Taiwan Ally Somaliland To Conduct Local & Parliamentary Elections In May

Hargeisa (PP News Desk) — Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi today signed an executive decree on the timeframe for local and parliamentary elections that will take place on 31 May 2021.

After a day of government visits from African based foreign diplomats that proved in large part highly contentious with much of the Somaliland diaspora on social media, the president’s signature has set in place the emerging nation’s next step on the road to full recognition by the international community.

Somaliland is viewed by many as a breakaway state of Somalia sandwiched between Ethiopia to the south, Somalia’s region of Puntland to the east, and the Gulf of Aden to the north.

Last July, Taiwan and Somaliland announced mutual recognition and have since exchanged ambassadors with a range of bilateral agreements having been signed in the intervening months.

On the domestic front, the Somaliland National Electoral Commission has recently successfully concluded voter registration in its outlying regions.

***Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi signing the decree on local and parliamentary elections to be conducted in May.***

The Somaliland Council of Elders yesterday held a session on the parliamentary term for the sitting MPs. “The parliamentary term will end on the day parliamentary elections take place” reads a statement read out by the First Deputy Chairman of the Somaliland Council of Elders.

The current Somaliland Parliament will have served until 2022, based on a decision reached when uncertainty on local and parliamentary elections first emerged following disagreements among the three main political parties of Somaliland.

This article first appeared in the © Puntland Post, 2021 and is republished in edited form with permission

Mark Buckton

Mark is a journalism vet of 20 years with most of those years spent in Tokyo, Japan, as a columnist for The Japan Times and numerous other publications. His work has appeared on CNN, in the BBC, NPR, and in several dozen other media forms and publications across five continents.