Voter Identification Cards Arrive in Somaliland To Replace Old Cards
The Somaliland National Electoral Commission, the NEC, took delivery of more than a million a new voter registration cards that will replace the cards currently in the hands of the registered voters.
The new cards, which the NEC says were printed in South Africa after the voter registration list clean up process was concluded, are much more difficult to fake. The cards that are currently in the hands of the voters, unlike the new cards that will replace them, were printed and laminated on site during the voter registration program more than a year ago at various registration stations throughout the country. That registration process, the first ever in Somaliland, was fraught with many obstacles including technical problems.
The NEC has already started training students and teachers across the nation on the distribution of the new cards and collect old ones which is planned to start Monday, May 10, 2010. According to Horyaal Radio, however, the ruling party UDUB and its Government appointed officials in Erigabo, Sanaag, have blocked the training program in that city demanding their own hand picked trainees to be included in the list of trainees which the NEC approved earlier for the training.
Elsewhere in Hargeisa, UDUB party spokesperson was jeered by the audience at a commemoration ceremony for the death of late president Egal. He faced a hostile audience after he appeared to say that his party, essentially the Government, will boycott the election. The spokesperson accused the NEC of using the same electoral lists which his party rejected a year ago. “If [the NEC] is willing to hold the election in June, we are even ready for it in May” Ali Guray said at the ceremony, to which the audience initially responded with cheerful applause. However he added “The six point agreement [between the parties] was for the previous voter list to be reviewed, re-examined and cleaned to finally produce a corrected and cleansed voter list allowing every Somaliland citizen the right to vote once.”
Referring to the newly printed cards he said “A million and two hundred cards were printed. Seventy thousand registrants, mostly underage children, were removed from the list.” He continued that 96 thousand registransts originally set aside from the original list were reduced by only 12 thousand and added to the overall list. He alleged that there is a net increase in the voter registration indicating that was not what UDUB wanted instead expecting a much smaller list than the final one adopted by the NEC. He said “We will not accept. We will not tell our people that this is a corrected and cleansed list”. The audience after hearing these words immiadately turned hostile and started jeering and whistling him. He howerver suddenly changed his tune and declared that “We [UDUB party] accept to participate in the election with the [new] NEC list”.
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