Opinion: In Somalia, Legitimacy Has Become a Matter of Who Wins

“When politicians condemn an electoral process but celebrate its winners, they undermine the very principles they claim to defend.” Ahmed Abdirahman Omar 

On 22 October, something curious happened in Somali politics. Within hours of Galmudug’s parliament electing Liibaan Ahmed Hassan as the state’s new president, congratulations arrived from some of the country’s most prominent opposition figures.

A former prime minister prayed that the burden of office would rest lightly on him. A former Galmudug president hailed him as the leader the moment demanded. Yet the election that produced him was overseen by the National Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, the body these same politicians have spent nearly two years describing as unconstitutional, partisan and unfit to referee a fair contest.

So which is it? If the opposition considers the commission illegitimate, how does it reconcile that position with its acceptance of the results? If its results deserve respect, the sweeping denunciations deserve a second look. Somali voters are entitled to know which position their leaders actually hold.

This is not a defence of Mogadishu. The opposition’s complaints about the electoral machinery are serious and, in important respects, well founded.

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud confirmed the commissioners while chairing the Justice and Solidarity Party, which competes in the very elections the commission oversees. In August, the Supreme Court annulled Galmudug’s first vote for failing to meet constitutional standards. The rerun then proceeded without the Towfiiq party, whose legal challenge had exposed the flaws in the original process.

An opposition that raises such concerns is doing its job.

The trouble begins when those concerns switch on and off.

Consider Jubbaland. In November 2024, Ahmed Madobe sought a third term through a seven-member electoral commission he had appointed himself. Jubbaland’s own opposition rejected the arrangement as unilateral and demanded that rivals nominate more than half its members — almost precisely what national opposition leaders now demand of the federal commission.

Deadly clashes in Kismayo preceded the vote. Madobe won 55 of 75 votes, and opposition politicians lined up to congratulate him. Today, he is a pillar of the Somali Future Council, the opposition’s main platform.

An incumbent-appointed commission, it seems, is a threat to democracy in Mogadishu but its guardian in Kismayo. The contrasting reactions suggest that political alliances, rather than consistent electoral standards, may have shaped the response.

Mogadishu’s own record is no tidier. The federal government declared Madobe’s re-election unlawful, yet the President hailed Galmudug’s contested outcome as historic on the day his party’s candidate won.

And in 2021, Hassan Sheikh himself stood alongside fellow opposition candidates demanding that President Farmaajo’s electoral commission be scrapped because it was stacked with loyalists and intelligence officers.

The principle he championed then — that no incumbent should choose the referee of his own re-election — did not expire when he returned to Villa Somalia.

Here lies the heart of the matter. Somalia does not suffer from a shortage of principles. It suffers from a surplus of conditions attached to them.

Why should this concern anyone beyond the political point-scoring in Mogadishu? There are three reasons.

First, inconsistency devalues legitimate grievances. Every congratulation extended to the winner of a supposedly flawed process hands the government its easiest rebuttal: the opposition objects only when it loses.

A court-annulled vote and an excluded party can then be dismissed as sour grapes. The opposition’s selectivity becomes the incumbent’s strongest defence.

Second, it teaches citizens that rules are merely political tactics. Democracy rests on a quiet bargain: losers accept defeat because they trust the process, and winners govern knowing that the same process can remove them.

When political elites model the opposite, ordinary Somalis learn that legitimacy is whatever their side declares it to be. That lesson is easy to teach and difficult to unlearn.

Third, it endangers national cohesion. When acceptance follows political alliances rather than established procedures, politics risks drifting back toward the clan bargaining that one-person, one-vote elections were intended to replace.