123
serving a genuine electoral vehicle to access a representative seat in the Somali
context.
170
Party cadre training is not only important to increase the capacity of party members to campaign
and fundraise, which are traditional cadre activities, but also to ensure that members understand
and can communicate the party platform, and that they understand the role of political parties in
Somaliland’s democratic system and how they differ from the clan system. Political party
members often are influential members of communities, and they can serve as important
reminders that democracy does not only take place during elections. They also serve as
important reminders of who the parties are and what they represent between elections when
parties do not spend on campaign paid media.
Somaliland’s
National Development Plan
, drafted in 2011 by the Ministry of National Planning
and Development, noted that Somaliland parties have “weak political party discipline and
membership cohesion.”
171
This comes as no surprise given that party mobilization tends to take
place only during electoral periods. Training party cadres in between elections is a good
opportunity to prepare them for elections, increase their loyalty, build their civic awareness,
increase access to and sources of information and increase internal communication, particularly
horizontal communication, which in turns builds trust and relationships, potentially across clan
lines.
Party cadre training is a relatively low cost effort, and could be made sustainable by the
development of internal expertise, to eventually serve as leaders in internal party training
divisions. The recommendation for internal party training wings was also raised after the 2012
elections in an April 2013 report by Saferworld, in which it noted the following
recommendation, “Political parties (and civil society organizations and the National Electoral
Commission) should work on developing their own internal capacity-building programs.”
172
With reference to cadre training, a high-ranking official of one of the political parties suggested
the following:
There are good opportunities in Somaliland; they could take the political parties
into the universities for cadre training, for example if the political parties need
lawyers, there are law faculties in the universities, there is political science and
international relations faculties in the universities, there is administration
faculties in the universities, these are the basic things which the political parties
need to develop.
There are few examples of political parties preferring to depend on universities to provide basic
cadre training, which suggests that party leaders are mostly concerned with basic member
capacity and, secondarily, with capacities specific to party cadres.
170
A Vote for Peace II: A Report on the 2010 Somaliland Presidential Election Process
. Rep. Hargeisa: Academy
for Peace and Development/Interpeace, 2012. Print, p. 13.
171
Republic of Somaliland. Ministry of National Planning and Development.
National Development Plan (2012-
2016)
. Hargeisa: n.p., 2011. Print, p. 230.
172
Makokha, Jacinta, and Yussuf Ali.
Somalilanders Speak: Lessons from the November 2012 Local Elections
.
Rep. Saferworld, Apr. 2013. Web. July 2013, p. 18.
