Somalia’s eternal struggle for the elusive universal suffrage

Under the changes to the law, which have met with opposition from some political rivals, Somalia will have a presidential race between three candidates and a framework for direct elections at district, state and national levels every five years.

These changes are to be reinforced by draft laws on the Electoral Commission, voter registration and political parties currently before Parliament.

The idea behind the changes, according to President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, is to ensure that more people are involved in electing their politicians.

“We cannot continue to use the indirect voting model. Since the end of the transition, we have had two elections. One time 14,800 people voted, the next time 30,000. This time we want millions of Somalis to vote,” Mohamud told the nation in an interview in June, shortly after the bills were proposed.

“If we can hold elections across Somalia, why not have elections? No, we do not expect the nearly 20 million people to vote. But we are targeting a few million people. This is the first time in 55 years that Somalia has applied the principle of 'one person, one vote'.”

There are already problems with the proposals. And a new paper analysing the changing landscape said this week that both the timing and manner in which the changes were made could delay progress. Mohamud's rivals accused him of failing to consult.

“For any major reform – electoral reform or other reforms – to succeed in Somalia, where strong regionalization prevails, it is essential to obtain the political buy-in of key stakeholders, particularly the leaders of the federal member states and the opposition,” said a paper published this week by GLAFPOL, a US research firm focused on politics in the Horn of Africa.

“Given their significant influence in the region, the leaders of the FMS cannot participate passively – without their active participation, direct elections will fail,” says the document entitled “A path to direct elections? Analysis of the Somali electoral law against the background of political realities.”

However, Mohamud had initiated consultations in the National Consultative Council, which brings together the federal government and member states. They met several times before Puntland, one of the five states, stopped “cooperating” with the federal government. But the Council of Ministers approved changes that parliament approved in March. They proposed a three-tier electoral system that takes into account the party's popularity and the interests of the clans.

The protests by rival politicians came about because some disagreed with the idea of ​​limiting the presidential race to the three most popular parties, which would be determined through grassroots elections in districts and states. They also disagreed on which districts should be used as the base unit. The changes refer to the districts that existed in Somalia before the fall of Siad Barre's regime.

“Of course, there are angers, arguments and counterarguments in such discussions,” Mohamud told the nation back then. There has been no universal suffrage in Somalia since 1969.

“But at the end of each meeting there are two documents. One is the communiqué on what has been done and what we will do, and the other is the agreement on the federal issue that has been agreed, signed and approved.”

These differences of opinion, he argued, were not a stumbling block but a stimulus that should serve to slow down and iron out the problems.

Mohamed Farole, climate minister of Puntland and a political analyst in Somalia, said the lack of consensus could harm the proposals, even if they sought to solve a Somali problem of elite politics.

“Unilateral action without consultation with member states will not work. Even in the states themselves, like Puntland, consultations must take place so that political measures are accepted,” he said, referring to the elections in Puntland in January.

“There have been deliberate attempts to prevent parliament from freely discussing these proposals. In Somalia, proposals must also come from the federal states.”

In Somalia, political reform is as much a question of timing as what is being proposed. For example, while most politicians have been vocal about the content and structure of the proposed elections, some observers see it as a matter of self-preservation. In Puntland, for example, holding elections in January this year means that the government does not want to hold the next election for five years and may not be willing to compromise on earlier elections to fit into the federal government's schedule.

Yasin Ahmed Ismail, Head of Research and Analysis at GLAFPOL, argues that while President Mohamud launched a reform programme earlier in his term than his predecessor, it may take four years after taking office for real progress to be made.

“The lesson we learn from this is that it depends on what the FGS proposes… and also when they propose it. In the past, they have made their proposals so late. They may be doing this to get an extension of their term,” Ismail told the nation.

The impression that reforms have been pushed forward too quickly could raise questions about whether these reforms are politically motivated, given the two years remaining in his four-year term and the uncertainty that indirect polls usually bring.

The proposals aim to abolish indirect elections, which are seen as too expensive for candidates. However, implementing the necessary structural changes could take more than two years. Some have suggested a gradual build-up, starting at the grassroots level and then gradually bringing about wider participation at the national level.

There is, however, a problem with clan dynamics. The proposals have limited the clans' presence in more than one party and allow clans to give up some seats to fringe groups. This could mean recognising clans as a pervasive problem, argues Dr Adam Aw Hirsi, director of Foresight for Practical Solutions, a Mogadishu-based public policy think tank.

“Historically, most Somali clans were sovereign entities, each with its own chief, territory and traditional codes known as 'xeer'. The arrival of European colonialists on the Somali coast ushered in a somewhat failed imitation of European systems of governance,” Dr. Aw Hirsi told the nation.

Even after independence, the new government followed the clan pattern. Barre tried to suppress them, but they only broke out again after his deposition.

“The 4.5 formula that Somalis have been using to share power since 2000 has given the clan system ultimate recognition and enabled it to assume absolute dominance in the Somali political system,” said Aw Hirsi, warning that any reform must take clan interests into account.

But the problem is not the clans, but the political elites who abuse them. Somalia is also facing an existential security problem.

The federal system has led to the emergence of clan enclaves competing for dominance, added Aden Abdirisak, a former senior adviser in the president's office and now executive director of Farsight Africa Research and Policy Studies in Mogadishu.

“Somalia urgently needs realistic political reform that decentralizes government power, as in Kenya,” he told the nationand argued that consensus was needed to achieve this.

The proposals are crucial for the future of the country's democracy, he argued.

“But first, the Mohamud government must focus on uniting the country, considering security reforms, ridding the country of Al-Shabaab terrorists and mobilizing new support from the regional and international community.”