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Somalia’s Presidential Election for 14,000 People

By Ty McCormick
FPLogo

MOGADISHU, Somalia —  The proliferation of billboards and glossy campaign fliers, plastered across windshields and storefronts here, gives the impression of a hard-fought battle for Somali votes. But the coming parliamentary and presidential elections, scheduled to take place over the next six weeks, won’t be decided by a democratic ballot.

They’ll be decided behind closed doors, by coalitions of powerful clan and militia leaders, often greased with illicit funds from abroad.

This year’s election was supposed to mark the culmination of Somalia’s democratic transition after more than a quarter-century of civil war. Instead it will be only slightly more inclusive than the last one, in 2012, when just 135 clan elders selected the Parliament that in turn voted on a president. It also may be tarnished, U.N. officials and opposition candidates say, by a surge in harassment of political activists and journalists by Somali security services.

Demonstrators hold placards during a protest against Al shabab insurgents outside Lido beach in the Somali capital Mogadishu, on January 28, 2016. Al Shebab killed at least 19 people when five gunmen detonated a bomb before storming a restaurant in the at Lido beach on January 22, 2016.  / AFP / MOHAMED ABDIWAHAB        (Photo credit should read MOHAMED ABDIWAHAB/AFP/Getty Images)
Demonstrators hold placards during a protest against Al shabab insurgents outside Lido beach in the Somali capital Mogadishu, on January 28, 2016. Al Shebab killed at least 19 people when five gunmen detonated a bomb before storming a restaurant in the at Lido beach on January 22, 2016. / AFP / MOHAMED ABDIWAHAB (Photo credit should read MOHAMED ABDIWAHAB/AFP/Getty Images)

I think there are a lot of people who think they are deeply disadvantaged by this election — and they would be right,” said Michael Keating, the special representative of the U.N. secretary-general in Somalia, who maintained that the vote still represents a step forward for the country.

Security has improved in parts of Somalia since the last election, thanks mainly to a 22,000-strong African Union force that has dislodged al-Shabab from most urban areas. But the al Qaeda-linked group continues to carry out regular bombings and assassinations, killing a top Somali general and six of his bodyguards in Mogadishu as recently as Sept. 18.

But it’s not just al-Shabab that stands between Somalia and a return to political normalcy. The clan violence that fueled the civil war throughout the 1990s and early 2000s has mostly subsided. The underlying clan rivalries, however, are still very much intact. And they have made everything from drafting a new constitution to federating the country to drawing up a plan for the current election — all things the government was supposed to have done by now — excruciatingly difficult.

After months of tortured negotiations, officials finally agreed that 14,025 “electors” representing the clans will select the members of the lower house of Parliament while the country’s recently formed state governments will nominate members of the upper house. Together, the two houses will elect a new president.

More than a dozen candidates have thrown their hats into the ring, but only a handful, including President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, and former President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, have the clan backing and financial support to be considered real contenders. The country’s first female candidate, Fadumo Dayib, has acknowledged she has virtually no chance of winning.

Sharmarke is the son of Somalia’s second president, Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, who was assassinated in 1969. ““Last time any election like this happened was 1969. Forty-seven years later, I think this is going to be a test of whether the country is ready for one-person, one-vote,” he said.

International donors have reluctantly come around to this view, having long ago dropped their insistence on a plebiscite open to all citizens. Already, however, there are worrying signs that the carefully designed electoral exercise may be marred by abuses.

In July, the president told local media outlets that anyone who opposed his re-election bid was Somalia’s second-biggest enemy, after al-Shabab. Since then, there have been numerous reports of harassment and intimidation of candidates who are challenging the president, especially those without the backing of powerful clans.

“I am subject to all-day harassment from him, from security,” Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, a former planning minister who is also running for president, said of Mohamud and his allies. He said that all his campaign billboards in Mogadishu were torn down, and that it was a hassle just to get permission to hold a news conference to release his new political manifesto, a 19-page document titled “Iskutashi,” or “self-reliance.”

“I don’t believe it will be a fair and free election,” Warsame said in interview at the heavily fortified airport in Mogadishu. “The president will try to use the government machine and money against us.”

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