• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

SOMALIA: Opposition rejects election results in Somaliland

NAIROBI, 21 April 2003 (IRIN) - The main opposition party in the self-declared republic of Somaliland, northwestern Somalia, has rejected the results of last week's presidential elections.

The presidential candidate for the Kulmiye (Solidarity) Ahmad Muhammad Silanyo, the main challenger to incumbent President Dahir Riyale Kahin, has reportedly said that he would not accept the results, because they were rigged, a senior party official told IRIN on Monday.

"We cannot accept results we know to be false,” the official, who requested anonymity, added. “We are confident that we won. We are not contesting the way the poll was conducted. What we are contesting is the counting."

The Somaliland Election Commission (SEC) on Saturday declared Kahin of the Unity of Democrats (UDUB) Party the winner of Somaliland's first multiparty presidential election, which was held on 14 April.

SEC officials, however, dismissed the allegations. "The elections were free and fair", Ahmad Adan Ali Godir, a member of the SEC, told IRIN on Monday. "All parties had agents present at each counting place who countersigned each result, so there was no rigging."

Godir said he hoped all parties would accept the results, but added that anyone who disputed them was "entitled to petition the high court, within 20 days as stipulated in our constriction".

The Kulmiye official told IRIN that the party would petition the high court "for redress". He added, "Our legal team is currently busy drawing up our petition, along with a long list of evidence of wrongdoing by the election commission."

According to Godir, Kahin got 205,595 votes, or 42.08 percent, against 205,515, or 42.07 percent, for Silanyo, a difference of 80 votes. Faysal Ali Warabe of UCID (Justice and Restoration), the third candidate, came in third, polling 77,433, or 15 percent, of the total vote of 498,639 votes cast around the country. An estimated 800,000 people were eligible to vote of Somaliland's three million people.

Kahin, 51, assumed the Somaliland presidency after the death of longtime President Muhammad Ibrahim Egal in May 2002. He is the first popularly elected president since Somaliland declared unilateral independence. Elders appointed Abdirahman Tur, the first president, and Egal.

Somaliland, a former British protectorate, declared independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991 after the collapse of the Siyad Barre government, but has not been internationally recognised. Over the past decade, it has moved away from conflict, while the rest of Somalia has been locked in civil strife.

Themes: (IRIN) Governance

[ENDS]

The material contained on this Web site comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post any item on this site, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All graphics and Images on this site may not be re-produced without the express permission of the original owner. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2003