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Opportunity 7: Increase the capacity of political parties to conduct and utilize low-cost
public opinion research.
Commensurate with the need for access to information from national survey research, political
parties need access to more regular and affordable ways to collect information that can be used
to identify and advance platforms and strategies. Political parties must serve not only as
advocates for issues of known importance to their members, but they must also serve as sources
of reliable and current information regarding their constituents, communities, regions, and issue
topics in order to inform their advocacy and legislative efforts. In order to gather the
appropriate information, analyze it and respond in an educated and timely manner, there is a
strong need for the parties to have increased capacity and knowledge of research methods, such
as focus grouping, interviewing, and basic polling. This is particularly critical given the limited
access to information via traditional media outlets, and limited communication channels due to
low information and communications technology penetration and high costs.
Opportunity 8: Support efforts to increase party presence and communication outside of
Hargeisa.
Political parties need a presence outside of Hargeisa to create national identities, understand
preferences and issues that prevail outside Hargeisa and provide an alternative political outlet in
between elections. A common theme throughout the assessment mission was the need for
organizations to have a better presence, and access to voices, outside of Hargeisa.
One international observer put it in the following way:
…if you have a strong party system that is present all over the country, then
hopefully those [local] messages and priorities can get filtered up to the national
level. Because as the way it is now, decisions are simply made by an elite,
without really thinking or understanding what the priorities need to be based on
what people want…part of that’s cultural, the sort of the privileging of elder
opinion over the community. But I think that parties are the best avenue you can
have to have local opinion represented at a national level.
Another international observer noted that it is not merely an issue of elites versus non-elite, but
Hargeisa versus outside Hargeisa, even in the case of civil society:
We often think that civil society is from grassroots and of the people, but elites
are elites…I don’t mean that in a negative way. It’s just a description. But I
think it’s wrong to view civil society, particularly Hargeisa-based civil society,
as speaking for the people…
Political parties noted the challenges they have traveling to the regions, communicating with
members based in the regions, building local party branch organizations, and encouraging
members of parliament to visit with constituencies. Significant obstacles include infrastructure
and resources; traveling outside Hargeisa is expensive and time consuming. However, building
a presence outside of Hargeisa is critical if parties are to strengthen their organizational
structures, learn about the issues and priorities facing their members to better develop platforms
