Dahir Riyale Kahin

President

Date of Birth: 1952

President Dahir Riyale Kahin's Unity, Peace and Independence Party (UDUB) is heavily criticised amid repeated delays to the presidential election, which was due on 27 September; this week he postponed it again.

Problems began in April 2008 when the Upper House, the Guurti, extended the mandate by a year. The Guurti is regarded as being in the presidential pocket and this infuriated the opposition. It took two months to resolve the crisis and reschedule the election for April 2009. There were further difficulties over electoral registration, which began in October; 1.3 million people were registered, though most estimates suggested 700,000 would be more plausible. Facial recognition technology is supposed to iron out inconsistencies and there were claims the count would be at least 90% accurate. This meant further delays and another extension of Riyale's mandate, to September. His government also expelled Interpeace, a United Nations-partnered organisation overseeing electoral registration due to monitor polling.

The government also caused uproar by announcing it would hold elections without the electoral register. Both opposition parties threatened a boycott. Ethiopia despatched its Minister of State for Foreign Affairs to Hargeisa and the number two in the British Embassy in Addis Ababa tried to mediate in the crisis, which damages Somaliland's hopes of international recognition.

Born in 1952, President Dahir Riyale Kahin is Somaliland's third President. A member of the feared National Security Service under the late Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, as Vice-President of Somaliland he took over after President Mohamed Ibrahim Egal died in 2002. He narrowly won the 2003 presidential election, amid claims of manipulation. From the minority Gadabursi people, he benefits from divisions in the majority Isaaq clan.