Hussen neutralized opposition civil servants by transferring them before the 1961 plebiscite.

Evidence

Immediately after his trip, Hussen transferred some of the key Northern opposition members in the civil service in his ministry, but not the governor, to other regions of the country. Mindful of the legacy of the 1959 election in the South, Hussen worked very hard to ensure that the forthcoming plebiscite was conducted with utmost probity. In that spirit, he wrote to the Speaker of parliament informing him that the opposition should station their representatives in all polling stations for the duration of the referendum. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 712