On Monday 13.11.2017 at 6 am local time in Hargeisa, capital city of Somaliland, people are queuing at the poling stations to voting for the president of the next five years.
At the polling stations, people casting their votes are enthusiastically talking about which candidate they support and why. This indicates that Somalilanders are even in some measures more open than the Western countries.
Voters lined up in long queus to cast their votes on Monday morning throughout Somaliland. Some of them who spoke with the local media cited that they are happy to vote freely.
Under the order of Somaliland’s Nation Election Commission, people cannot drive cars in Hargeisa before the clock hits 6pm sharp. This made Hargeisa friendlier to those using their feet to reach polling stations. Mostly, business place and public and government headquarters are closed.
The commission also shutdown all social media networks, an act which human rights organizations criticized.
After tough campaign between three major political parties UCID, KULMIYE and WADDANI, today is the day that each party will harvest the fruits of its campaign.
All the three presidential candidates, who two of them are Finnish citizens, have already pledged to accept the result of the polls and this made the polling atmosphere more interesting and more transparent.
International observers and many Somalilanders believe that the secret behind Somaliland’s political triumph is person-backed democracy, which is ordinary people are fully aware their right to vote freely and fairly.
Though, the results are yet to be announced, however, But, what makes this election unique is, that Somaliland has succeeded to conduct one-man-one-vote election and showed ostensibly what democracy means to the rest of the East African countries, which in the history have not did the same.
