By Abdirahman Said Bile
Recently, I read an interesting article from one of the Somali websites in which the author of the article claimed that, it is only five months from now, in December, when Puntland government is set to hold the municipal elections, quoting from Puntland president’s speech in March this year.
Truly, I cannot verify independently if Puntland plans to hold a municipal election, but the interesting thing was as the writer posed: Will it be possible for Puntland to hold democratic elections in December of this year?
Not to be coy: I agree with Giovanni Carbone and Vincezo Memoli who wrote in 2013 “in present day Somalia, talking about democracy would largely amount to putting the cart before the horse”, reason being, Somalia is lacking a key political precondition for democracy: a viable state. Therefore why the government want to call for something we are unlikely to achieve in the near future? The answer can be that; democratization has become the buzzword of Somali politics in recent years. Politicians of every stripe try to convince the people that the next government should come through free and fair elections. Despite the cogency with which democratization agenda is presented, practically, any operational success so far becomes unattainable.
The international community on the other hand seem committed to propound this failed agenda, but is understandable.
Nearly 27 years ago, Francis Fukuyama wrote his famous essay “the end of the history”. He envisaged that the triumph of liberal democracy marked the end of the history. His hypothesis is twofold; first, a liberal democracy coupled with capitalist market economy would ultimately lead to a greater prosperity. Second, the remaining autocratic regimes would succumb to democratic ideals and transit to democracy, because the world is dominated by a liberal hegemony that spreads democratic elections, this is the gospel of the international community.
The hypothesis initially seemed correct, as the winds of democracy struck autocratic regimes from Latin America to Asia what Samuel Huntington termed as “the third wave of democratization”.
However, Fukuyama expectations short lived. Only a decade later, the world has witnessed a period of democratic recession. Many newly established democracies reversed and followed what Rose and Shine called “democratization backwards”. This has ushered a new debate about the decline of democracy. Several scholars contributed, producing a raft of books among which Fukuyama’s latest two books The Origins of Political Order (2011) and Political Order and Political Decay (2014) stand out. The journal of democratization itself dedicated exclusively a whole issue in 2014 about state-democracy relations. Although liberals tried to fight back, they failed, their conclusion become, in the words of Francis Fukuyama “before you can have democracy, you must have state” or “no state no rule of law no democracy”.
Why stateness first? State is defined by Max Weber as an institution that concentrates and employs power within a defined territory. Michael Mann further distinguished between coercive power which Weber’s definition explicitly captured and infrastructural power; the ability of the state to formulate policy and implement decisions through the entire territory. Democracy on the other hand is a mechanism which is used to ensure that power is exercised on behalf of citizens, thus democracy constraints state power. But before you can constrain power you should be able to employ it.
Stateness is inevitable for both stages of democratic transition and consolidation. For democratic transition period, there are preliminary steps that should be undertaken such as demarcation of district boundaries as the case of Puntland, national census, preparation of legal issues including the introduction of election laws, setting of credible electoral commission, political parts formation, voter registration and identification and finally holding peaceful elections.
In gist, democratic elections involve complex and cumbersome process that needs both technical and administrative capacity. Hence only able states can perform it, that is why many election irregularities that beset many developing countries is ascribed on low state capacity rather than a deliberate attempt to manipulate the election by the governing.
During the consolidation period, the level of democracy mainly relies on the calibre of the state. States perform a variety of functions from the defence of the state sovereignty, enforcement of law and order, extraction of resources and the delivery of public goods, all which are important for a democratic state to sustain. In some instances it is proven that, citizens overwhelmingly vote for dictators because they can deliver public goods better than their counterparts.
Now, let’s give a quick glance over Puntland state, in 2013, the former president of Puntland Faroole cancelled the proposed municipal elections, after the election materials was set ablaze in some parts of Puntland. The president blamed the incident on what he called “spoilers” who wanted to destroy Puntland. Besides that, the government skipped over all preliminary steps towards a successful election, because it was incapable of accomplishing them.
Puntland government did not have the experts, the resources and even the coercive means to provide the minimum security for the election centres. It is therefore clear in 2013, Puntland state neither had the coercive power to tame the spoilers nor did it have the infrastructural power to undertake the preliminary steps for the process of free and fair elections.
Sure enough, nothing has changed vis-à-vis the state capacity of Puntland at this moment. But doing the same thing in the same way cannot bring a different outcome as George Santanya famously remarked “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Puntland should secure a legitimate political order based on rule of law before any kind of elections is talked about.
Abdirahman Said Bile
Email: [email protected]
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Abdirahman Said is an independent researcher mainly interested in Governance, international studies, security and strategic issues .
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