Residents of Somalia’s capital are casting ballots in native council elections, marking the primary time in additional than 50 years that voters will instantly select their representatives, a milestone overshadowed by opposition boycotts.
Polling stations throughout Mogadishu opened at 6am native time (03:00 GMT) on Thursday, with strains forming early as Somalis queued to take part in what President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has referred to as a “new chapter within the nation’s historical past”.
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About half 1,000,000 individuals registered to vote for 390 district council seats, with roughly 1,605 candidates competing throughout 523 polling stations within the capital.
Authorities deployed near 10,000 law enforcement officials and imposed a city-wide lockdown, limiting car and pedestrian motion, in addition to stopping flights into the town’s major airport.
Safety in Somalia’s capital has improved this 12 months, however the authorities continues to battle the al-Qaeda-affiliated armed group al-Shabab, which carried out a major attack in October.
Info Minister Daud Aweis described the election as a “resurgence of democratic practices” after many years with out them, whereas electoral fee chairman Abdikarim Ahmed Hassan assured voters they might belief safety measures “100%”.
Somalia final held direct elections in 1969, months earlier than an October army coup that stored civilians out of energy for the following three many years.
After years of civil struggle following army chief Mohamed Siad Barre’s fall in 1991, the nation adopted an unpopular oblique, clan-based electoral system in 2004, by which clan representatives choose politicians, who in flip select the president. The method has traditionally been deeply contested by candidates looking for prime workplace.
The incumbent president, Mohamud, who received energy twice by way of this method, introduced in 2023 his dedication to transition to common suffrage on the native, federal and presidential degree.
His authorities secured parliamentary approval for constitutional reforms and established a nationwide electoral fee to supervise the transition, a transfer that has galvanised main opposition figures, together with two former presidents.
An settlement reached in October 2024 between federal and regional leaders collapsed amid bitter opposition, complicating upcoming presidential polls.
‘Extra of a symbolic vote’
Outstanding opposition figures have brazenly criticised the Mogadishu vote and the federal government’s general trajectory, accusing it of excluding them from the electoral course of.
Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed described the procedures as “unlucky,” attacking what he referred to as an “exclusionary voter registration course of” that lacks legitimacy. Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, often known as Farmaajo, claimed the method “opens the door to risks that threaten the safety of the nation”.
Two necessary federal member states, Puntland within the north and Jubbaland, bordering Kenya, have rejected the framework outright.
Main opposition figures, together with the leaders of these federal states, met within the port metropolis of Kismayo earlier this month, issuing a communique by which they threatened to carry their very own separate nationwide elections.
Whereas signalling willingness to barter a “clear, consensus-based electoral course of”, they firmly rejected Thursday’s vote as untimely and illegitimate.
Mahad Wasuge, the chief director of the Mogadishu-based Somali Public Agenda assume tank, instructed Al Jazeera that the federal government had invested vital political capital in holding a direct election and a neighborhood ballot provided an “simple win or simple exit” as a result of it’s low stakes.
The federal government, he added, workouts vital management over Mogadishu’s political scene, so wouldn’t have confronted an actual menace.
However he famous “the vote isn’t supported by Somalia’s worldwide companions and the foremost opposition figures have boycotted it, which is a crimson flag”. He characterised it as “extra of a symbolic vote”.
The election comes as Somalia faces mounting safety challenges in areas close to the capital.
Al-Shabab, an armed group looking for the federal government’s overthrow, launched a significant offensive in February 2025 that reversed authorities territorial good points. UN specialists lately instructed the UN Safety Council that the group’s capacity to hold out main assaults “stays undiminished”.
The United Nations Safety Council renewed the mandate of a UN-backed African Union peacekeeping mission this week, but it surely faces main funding shortfalls which may threaten its effectiveness and continuity.
The USA ambassador to the UN, Jeff Bartos, Somalia’s most necessary safety accomplice, expressed deep concern over the deteriorating safety state of affairs, warning that Washington was now not ready to proceed funding the mission.
The Trump administration has additionally recalled its ambassador to Mogadishu as a part of a broader pullback of US diplomats from Africa, a transfer extensively seen as signalling a downgrading of American pursuits in Somalia.
