Issue No. 858

Something is Rotten in the State of Somalia

OPOV or not OPOV? That is the Shakespearean question upon which Somalia's political future would depend. But is it really? The question has consumed the country and commentators for months, but the very term itself-- 'one-person, one-vote' (OPOV)-- does not begin to reflect the situation today. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's (HSM) professed commitment to conduct OPOV elections for the federal parliament in May 2026 is both a disingenuous misnomer and a deft gesture of political sleight of hand. For a host of reasons, it is by now apparent to all concerned that an OPOV poll in Somalia is inconceivable under present circumstances. Even HSM has privately acknowledged as much. So why are we still talking about it?

Proponents of an OPOV election claim that the previous model of indirect elections, anchored in Somalia's '4.5 system' of clan representation, is irredeemably corrupt and cannot be relied upon to deliver a credible new government. That argument might hold water if it were wielded by a political opposition determined to prevent HSM from stealing yet another election in order to serve a third term as president. Ironically, however, it is HSM and his Damul Jadiid disciples who are excoriating the very electoral model that brought him to power – twice. 

What Villa Somalia proposes instead bears no relation to the slogan of 'one-person, one vote.' That would be impossible given that, since Puntland and Jubaland no longer recognise Villa Somalia's authority, the federal government's remit notionally extends to less than 30 per cent of Somalia's territory – most of which is actually controlled by a still-advancing Al-Shabaab. Realistically then, elections could only be conducted in major towns still under effective government control – an exercise in direct voting, perhaps, but hardly OPOV. 

A far more serious consideration is what a direct parliamentary election – especially one limited to parts of southern Somalia - would mean in terms of political inclusion, representation, and accountability. Under the current '4.5' system of indirect polling, each of parliament's 275 seats is awarded to a clan, with the four 'major' clans – Darood, Hawiye, Dir, and Digil-Mirifle – each allocated 61 seats, while the 'point five'- the minority clans– share the remaining 31 – a formula devised over two decades ago at the Arta Peace Conference in 2000. Negotiations within each clan then take place to subdivide these quotas even further until every seat has been assigned to a specific sub-clan. The traditional elders from that specific lineage then nominate 101 delegates who cast votes amongst the candidates competing for that particular seat. 

This ostensibly clan-based process is far from pristine. Every step, from the allocation of seats and the selection of 'traditional' elders to the nomination of delegates and the casting of votes, is susceptible to negotiation, manipulation, and sleaze. The federal and state governments all seek to shape the outcome – both by outspending one another and influencing their respective electoral management bodies: State Electoral Implementation Teams (SEITs) at the state-level and the Federal Electoral Implementation Team (FEIT) in Mogadishu. And Somalia's various Islamist movements also play a powerful, if largely invisible, role in every aspect of the process through their undeclared proxies.

Yet while corruption is pervasive and embarrassingly transparent, it is rarely decisive. With all sides offering bribes, many delegates abide by the pragmatic edict-- "take the money but vote with your conscience." When all is said and done, every clan knows not only who has filled its seats in parliament but also broadly how they arrived there and to whom they owe the privilege. And each time that Parliament has elected a president since 2012, the outcome has been plausibly unpredictable, with no incumbent winning a consecutive second term. The system is far from perfect, but it has nevertheless imbued successive federal governments with sufficient legitimacy to take office with the consent of the governed (Somaliland notwithstanding). The fact that both Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo and HSM (in his second term) have largely forfeited that consent has more to do with their bungling attempts at state capture than with inherent flaws in the electoral system. With domestic support for Villa Somalia at an all-time low beyond its heavily fortified compounds in Mogadishu, the only votes HSM can rely upon at the moment are those of his foreign donors and military allies.

Villa Somalia now proposes to replace clan-based, indirect elections with a 'Closed List, Single Constituency' poll between two (or possibly three) political parties. Much has been made about such a transition away from the 4.5 formula towards a supposedly democratic model, but far less attention has focused on what such a process would actually entail. Under the Closed List, Single Constituency system, each party would submit a list of 275 candidates for election to the Lower House of Parliament, presumably respecting the 4.5 formula, but not broken down by electoral district, region or Federal Member State. Instead, the seats assigned to each party would be determined as a percentage of total votes cast, meaning that MPs in one part of the country could be elected on the basis of votes from another. In a single fell swoop, this would effectively sever any residual relationship between many MPs and their putative clan constituencies. For example, Darood candidates from Garowe or Kismaayo could be elected to parliament because a majority of Hawiye votes in Mogadishu, Jowhar, and Beledweyne were cast for their party – even if no election took place in their home states of Puntland and Jubaland. 

An election of this nature would constitute a flagrant exercise in gerrymandering, since Villa Somalia would be able to ring fence the vote in areas dominated by its Justice and Solidarity Party (JSP) allies. So far, the federal government has adroitly manoeuvred every aspect of the process from the appointment of the National 'Independent' Electoral Commission - headed by HSM's former campaign manager – to voter registration and ballot counting. If such a trend continues, then the outcome of the 2026 election will be a foregone conclusion in HSM's favour – hardly the progressive march towards democracy that pro-government spin doctors would have the international community believe.

Moreover, such a vote would erode the federal government's domestic legitimacy even further, to only areas of central Somalia that it nominally controls. At this current juncture, Puntland and Jubaland are certain to reject both the process and its results, overtly diminishing Villa Somalia to an essentially Hawiye authority with pretensions to national government. Mogadishu's fabrication of isolated, clan-based proxies in Laas Aanood and parts of Gedo would hardly compensate for the defection of such powerful, well-established regional administrations. And whether or not the Digil-Mirifle communities of South West State would continue to indulge Villa Somalia's affectations of national leadership under such circumstances remains to be seen. While Beijing, Doha, and Ankara may continue to back their ally, much of the international community on the other hand would probably accelerate their retrenchment from Somalia.

No wonder then that more lucid Somali nationalists are casting about for alternatives to Villa Somalia's electoral charade. Just last week, two leading think tanks – Somali Public Agenda and the Puntland Development Research Centre – jointly published a set of proposals for alternative polling arrangements aimed at averting the looming political and constitutional crisis. And on 10 August, opposition politicians from the National Salvation Forum met with HSM in a last-ditch attempt to agree on a way forward. Reports of yet another deadlock have emerged with the president refusing to put in writing any rollback to his constitutional and electoral agenda, and a further meeting has now been scheduled for later this week.

But opposition grievances extend far beyond Villa Somalia's brazen gerrymandering, encompassing a range of constitutional and legislative amendments that his government has introduced through Machiavellian, extra-constitutional means. If HSM were to finagle his way to a third term, such amendments would resuscitate precisely the kind of corrupt, centralised, clan-based authoritarianism – albeit with an Islamist slant - that Somalis overthrew in 1991. There can be little doubt how that would end.

The lingering question of whether Somalia is 'ready' to conduct an OPOV election is a deceptive one. Assuming Al-Shabaab doesn't overthrow the federal government first, next year's poll may involve some Somalis casting ballots, but in a sham election that would consummate the creeping process of state capture manifest in HSM's monocratic constitutional and legislative agenda. "Something," Shakespeare might well have said, "is rotten in the state of Somalia." And Villa Somalia's OPOV antics are part of the sepsis – not the remedy.

The Somalia Wire Team