What is delaying Somalia’s elections?

 

As the clock ticked towards 12am on Monday, young men counted the seconds to midnight before firing a hail of bullets into the calm dark skies over the Somali capital to celebrate the end of President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed’s term in office.

Rewind four years, and young men in Mogadishu were also turning their guns upwards but for the exact opposite reason – to express their joy at Mohamed, popularly known as Farmaajo, taking office.

Remarkably, in a country where clan loyalty runs deep, the crowd was celebrating the election defeat of their own clansmen. Running on a nationalist platform and a promise to wipe out the al-Qaeda-linked armed group al-Shabab, Farmaajo – a bespectacled Somali-American who lived for decades in Buffalo, New York – had defeated two former presidents who hail from the coastal city to clinch the top seat in the 2017 election.

Similar scenes were witnessed in several cities across the Horn of Africa country. Even in neighbouring Kenya’s Dadaab, home to one of the world’s largest refugee camps housing thousands of displaced Somalis, Farmaajo’s win was welcomed.

But four years is a long time – especially in Somali politics, as no president has ever won a second term in office.

On Saturday, Farmaajo and the leaders of the country’s federal states failed to break a deadlock over how to proceed with elections. Farmaajo accused the regional leaders over the impasse, but opposition groups said they would no longer recognise his authority following the expiration of his term on Monday.

“The president is solely responsible for the delay to the election,” Ilyas Ali, an opposition senator reported. “He had four years to organise an election but he didn’t do that. Now, his term has ended. We don’t recognise him – and he only has himself to blame.”