n 21 February 2020, the President of Somalia,
Mohamed Abdullahi (Farmaajo), signed into law
the long-awaited electoral bill that has been in
the making for years. The leaders of the Federal
Government of Somalia (FGS) celebrated the signing
of the bill as a historic achievement, because the
law should, in theory, allow citizens to directly elect
their representatives in the parliament for the first
time since 1969.1
Moreover, the law was designed
to be implemented during parliamentary election
scheduled for later this year, and presidential
election early next year. However, it is becoming
abundantly clear that applying the new law to the
upcoming electoral cycle would be easier said than
done.2
In addition to the lack of political consensus
among key stakeholders3
, the law still has major
deficiencies in a number of areas. They include
assigning seats to constituencies, representation
for Somaliland and Banadir, ensuring a women’s
quota and clarifying the role for political parties.
Additionally, the time remaining from the end of
the mandate of the Farmaajo administration is
too short to agree and finalize all aspects of the
upcoming election.
1 Somali President Signs Historic Election Bill Into Law; https://bit.ly/3fIu6Et
2 The National Independent Electoral Commission (NIEC) is scheduled to tell parliament on 27 May 2020
whether it can conduct a one-person one-vote election.
3 In our last election paper (Somalia: In Search of a Workable 2020 Electoral Model; https://bit.ly/2LpdXFI), we defined stakeholders as: the FGS, FMSs and registered political parties.
4 The FGS did not, in the last budget, allocate funds for the election and neither did the member states.
5 Since 2000, holding elections on time and transferring power at the end of each mandate has become sacrosanct and non-negotiable and it would be anathema for the Farmaajo administration which has been tasked with ushering in one-person one-vote to turn
around and ask for an unconstitutional term extension.
Insecurity remains a pervasive problem across the
country, while the financial envelope needed to
organize a universal suffrage election would be too
big for the FGS and Federal Member States (FMS).4
Moreover, the technical preparation required for a
universal suffrage election is also not available. The
new law, which infuses modern democratic norms
with traditional power-sharing principles, calls for
a biometric system to be used. It will be difficult,
if not impossible, for the National Independent
Electoral Commission (NIEC) to raise the funds
needed, purchase the equipment and develop
the capacity to operate it within the eight months
remaining before the election.
Given the short amount time left, stakeholders
must find common ground on the election model.
The unintended—or perhaps the intended—
consequence of failing to do so is a term extension
for the current administration. As we noted in our
election paper last year, extending the mandate
of this administration will not only reverse crucial
gains made in the areas of peace-building and
state-building since the establishment of the
Third Republic in 2000, but could also erode the
legitimacy of the FGS, sparking electoral violence
and further disintegrating the country.
to read more, click this http://www.heritageinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Heritage-Institute-Policy-Brief-on-the-2020-Election.-English.pdf
