Somalilandsun – The flurry of words of accusations, allegations and resolutions vis-à-vis their counters as concerns the registrations of persons and that of the electorate are generating more than their worth, confusing the members of the public even more.
The simple question and fact of having a free and fair election is, first and foremost, to have the basic pre-requisite and indispensible national personal identification card.
There is no way that an election can take place without the national IDs and becomes a free and fair one.
It is this basic requirements that is used (have to be used) to acquire the right to vote.
Thus, the electorate has to identify themselves at specified polling points to register themselves as potential voters.
To vote without IDs or to register as voters without national ID cards is outright rigging of elections. We take to emphasize this repetitively to make it clear that what the opposition parties’ demand is indeed, directly without further substantiation, an act of undermining the electioneering process.
So far, we have not seen or heard any real articulate reason that the opposition leaders have brought forth that would support their misguided campaigns of mobilizing for public boycott of the registration. We are of course confounded by their demand of foregoing national IDs for direct (only) election registration!
Are they not whipping up support for rigging? Why are they refusing national IDs? Do they want to import voters? By denying the populace to have their personal indices registered is to deny the essence of nationhood, statehood or our whole essence of Somaliland.
The funny thing is that even before the law on the issue is enacted, we see these misguided sentiments.
The fact is that the one being formulated as per international norm provided for issuance of IDs before voter registration.
The one in the lawmakers’ oven right now being baked specifies for the registration of the national ID’s within six months from commencement.
Another thing is that we still are waiting for the establishment of the new NEC committee and the date of election which they then have to slate.
Even before all these are done and declared do we see innuendoes that are not apt to the populace consumption.
Going about the public places and sampling street political comments reveal a lot of confusion whereby people argue about what seem results of serious misrepresentations.
The beating up of tribal drumbeats will surely not pay.
If there are any bones of contentions then they should be ironed out through right channels. Playing tribal cards is non-starter.
National ID cards are not to be confused by voter IDs. They are quite separate and it is a state’s undertaking. They are not political tramp cards and MUST not be made to be so.
We should not be fooled by uncommonsensical whims which are not logical in the remotest senses.
By refusing the ID cards the perpetrators of the campaigns are denying us our statehood.
As for the time factor of, again their misguided phobia then let them be specified in the laws and regulations of the land.
An editorial of The Horn Tribune a weekly English language newspaper published in Hargeisa by the State owned Dawan Media Group
