Somalia’s capital on the edge before presidential election
Mogadishu under lockdown as fears grow of Al Shabab strike to derail vote
MOGADISHU // Somalia will hold its presidential election today after several delays, with security concerns and warnings of famine topping the agenda for a new administration.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is seeking re- election against 21 other candidates, after another dropped out yesterday.
Before the election, the capital of Mogadishu was under security lockdown with roads and schools closed and residents urged to remain indoors.
Fears are high that the Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabab group will seek to disrupt the election by carrying out an attack in the capital. Two weeks ago, twin car bombs at a busy hotel killed 28 people.
Heavily armed security personnel patrolled the streets of the capital, while several main roads were blocked by sand berms and residents of the capital were urged by mayor Yusuf Hussein Jimale to stay indoors. “My children did not go to school because of the election, and my husband who works as a policeman had to stay on duty for the past three days,” said Samiya Abdulkadir, a mother of four.
“This thing is taking too long and people would be relieved if they could see an end to this drama.”
The Horn of Africa nation, which has not had an effective central government in three decades, was promised a one-person, one-vote election last year.
However, political infighting and insecurity brought about by Al Shabab militants, who control swaths of countryside and strike at will in Mogadishu, led to the plan being ditched for a limited vote running months behind schedule.
The presidential election had been due to take place in August, four years after the previous vote in which 135 clan elders chose MPs who then voted for the country’s leader.
Elections instead began in October with an electoral college system that excluded ordinary citizens and involved 14,025 delegates voting for candidates for parliament and a new upper house. The elections were marred by widespread allegations of vote-buying and intimidation.
In a report yesterday, Somalia’s anti-corruption watchdog Marqaati said the elections “were rife with corruption”. Repeated delays meant the new legislators were not sworn in until December.
The tortuous process has left some disillusioned.
“I really don’t care who becomes president. We just need to be free to attend to our business,” said Qoje Siyad, a Mogadishu labourer.
While falling well short of the election that was promised, the process is more democratic than in the past and is considered a step towards universal suffrage, now an aspiration for 2020.
In today’s voting, members of the 275-seat parliament and 54 senators will cast ballots inside a hangar within the heavily guarded airport. Security sources said commercial flights would not be operating.
No candidate is expected to get the two-thirds majority needed for a first-round win, with two further rounds permitted before a winner is declared.
In the absence of political parties, clan remains the organising principle of Somalia’s politics.
All 22 candidates are men after the only declared female candidates dropped out.
Each had to pay the US$30,000 ( Dh110,120) registration fee although few have any serious chance of winning. One of them is the current president, a 61-year-old former academic and social activist from the Hawiye clan.
Also in the running is ex-president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a fellow Hawiye and 52-year-old former leader of the Islamic Courts Union, which pacified Somalia before being driven out by US-backed Ethiopian troops.
The leading Darod candidates are prime minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Shamarke, 56, and a former premier Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, 55.
Both hold dual nationalities having lived for years in Canada and the United States respectively.
The overthrow of president Siad Barre’s military regime in 1991 ushered in decades of anarchy and conflict in the country.
The clan rivalries and lawlessness provided fertile ground for Al Shabab to take hold and seize territory, frustrating any efforts to set up a central administration.
Al Shabab has been in decline since 2011 but still launches regular attacks against government, military and civilian targets in Mogadishu and elsewhere.