Somaliland Presidential Election Chronicles- Part I -By Dr. Abdishakur Sh. Ali Jowhar
ADDIS ABABA, 21 FEB 2003 (ADDIS TRIBUNE)--Presidential elections are scheduled in Somaliland for April 14, this year. This series of articles will provide an in-depth analysis of the election. Two diaspora- based Somalilanders- a political scientist (Dhimbiil) and Psychiatrist (Jowhar)- will provide the analysis on alternate weeks. A Primer on an Embryonic Democracy

Somaliland gained its independence from the British Empire in late June of 1960 and lost it 4 days later, in a fit of postcolonial delirium, by merging with its southern neighbor to form the Republic of Somalia on July 1st of the same year. The union was driven by a chauvinistic ideology of “Greater Somalia”, a scheme of “freeing and uniting” all Somali-speaking people in the Horn of Africa. The Somali Republic, formulated on this basis, disintegrated and failed - the first modern state to simply disappear and vanish. The Somali Republic no longer exists as a state.