The country has a republican form of government. The legislative assembly is composed of two chambers - an elected elder's chamber, and a house of representatives. An elected President and an elected Vice-president head the government.

The President nominates the cabinet which is approved by the legislature. There is an independent judiciary. The country has three political parties. i.e UDUB Party, Kulmiye Party and UCID party.

The current President of the Republic is H.E Dahir Riyale Kahin and the vice-president is H.E Ahmed Yusuf Yasin of UDUB party who were elected on April 2003 for a five year term. The term of the current government ends in early 2009.

The president of Somaliland is an executive head of state: the president functions as both head of state and head of government. There is no prime minister.

Presidents of Somaliland (1991-Present)

Name	Term start	Term end	Political Party
Abdirahman Ahmed Ali Tuur	28 May 1991	16 May 1993	Somali National Movemen
Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal	16 May 1993	3 May 2002	Somali National Movement (until 2001), United Peoples' Democratic Party (from 2001)
Abdirahman Ahmed Ali Tuur	3 May 2002		United Peoples' Democratic Party

Latest election

Summary of the 14 April 2003 Somaliland presidential election results

Candidates - Nominating parties	Votes	%
Dahir Riyale Kahin - For Unity, Democracy, and Independence		205,595	42.08
Ahmed M. Mahamoud Silanyo - Peace, Unity, and Development Party		205,515	42.07
Faysal Cali Warabe - For Justice and Development		77,433	15.85

Executive

System of government The Executive body of the government is the President, Vice President, and legislative government; a bicameral Legislature; and an independent judiciary.

Legislative

The Constitution of Somaliland was adopted by the Houses of the Parliament of Somaliland on 30 April 2000. The constitution was approved in a referendum held on May 31, 2001 when 97% of the voters voted in its favour. Its re-published version consists of a Preamble (Arar) and five main chapters (Qaybo) each of which is sub-divided into Parts (Xubno). There is now a total of 130 Articles (Qodobo) as compared to the previous 156 Articles.

Somaliland has had other constitutional documents of historical importance which range from the international treaties signed by the various Somaliland communities with the British government, and the various constitutional arrangements prior to independence in 1960 to the Declaration of Re-assertion of Sovereignty in 1991 (in Burao) at one of the earliest grand conferences of the Somaliland communities. Although the Republic of Somaliland was independent for a short period in June 1960, it later unified with Somalia. During that short period no comprehensive constitution was adopted but the State of Somaliland had its own Constitution which was drafted in early 1960.

The first main Constitutional document of the independent Somaliland was the National Charter (Axdi Qaran) which was signed by the Conference of the Somaliland Communities in 1993 in Borama. This was followed by the first Somaliland Constitution which was adopted at the conference of the Somaliland Communities in Hargeisa in February 1997. Under article 151 of this Constitution, the constitution shall be implemented for a period of three years from its approval in February 1997, and shall come into force fully once a referendum has been held. There was a provision for this interim period to be increased by the two Houses of Parliament, and in early 2000, the two Houses voted that the period be increased by one year. This was primarily to give more time for the completion of the revision of the Constitution (before its submission to the nation at a Referendum) and for putting in place the laws and mechanisms for changing the current "representative" democracy in Somaliland to a popular democracy based on the direct elections of the President of Somaliland and the Parliament of Somaliland.

Although initially the Somaliland Government proposed fairly extensive amendments to the Constitution in 1999, the final revised Constitution is not very different from the last one and the reduction of the number of articles from 156 to 130 has been largely achieved by the amalgamation of some articles, rather than by extensive repeals. Unlike the earlier draft proposals, the parts of the Constitution relating to directive principles and to human rights have all been retained. On the whole, the revisions tidied up the Constitution and no fuThis is a list of presidents of Somaliland. The country is not recognized internationally. However, it is considered by most observers to be the best functioning entity.

House of Elders of Somaliland

The Parliament of Somaliland (Baarlamaanka) has two chambers. The upper house is the House of Elders (Golaha Guurtida). It will have 82 members, representing traditional leaders. The traditional Somali elders (guurti) was incorporated into the governance structure and formed the upper house, responsible for managing internal conflicts.

House of Representative

The House of Representatives of Somaliland (Golaha Wakiilada) is the self-declared, breakaway republic's lower house. The current House of Representatives, formed following elections held on 29 September 2005, has a total of 82 members including the Speaker of the House, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi. They are elected in six multi-member constituencies using the party-list proportional representation system for a five year term.

Summary of the 28 September 2005 House of Representatives of Somaliland election results

Parties	Votes	%	Seats
UDUB For Unity, Democracy, and Independence		261,449	39.0	33
KULMIYE Peace, Unity, and Development Party		228,328	34.1	28
UCID For Justice and Development		180,545	26.9	21
Total		680,322	100.0	82
Invalid votes		4,585
Total votes cast		674,907