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The Nairobian

Somaliland opposition leader wins presidential election

World

By AFP | Nov 19, 2024

**Somaliland opposition leader Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi wins presidential election.** [AFP]

Somaliland's leader of the opposition has won the breakaway region's presidency, the election commission said Tuesday, in a result rejecting the establishment and calling for change.

Some 1.2 million people were registered to vote on November 13, in an election that international observers hailed as a display of Somaliland's peaceful democracy.

Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, popularly known as "Irro", won the election with 63.92 percent of the vote, well ahead of outgoing president Muse Bihi (34.81 percent) and Social Justice Party (UCID) leader Faysal Ali Warabe (0.74 percent), election commission chairman Muse Hassan Yusuf announced on Tuesday.

Irro is a former ambassador of Somalia to the Soviet Union and Finland in the 1980s, and a long-time speaker of the Somaliland parliament.

The 68-year-old has offered few concrete policy changes but says he will be a more unifying figure than Bihi -- who he accuses of having divided Somaliland.

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He claims the outgoing president fomented clan divisions that led to the loss of part of the Sool region, when Somaliland forces withdrew in 2023 after several months of violent fighting against a pro-Mogadishu militia.

Bihi headed a controversial deal with Ethiopia at the beginning of the year, offering the landlocked nation a lease on 20 kilometres (12 miles) of Somaliland's Red Sea coastline for a port and a military base.

He says Ethiopia offered to recognise Somaliland in return, though this has never been confirmed by Addis Ababa and full details of the agreement have not been made public.

The memorandum of understanding has aroused fury in Somalia, sparking a verbal and military escalation with Ethiopia that has alarmed the region and the international community.

The self-proclaimed republic, which enjoys a strategic position in northwestern Somalia, has its own money, passports and army.

But since its unilateral declaration of independence in 1991, Somaliland has grappled with decades of isolation.

Its lack of international recognition has hampered access to foreign loans, aid and investment, and the region remains deeply impoverished.