Issue No. 949

On Tuesday, 14 April, the four-year term of Somalia's federal parliament ended, or rather, it didn't. Villa Somalia's (un)constitutional coup of a year-long term extension for the parliament and president in March remains in effect, leaving the institution in a kind of lingering zombie statehood. It is perhaps a fitting denouement for the 11th parliament, whose degeneration has been so thorough that its formal expiration means little in practice.

The expiration elicited criticism from a raft of opposition politicians, but the federal government-- emboldened by its ousting of South West President Abdiaziz Laftagareen from Baidoa last month-- has the bit between its teeth. Spurred on by a lack of international response, a raft of senior officials are now threatening similar violence against all those, including Puntland and Jubaland, who would resist its 'democratising' agenda. Some threats —including into Gedo —are more realistic than others, but with blood in the water, any possible defection by Galmudug or Hirshabelle leaders is now doubtful. And in the weeks since the finalisation of the Provisional Constitution, buoyant senior ministers, including State Foreign Minister Ali Omar 'Bal'ad' —always a fervent defender of the government's monopolistic agenda —are attempting to sell the year-long extension to the diplomatic corps in Mogadishu.

In turn, preparations for district and state-level elections are rapidly proceeding in these Mogadishu-captured Federal Member States (FMSs), with South West elections scheduled for later this month. But beneath this democratic sheen, the subterranean horse-trading of positions and patronage continues, particularly for the presidency of South West-- as President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud attempts to balance the vying interests for the seat. And at the same time, Villa Somalia's restructuring of the security services is continuing apace, consolidating power in the hands of Hawiye/Abgaal allies and preparing for conflict in Mogadishu. Against this grim backdrop, the expiration of parliament's mandate is part of the much broader crisis, with no clear path out of the political quagmire.

Still, with the parliament's term having expired, it is worth taking a step back to look at the institution itself. Like so many of Somalia's organs designed after the state's collapse in the 1990s, the reconstitution of the federal parliament was based on the tradition of 'consociationalism.' Coined by political scientist Arend Lijphart in the 1970s, the concept contends that deeply fractured societies might be stabilised through elite-level power-sharing bargains across major societal blocs. 

In Somalia's case, central to overcoming the deep societal fractures of the 1990s has been, of course, the '4.5 formula', which, in parliament, divvies up the Lower House's 275 seats among the four 'major' clan families: Darood, Dir, Hawiye, and Rahanweyne. Each grouping is allotted 61, whilst Somalia's .5 'minority' clans hold the remaining seats. Still, negotiations within each clan then subdivide these quotas further until every seat is assigned to a specific sub-clan, whose traditional elders nominate 101 delegates to vote among competing candidates.

But the federal parliament is only one part of a much larger consociational equation. The allocation of public distributive goods — ministerial appointments, military commissions, civil service positions, the designation of regions, the award of government contracts — constitutes a complex calculus that runs through every level of the federal system. The parliament's principal legislative role has always been arguably secondary to its function as a chamber of representation and co-optation; a mechanism for ensuring that every significant clan constituency has a visible stake in the federal project, and that successive administrations can assume office with enough legitimacy to govern.

This is not to obscure the ills of Somalia's federal parliaments; they are well-documented, be it perennial absenteeism, transactional vote-trading, a lack of scrutiny —see the brazen passage of the constitutional revisions earlier this year —or severe mismanagement. And over the past two years, it is the leadership of Speaker Aden Madoobe that has generated particular dismay amongst opposition lawmakers in Mogadishu, of whom dozens were arbitrarily ejected from parliament by him during the recent constitutional 'debates.' Having initially played a backseat role, Speaker Madoobe has gradually stepped into the fore as a key ally of Villa Somalia, casting off his history as part of the Rahanweyne Resistance Army (RRA) in the 1990s to join the centralised Justice and Solidarity Party (JSP) last May. At Villa Somalia's behest, Speaker Madoobe has steered-- through force or cajoling-- the raft of constitutional revisions, even deploying police to the chambers to bring about the 'finalisation' of the country's principal political document. 

But unlike Farah Abdulkadir or Hamza Barre —motivated by the government's Islamist inclinations—Speaker Madoobe has his sights on other prizes, namely the presidential palace in Baidoa. Other prominent Rahanweyne politicians are jostling for the position as well, but Madoobe is leading the pack to become the JSP's sole candidate, though President Hassan Sheikh is believed to also favour Hussein Sheikh Mohamud, his former chief of staff. Speaker Madoobe will not want to resign his parliamentary position without confirmation that the regional presidency is his, however. 

But beyond these imminent elections in Hirshabelle, South West, and Galmudug, the 4.5 formula and the manner through which parliamentarians take their seats in the Lower and Upper Houses will be forever changed as well, at least if Villa Somalia gets its way. Though Hassan Sheikh's term expires in just a handful of weeks, the government is contending that the parliamentary elections-- now in 2027-- will use a new model entirely, namely a 'Closed List, Single Constituency' system.

Under the proposed system, each party — namely those approved by the Interior Ministry's commission — would present a list of 275 candidates for election to the Lower House. But rather than being tied to a district or a federal member state, it would be a wholly national election, with seats allocated by proportional representation. MPs would be returned not by the clan constituencies that nominated them but by whichever party list they appeared on, and their political survival would depend entirely on their standing with party leadership rather than with their lineage networks. 

Subsequently, the behemoth that is the JSP-- despite the fissures within it-- would inevitably rule the roost, particularly with Jubaland and Puntland having withdrawn their recognition of the federal government. Under 4.5, the link between a parliamentary seat and a specific clan constituency — however mediated, however corrupt — is the mechanism through which the system produces legitimacy. Under the closed list, a candidate for Darood-majority Garowe could be elected on Hawiye votes cast in Mogadishu, even if no election took place in Puntland at all-- as anticipated. And with any exercise in direct voting still limited to the capital's confines and just a handful of satellite and garrison towns across south-central, it would inevitably result in a predetermined election, sever the putative link between clan and constituent in today's parliament, and further graft the legislature into a branch of the executive.

Thus, the attempts to reform parliament's model constitute more than mere anti-democratic backsliding or an unconstitutional term extension, but represent the overhaul of the logic that has underpinned post-collapse Somalia-- a dismantling of consociationalism. In turn, each week that passes, the cleavage in Somalia's political settlement deepens, hardening around rival axes. What replaces consociationalism, should Villa Somalia succeed, is not democracy but rather hegemony — a single-party, single-constituency model underwritten by Ankara's military and financial patronage, in which the fiction of federal balance is merely maintained to capture state institutions. The fragmentation this produces runs in both directions. Success for Villa Somalia means a nominally unified state that is in practice a Mogadishu-centred hegemony with a thin federal veneer — one likely to accelerate the hardening of Puntland and Jubaland into permanent autonomous entities, drawing in rival external actors and deepening the very fractures the federal project was designed to manage. 

Failure, or prolonged stalemate, risks the formalisation of parallel structures-- a rival election, a rival government, institutionalised division in place of the fluid, negotiated fragmentation that has at least kept the architecture of the state nominally intact. Either outcome represents a departure from the post-collapse logic of managed elite competition — and a settlement more brittle, binary, and prone to violence than the one now being dismantled. The breaking of consociationalism does not resolve Somalia's political crisis; it sets the stage for a more explicit and more violent struggle over the state itself-- beginning with Baidoa.

The Somali Wire Team