The Chairman of the National Electoral Commission (NEC), Musa Hassan Yussuf, announced in a national broadcast on Tuesday evening the implementation of a comprehensive vehicle movement restriction, extending from 12:00 midnight Tuesday to midnight Wednesday. The 24-hour curfew exempts vehicles displaying official NEC identification plates, emergency services, medical personnel, and essential service providers carrying special permits.
The Head Commissioner emphasized the critical importance of strict compliance with this traffic curtailment measure, which aims to ensure orderly conduct during the electoral process. Security forces and traffic police were strategically deployed at major intersections and thoroughfares to enforce the restriction, while mobile election monitoring teams operated under special passes to facilitate their movement during the curfew period.
This vehicular restriction protocol has been a standard security measure in Somaliland's electoral history, consistently implemented in all elections and polling exercises since 2001, including the historic referendum that ratified the Somaliland Constitution. That referendum, which marked the first of nine democratic exercises since declaring independence in 1991, served as a pivotal moment in Somaliland's democratic journey, catalyzing its progression toward today's unprecedented dual elections for both presidential office and national party qualification.
Well before dawn, extensive queues of eager voters formed outside polling stations across the country, with over 1 million registered voters eligible to participate. While some stations experienced minor technical difficulties with the biometric registration systems, these were promptly addressed by electoral staff. According to regional electoral commissioners, voting commenced punctually at more than 95% of the 2,709 polling stations distributed across Somaliland's six major regions, overseen by more than 30,000 deployed personnel and monitored by international election observers from many countries around the world including the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Poland, and Eswatini.
