“Every president wants to extend his tenure and at least add one more year, so why can’t they make it official and hold elections every five years instead of four?” wondered Abdirisaq Ali Mohamed as he watched TV at a hotel.
The uncertainty is ripe for exploitation by the Somalia-based al-Shabab extremist group, which has threatened to attack the polls. Meanwhile, the country is adjusting to the withdrawal of some 700 U.S. military personnel, a process completed in mid-January.
A successful election means Somalia’s government can move on to address urgent issues like the COVID-19 pandemic, a locust outbreak and hundreds of thousands of people displaced by climate crises like drought.
Despite its insecurity, the Horn of Africa nation has had peaceful changes of leadership every four years since 2000, and it has the distinction of having Africa’s first democratically elected president to peacefully step down, Aden Abdulle Osman in 1967.
But the goal of a direct, one-person-one-vote election in Somalia remains elusive. It was meant to take place this time. Instead, the federal government and states agreed on another “indirect election,” with senators and members of parliament elected by community leaders — delegates of powerful clans — in each member state.
Members of parliament and senators then elect Somalia’s president.
An alliance of opposition leaders, along with civil society groups, have objected, arguing it leaves them no say in the politics of their own country.
Jubbaland and Puntland finally appointed electoral commissioners this week, a sign of progress. “No partial elections or parallel processes,” the U.S. Embassy said as it encouraged political leaders to meet on remaining issues.
An outburst of deadly fighting in Jubbaland this week has highlighted the tensions . Somalia blamed it on rebels backed by neighboring Kenya, with which Somalia severed diplomatic ties in December. Critics of the president say he is trying to rally support as he seeks a second term — an elusive goal for Somali leaders over the past two decades.
The opposition alliance, which includes two former presidents and former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre, has urged the president to return to his senses and let all stakeholders play their rightful role in the election.
“You promised that once president you will be a good Somali elder. You were given to lead a united people in a peaceful way,” said one of the former presidents, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. He himself benefited from an extra year in office when elections were not yet ready.
The former president warned that Jubbaland and Puntland could go the way of Somaliland, with the unity of the country at stake.
“There’s no way that Somalia will go back to the 1990s,” Mohamud said of an era in which local warlords ran rampant in Mogadishu and an attempt by the U.S. military to intervene collapsed when the bodies of U.S. soldiers were dragged through the streets.
The objecting states have been given plenty of time to take part in the election, said Ibrahim Hassan Haji, an electoral commission member from Southwest state. “Otherwise, we will be forced to go ahead without them and select their quotas of (delegates) from here in Mogadishu.”
But the head of the local Hiraal Institute think tank, Hussein Sheikh Ali, said holding a partial election will not be tolerated in a country where clans are still “armed to the teeth.”
Instead, “it is always the ‘sixth clan’ (the international community) that intervenes” in such crises and a road map is usually agreed upon, added political analyst Liban Abdullahi.
The U.N. special representative, however, has stressed that any resolution must come from Somali leaders, whom he urged to “be imaginative.” He would not say how the international community might respond to a vote that goes ahead without all states involved.
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