Political competitiveness in Somaliland

Political competitiveness in Somaliland; by: Prof. Abdi Ali Jama.

Most of the people think that multi-party system --if deregulated-- will definitely produce many political parties or at least two, three bigger parties.  However, the result might not be like that, in the sense that a multiparty system-- though unfettered-- may end up paradoxically into one single party by domination, while all other political parties remain so trivial that they would never challenge the party that dominated the political life, let alone to win the leadership of the country. In other words, the country might be led by one single party for a long time or forever but—ironically-- out of fair and free democratic election, not as one ruling party like China that has been ruling the country in dog’s age because there is no democracy in the first place.

 South-Africa is ruled by only one party. However, ANC has been ruling South-Africa since independence by domination while China ruling party has been ruling the country Since Mao Tse Tung by law.  In China, only one party is allowed to exist legally whereas in South-Africa, you can apply for opening a party whenever you wish so. Therefore, ANC has been in power for that long time not because the law of the country monopolized the political power for ANC, but it is the only party that inevitably wins every election by landslide due to its popularity, and hence dominated the political life-- not by law-- by popularity. SNM could have been like ANC, had they been able to internalize their political dispute.

In Somaliland, political parties are limited to three in number by law.  There are now nine political party candidates, but only three of them will eventually be promoted to national political parties as stipulated in Somaliland constitution. In this regard, Somaliland political party system lies between china where only one single national party is allowed by law and South-Africa where there could be as many parties as possible.

Kulmiye, Udub and Ucid have dominated political sphere of Somaliland for the last ten years. For the next decade, the constitution of the country gives monopoly to only three political parties in which the older ones might include or might not. However, In USA or UK, for instance, two political parties alternate in ruling the country.  But unlike Somaliland, the Democratic Party and the Republican in USA are not given monopoly by law as ours; but it happened that they have become the only two parties that dominated other political parties by preponderance like ANC so much so you might rarely hear any other political parties. They do exist, though.

To be laconic, we can tell by inference that our multi- party system is not perfect competitive. In here, Politics is like Economics. So, in analogy, an industry or market that is not characterized with freedom of entry and exit is not considered to be perfect competitive in Micro-conomics. It is either monopoly or imperfect competitive. For example, if certain legislation says: only three bottled water companies are allowed to operate in the country. This would preclude any other firm to enter the market and hence would make the industry oligopolistic (imperfect competitive) by law. In other words, such industry is said to be subject to heavy regulation or government intervention. However, it sometimes occurs that with out government intervention, the same three companies may dominate the market, but this time by domination due to popularity of their brand products, not by law.