HARGEISA, 5 August 2009 (Somalilandpress) – The people and Government of Somaliland spend time, energy and money to the biometric voter registration to have free and fair election. The process continued for two years across Somaliland from Sool to Awdal regions. The world witnessed millions of Somalilanders in long queues for hours under blazing sun to redefine their identity as Somalilanders, after premature unity with Italian Somalia on 1st July 1960. The women and youth played very important role in voter registration process. Thousands of Somalilanders volunteered in helping the government to complete the registration.
The Somaliland flag was flying on the roof of very house across the country. The international community including USA, EU and African Union praised Somaliland for becoming the first African Nation to carry out electronic biometric voter registration, in the heart of a region dominated by dictators and kings.
Somaliland registration started after thousands of unarmed civilians were killed and displaced in Kenya over disputed election result. Also, democracy and human rights record in the region is not cheering.
However, the recent election dispute in Somaliland, between the political parties, government and National Election Commission, has triggered political confusion, particularly after President of Somaliland Dahir Riyale Kahn canceled the result of biometric registration, and called for traditional finger-painting style of election. This is a fallback to Somaliland democracy and after two years of hard work of enrolling the millions of citizens; also, it is disappointment to international community that helped Somaliland to achieve it.
Today, it is not right to accuse each other over the election because the country needs somebody to save from political collapse. The result of the Server – Biometric Registration – is very essential for the people, though it contains minor errors but yet better than finger-painting.
Biometric system will, at least, identify Somalilanders from the others in neighboring countries. We all know that Somali speaking people in the Horn of Africa lookalike each other and difficult to distinguish between them; but the biometric system will filter out the non-Somalilanders.
Interpeace is part of the failure in Somaliland Voter Registration, because it failed to generate accurate result from the Server, which is under its direct management.
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Interpeace disappointed the people of Somaliland, who strongly turned out for voter registration. Somaliland Government and Opposition Parties cooperated with Interpeace very effectively. However, it is below par to hear the announcement of Interpeace of the failure of the server to produce correct and reliable statistics that can help the country to vote for its 4th President in less than 20 years. Such announcement angered the government and people equally, so Interpeace needs to apologize to the people of Somaliland and solve the errors in the server.
Riyale´s decision of sending police to eject Interpeace from the country was very unwise and undiplomatic and it is a slap in the face of those who wanted to help and with good intentions towards Somaliland democracy progress. Interpeace left for now, and Somaliland is biggest looser because it cannot avoid financial needs to run the process of voter registration and expertise to reboot the server.
The New Technology:
Over the past year and specially the last six months much has been said about the Server and right now it has taken its own. The technology used in Somaliland Voter Registration is latest in the world, and this was very excellent step towards building free and fair democracy in Somaliland. The World and Donor Nations welcomed the initiative of registering the voters. However, Interpeace´s silly minor mistakes screw the registration process.It seems that Interpeace supplied this bad/old/low configuration server to reduce the cost.
After consulting highly skilled IT Professionals particularly ´System Administration area´ and after study on errors announced by Interpeace and National Election Commission, they described the errors very minor and result of bad study before the installation of the system. They underscored that hardware capacity of the server is too small to handle database of the voters.
The frequent statements from Interpeace and National Election Commission are: the server is filtering out the duplications; the server has errors and rebooting; the server accepted all duplications at the registration time and doing double job to clear it; the server is unable to have reliable output; and finally, Interpeace announces failure of the biometric registration server!!! The professionals finalized that current problem is result of bad pre-installation survey.
IT Professionals advised the hardware of the server should be upgraded and software to be reexamined to be fit to handle database of 4 million voters in Somaliland. The testing phase must include plan for next 20 years according to population growth rate.
They called for upgrade of both hardware and Software including the operation system, which should have latest security and performance tuning patches. The hardware upgrade should include Hard Disk, RAM and the Processor. They highlighted that majority of the data captured in the server are not in text or binary format like picture and fingerprint, which needs massive storage area. RAM and Processor helps the server to boot and run quickly particularly during filtering the duplicates.
The people and government of Somaliland accepted the offer of Interpeace to install the Server at the initial stage, and it should take all the responsibility. Both government and people of Somaliland done their part of job, but Interpeace failed!!!!
People of Somaliland & Government:
The world witnessed your powerful desire to establish fair and free democracy in your part of the world, after many recognized governments failed to do so. The world appreciated your commitments towards quality democracy with little outside support. It was amazing to see the people of Somaliland standing for long queues for many hours waiting to register for the election. These were unforgettable moments in the history of democracy.
However, today your democracy is under threat by Interpeace and its weak relation with government, National Election Commission and Opposition Parts in Somaliland. However, this does not demoralize you because you are people of democratic principles. Yet, you can do free and fair election using the current result from the server. There are minor errors in the result and must be corrected in the upcoming Parliamentary Election. The current Server result is better than traditional finger-painting election system, and will, at least, stop Non-Somalilanders from voting.
The security and stability is the backbone of your struggle to democratic and independent Somaliland, and shall be protected with every possible tool. The government and Opposition parties are politicians, and we know politician is full of lies. A politician is your servant and you appoint him to run your affairs for a period of time.
The decision of Riyale administration to expel the representative of Interpeace was wrong and politically motivated; because Riyale believes that he can be reelected using the old finger-painting system, but this wrong!!! Riyale deported the representative of Interpeace knowing that his administration cannot repair or fix the Server, and that Interpeace are the only one who can do it. So, Riyale minimized the chances of free election in the country.
Riyale administration arrested the representative like thief, after police arrested him from his hotel room escorted him to the airport, where he was put into waiting aircraft. It was not a wise and civilized step.
Riyale should accept Interpeace back to Somaliland because it is the only organization that can run the Server again, unless Riyale is planning another voter registration in the country, which may need another millions of dollars and two more years!!!
By Abdulaziz Al-Mutairi
Email: az.almutairi@yahoo.com
This is another amazing article, with solutions to the Somaliland Election Server Problems, We really need people like Al-Mutairi to be consultants of Riyale.
Welldone Abdulaziz, you are wonderful writer
Lovely article, it is fantastic full of realities and solutons.
I like such writers who highlight the problems and bring the solutions. This kind of reporting is called productive and constructive writing, unlike many Somali writers.
Thanks
why do u need so much time, technology and money in order to have a bloody functioning president and cabinet , thats because your leaders are not honest to you, …if they were honest and sincere they wouldnt force awdal into this fairy tale story of independence, and if it wasn't for the puntland administration they would also have forced sool snaag and cayn into your not so long lasting marriage …..
you are still sleeping man, the people of Sool came to Somaliland and rejected Puntland, the governemnt of Somaliland provided only military support to expel the militia of puntland… If Somaliland is forcing the people of Sool into Somaliland, they could have do long time ago, but it is not part of Somaliland agenda to force people…. Now after Sool people tired with Puntland stupidity they decided to join the growing democracy rather than trabal state of Majeerteeniya
Woooooooo what a story well done Mr Abdulaziz Al-Mutairi, and thaz somaliland press to show can of this story
No that is another misleading reporting, sool was never listed nor has a ballot box ever been put in sool!!!
Sool never participated in elections of sland, who is this propaganda reporter fooling? sland are divided let alone sool or awdal..i know many ppl that don't accept sland…for example look at the vice-president and his comments about somaliland..he said somaliland is fake and somalia is the only real option…thats ur own vice president for goodness sake!!!
So really sland is just big outside of sland..
This is the best solution, because we need to get election that fear, less frauds and misreading, without registration as traditional before I think its very high risk and affect peace, and future of somaliland people. look the last two years the opposition was waiting this result, in accordance somalland presidential election laws, registration law, let me ask you what based president and commission with out registration are r
there are no somaliland peole fool thre is only Somali people get some education
you clanist dog
Thanks so much, Dr. Al-Mutairi, your writing is really constrictive, and indeed you built your statements on the basis of on the ground facts. As a concerned Somalilanders who live in Hargeisa and close monitor the voter registration processes, from A to Z. the whole process was full of corruption and fraud, the whole field registration operators, political parts representatives, election commission staffs, and the registered citizens were in agreement to cheat the registration process and system in a every step.
During the voter registration exercise I had witnessed with more then thousands times that the all voter registration staff discarded the fingerprint test with intentionally.
Together with the server’s unacceptable results – the server accepted all duplications at the registration time.
So honestly I believe that the Somaliland voter registration has failed. The only available option is to go the polling day without registration which works well recent past.