Multicultural Must Read: Somali candidates come up short

Somali: "All Toronto Somali-Canadians lost the municipal elections"

VOASomali radio in Washington reports:

Somali-Canadians in Toronto have recently been very successful in politics at both the federal and provincial level. They currently hold one of the most prestigious ministerial portfolios, citizenship and immigration. In the municipal elections, five Somali-Canadians ran for different positions on the city council and school boards. This was a first in history. However, none of the candidates was able to win a seat. The question on everybody’s mind is what the reason is for their failure. The candidates themselves gave their opinions on what happened. Deka Mohamed Barre, who ran for city council in Yorkville West, told VOA “we used to have 47 council seats in Toronto, and now that has been reduced to 25 council seats by Doug Ford and his PC party. And because of the judicial dispute among the political parties at Queen’s Park, the time for campaigning was reduced to only two months instead of ten months”. She claimed that there was a lot of corruption in this election. Deka is optimistic about her political future because she learned a lot of things from this election. Mohamed Ali is a candidate who ran for the Toronto District School Board, which is the third largest board in North America. He mentioned that there were some hidden political deals among none-Somalis, where they were supporting each other to get elected. Ali told VOA that many Somali community members who are eligible to vote did not come out to cast their ballots. He admitted that some candidates were inexperienced, unprepared or new to Canadian politics. Ali said, “I know in an election you should be ready to win or lose, and loosing is part of the game. Now I am more prepared to run for the next election.” In BC, Sharmarke Dubow, a Somali-Canadian, won a seat on the city council of Victoria. He competed against 29 candidates in a city with a small Somali population. “It was a very tough competition and the chance of victory was remote, but in the end, I was elected,” said Sharmarke. (30/10/2018)