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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 03/04
Somaliland: Democratisation and Its Discontents
July 2003
Abstract
Recent developments have made the choice faced by the international community considerably clearer: develop pragmatic responses to Somaliland's demand for self-determination or continue to insist upon the increasingly abstract notion of the unity and territorial integrity of the Somali Republic - a course of action almost certain to open a new chapter in the Somali civil war.
Somaliland's presidential election of 14 April 2003 was a milestone in the self-declared, unrecognised republic's process of democratisation. Nearly half a million voters cast ballots in one of the closest polls ever conducted in the region: when the last votes had been counted and the results announced on 19 April, the incumbent president, Dahir Rayale Kahin, had won by only 80 votes.
