the delays in Somalia’s election process continue to raise concerns The perpetual transition in Somalia
Peter Fabricius
03 November 2016
Peter Fabricius writes that the delays in Somalia’s election process continue to raise concerns
The perpetual transition in Somalia
3 November 2016
Somalia’s legislative elections missed a key deadline last week, risking a third delay and raising more serious questions about whether the deeply troubled country will ever make it out of its open-ended transition phase to become a real democracy. Four of the six federal states completed the election of members of the new upper house of the Somali Federal Parliament. But voting for the more important lower house – The People’s House – which was supposed to start on 23 October and run through to 10 November, had not begun.
This raised some doubts about whether or not Parliament would be able to perform its first duty of electing a new president on 30 November, who would appoint a new prime minister, who would in turn appoint a cabinet.
The failure of clan elders and others involved to complete the process of choosing an electoral college, to elect the 275 members of the lower house, provoked a strong rebuke from the international community. In a rare joint statement, the United Nations (UN), African Union, Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, Ethiopia, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States expressed ‘grave concerns’ over allegations of corruption and the intimidation of prospective candidates for Parliament, electoral college delegates and election officials.
Michael Keating, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia, warned this week that: ‘The electoral process is reaching a pivotal moment’ and that the continual delays, intimidation and vote-buying ‘are now raising serious questions about the integrity and credibility of the process.’
It is not the logistical challenges familiar to many other African elections – of getting ballots and other materials to thousands of polling stations scattered around the country – which is causing the delay. Only 14 025 people out of Somalia’s population of some 12 million may vote in this election; and they are to do so in just a few federal state capitals.
Even so, that is an improvement. The Transitional Federal Government, which ran the country from 2000 to 2012, was chosen by the 135 clan elders. The current Federal Government of Somalia was established after the last election/selection in 2012, but remained, in effect, not much less transitional than the previous one.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who was voted in by an elected legislature in 2012, promised that the next elections, this year, would at last be on the basis of universal franchise.
But that didn’t happen for several reasons. As Institute for Security Studies researcher Omar Mahmood has pointed out, logistical problems were among these reasons. The country had not completed a census or a voter’s roll. But he suggests the biggest delaying factor was that the violent extremist Islamist group al-Shabaab still poses a major security threat. It has vowed to disrupt even the limited election proposed. If all eligible Somalis were to have voted in thousands of polling stations across the country, the threat would have been so much greater.
Mahmood also cites lack of political will – in effect the reluctance by some politicians who control the country – as another possible factor that kicked universal franchise down the track again.
In the absence of universal franchise, the country’s leadership decided to extend voting rights just a little bit beyond those 135 clan elders by adding another step to the electoral process. The 135 clan elders would choose an electoral college of 51 members for each of the 275 Parliamentary seats, providing a total of 14 025 electors who would cast secret ballots to elect the lower house.
So the electorate has increased since 2012, in an attempt ‘to moderate the perception that is a purely elite-driven process,’ as Mahmood says. ‘But in a country
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