Somalia Federal Election 2021: Need for Dialogue, Compromise and Consensus

[Deeq A.]

The mandate of Somalia’s current bicameral parliament ended on December 27, 2020, and the presidential term ends on February 7, 2021. Between July and September 2020, four conferences were held and attended by leaders of the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) and Federal Member States (FMS): three conferences were held in the Galmudug state capital of Dhusamareb, and one conference was held in Mogadishu. In September, FGS President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed ‘Farmajo’ chaired a meeting with five FMS leaders, whereupon they agreed on a revised election model known as, “Electoral Constituency Caucuses”, which was consistent with the 4.5 power-sharing system, and very similar to the 2016 Indirect Elections model. The 2020 election model is a lackluster attempt at broadening the 2016 electoral process; with 101 clan-delegates selecting each federal parliamentarian, thus doubling the number of delegatevoters compared to the 2016 parliamentary election. Dhusamareb Conference 3, which was held in August 2020 and boycotted by Puntland and Jubaland state governments, was a more democratic attempt at increasing electoral legitimacy by broadening delegate-voters of the Indirect Elections to 301 and creating mixed-constituency voting-blocs, instead of exclusively clan-based voters (as in the 2016 election).

The proposed model at Dhusamareb Conference 3 shared many similarities with an election model proposed by NAI in July 2020, entitled, Broad Legitimacy Model; this proposed model called for regional voting-blocs to curb the risk of corruption and to ensure that delegates selecting MPs were basing their vote on merit. However, Puntland and Jubaland refused to attend Dhusamareb Conference 3, citing confidence issues because the administration lacked a Prime Minister to implement the agreement.1 At the time, then-Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire was sacked in a parliamentary confidence motion.2 The ousting of Khaire and other political decisions made by the FGS had eroded any confidence Puntland and Jubaland had in the FGS to implement the agreement. It is also worth stating that the FGS did not attend the two previous conferences of Dhusamareb 1 and 2.

In the lead up to Dhusamareb 3, Puntland and Jubaland leaders called for international stakeholders to take part in the Conference and to act as observers of the electoral process. But all of these conferences failed at a lasting agreement, as pressure for a genuine consensus on the electoral process mounted both domestically and internationally. In midSeptember, only weeks after the third Dhusamareb Conference, a ‘final’ conference was organized in Mogadishu, which all FGS and FMS officials attended. The stage was set for a path forward built on consensus. All signs pointed to the end of a rocky process, but it did not prove so as the national leaders did not prioritize discussing and agreeing on the specifics but rather holding a conference that ended in a generic and ambiguous agreement. Read more here

Source: New Access International

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