President Dahir Riyale Kahin	UCID chairman, Faysal Ali Warabe

Hargeysa, Somaliland, May 10, 2008 (SL Times) – Somaliland president Dahir Riyale’s 5-year term in office will officially expire by next Thursday.

Never-the-less Mr. Riyale has so far shown that he intends to hang on to power long after his time has finished on the basis of last month’s controversial decision reached by the Guurti whereby the incumbent president’s term in office has been extended for one year.

But the opposition parties KULMIYE and UCID have already challenged the Guurti’s move as illegal declaring that they will not recognize Riyale as president once his term has expired on May 15, 2008.

Instead, leaders of the opposition have called for the formation of an all-inclusive interim government which can be trusted with holding free and fair elections. There is no solution in sight for this stand off between Riyale and the opposition. The deadlock could have been avoided had the April 2008 deadline for the presidential election been met.

Municipal elections which were supposed to be held by December 2007 as well as the presidential election which was scheduled for April 2008, have both been postponed twice.

One November 2007 the new National Electoral Commission proposed to the 3 political parties of UDUB, KULMIYE and UCID that they accept July 1, 2008 and August 31, 2008 as the new deadlines for holding the municipal and presidential elections.

The opposition parties agreed on the condition that no further delays should arise.
In March this year the NEC disclosed that the voter registration exercise couldn’t be completed before the deadline for the two elections.

On April 9, 2008, the country’s 3 political parties reached an agreement setting a new time-line for the voter registration and the elections.

According to this tripartite agreement which KULMIYE accepted reluctantly, the 2 elections were to be held on October 7 and December 31, 2008.

Political tension between Riyale and the opposition was about to ease when a day later the Guurti acted to extend the president’s tenure for one year. The extension would have allowed Riyale, at least theoretically, to remain in power until May 2009, thus nullifying the NEC’s time-line for the elections.

But the Guurti’s plunder had deepened the country’s political crisis. The opposition and much of Somaliland saw the extension not only as illegal but also as highly provocative as well.

The Guurti’s own term expired in 2006 but the elders skipped re-election by conspiring with Riyale to have their term extended for 4 years. Both extensions were widely perceived as invalid.

According to the Somaliland constitution only the House of Representatives could extend the Guurti’s term in office under very strict conditions.

The president’s term in office can be extended by the Guurti only if security in the country was so bad as to impede holding presidential elections.

The reputation of both Riyale and the Guurti have been tarnished by the extension fiasco.

Meanwhile there hasn’t been much progress in the mediation efforts initiated 2 weeks ago by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Abdirahman Erro.

Although Riyale has reportedly accepted to hold direct talks with opposition leaders Ahmed Sillanyo and Faysal Ali Warabe, however the president was said to be not ready yet to discuss an interim arrangement for administering the country until the next elections.

The opposition parties insist that Riyale either accept a provisional government of national unity or an independent care taker government to run the country in the run-up to the presidential and local government elections.

According to analysts Riyale is desperate to buy time before the arrival of May 15. By accepting to have talks with opposition leaders, from now until Thursday he wants to project the public image of a man still in control.

In fact the president and his close lieutenants have been noticed in the last one week scrambling for contingency plans.

Mr. Riyale was said to be worried about the prospect of thousands of demonstrators marching through the streets demanding that he should step down and leave the presidency.

Although UCID leader Faysal Ali Warabe has indicated that he wouldn’t ask his supporters to stage street protests, however the larger and more popular KULMIYE has not ruled out the possibility of organizing mass demonstrations against the government in the days to come.

On Wednesday KULMIYE staged a huge rally at its main headquarters in Hargeysa. The government tried to sabotage the gathering by stopping specially chartered buses carrying party supporters from reaching the KULMIYE offices.

KULMIYE leaders complained that the government has been targeting their members for harassments, arrests and physical assaults. They cited the arrest of several activists including Elder man Deyr Mohamed Elmi, the chairman of the KULMIYE Hargeysa branch Hamarji and Abshir Hassan Hashi.

Basking in its rising popularity, KULMIYE leaders insist that although they are ready for talks with the government but they will however not accept any arrangement that would allow Riyale to utilize state resources in the run-up to elections.

Although what is needed is essentially a political solution, however mediators are not confident that Riyale will take the first necessary steps towards a settlement of the country’s political crisis.

Source: Somaliland Times