Sunday, May 17, 2009

Somaliland Strives To Stand Out In Troubled Region

From The L.A. Times:

The breakaway republic hopes to become Africa's newest state, wooing international support with state-of-the-art elections. But it faces the corruption, injustice and tensions endemic to the region.

Reporting from Hargeisa, Somaliland -- When it came time to register voters for a presidential election in Somaliland, this dirt-poor breakaway republic picked the most expensive fingerprint-identification technology available to prevent fraud.

Then it seemed everyone did their best to undermine it.

With many people using different fingers on a biometric scanning pad or other ways to fool the device, nearly twice as many as the 700,000 to 800,000 estimated eligible voters received voter cards. Under the new $8-million system, one polling station registered, astonishingly, nearly 14 times as many people as it had for a parliamentary election four years ago.

Read more ....

My Comment: This small country is not slaughtering its civilians or having a piracy problem as its south-western neighbor is currently going through .... and for that .... it is a success.

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