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Residents of Somalia\u2019s capital are casting ballots in local council elections, marking the first time in more than 50 years that voters will directly choose their representatives, a milestone overshadowed by opposition boycotts.<\/p>\n
Polling stations across Mogadishu opened at 6am local time (03:00 GMT) on Thursday, with lines forming early as Somalis queued to participate in what President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has called a \u201cnew chapter in the country\u2019s history\u201d.<\/p>\n list of 2 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n About half a million people registered to vote for 390 district council seats, with approximately 1,605 candidates competing across 523 polling stations in the capital.<\/p>\n Authorities deployed close to 10,000 police officers and imposed a city-wide lockdown, restricting vehicle and pedestrian movement, as well as stopping flights into the city\u2019s main airport.<\/p>\n Security in Somalia\u2019s capital has improved this year, but the government continues to battle the al-Qaeda-affiliated armed group al-Shabab, which carried out a major attack in October.<\/p>\n Information Minister Daud Aweis described the election as a \u201cresurgence of democratic practices\u201d after decades without them, while electoral commission chairman Abdikarim Ahmed Hassan assured voters they could trust security measures \u201c100 percent\u201d.<\/p>\n Somalia last held direct elections in 1969, months before an October military coup that kept civilians out of power for the next three decades.<\/p>\n After years of civil war following military leader Mohamed Siad Barre\u2019s fall in 1991, the country adopted an unpopular indirect, clan-based electoral system in 2004, in which clan representatives select politicians, who in turn choose the president. The process has historically been deeply contested by candidates seeking top office.<\/p>\n The incumbent president, Mohamud, who won power twice through this system, announced in 2023 his commitment to transition to universal suffrage at the local, federal and presidential level.<\/p>\n His government secured parliamentary approval for constitutional reforms and established a national electoral commission to oversee the transition, a move that has galvanised major opposition figures, including two former presidents.<\/p>\n An agreement reached in October 2024 between federal and regional leaders collapsed amid bitter opposition, complicating upcoming presidential polls.<\/p>\n Prominent opposition figures have openly criticised the Mogadishu vote and the government\u2019s overall trajectory, accusing it of excluding them from the electoral process.<\/p>\n Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed described the procedures as \u201cunfortunate,\u201d attacking what he called an \u201cexclusionary voter registration process\u201d that lacks legitimacy. Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as Farmaajo, claimed the process \u201copens the door to dangers that threaten the security of the country\u201d.<\/p>\n Two important federal member states, Puntland in the north and Jubbaland, bordering Kenya, have rejected the framework outright.<\/p>\n Major opposition figures, including the leaders of those federal states, met in the port city of Kismayo earlier this month, issuing a communique in which they threatened to hold their own separate national elections.<\/p>\n While signalling willingness to negotiate a \u201ctransparent, consensus-based electoral process\u201d, they firmly rejected Thursday\u2019s vote as premature and illegitimate.<\/p>\n Mahad Wasuge, the executive director of the Mogadishu-based Somali Public Agenda think tank, told Al Jazeera that the government had invested significant political capital in holding a direct election and a local poll offered an \u201ceasy win or easy exit\u201d because it is low stakes.<\/p>\n The government, he added, exercises significant control over Mogadishu\u2019s political scene, so wouldn\u2019t have faced a real threat.<\/p>\n But he noted \u201cthe vote isn\u2019t supported by Somalia\u2019s international partners and the major opposition figures have boycotted it, which is a red flag\u201d. He characterised it as \u201cmore of a symbolic vote\u201d.<\/p>\n The election comes as Somalia faces mounting security challenges in regions near the capital.<\/p>\n Al-Shabab, an armed group seeking the government\u2019s overthrow, launched a major offensive in February 2025 that reversed government territorial gains. UN experts recently told the UN Security Council that the group\u2019s ability to carry out major attacks \u201cremains undiminished\u201d.<\/p>\n The United Nations Security Council renewed the mandate of a UN-backed African Union peacekeeping mission this week, but it faces major funding shortfalls which could threaten its effectiveness and continuity.<\/p>\n The United States ambassador to the UN, Jeff Bartos, Somalia\u2019s most important security partner, expressed deep concern over the deteriorating security situation, warning that Washington was no longer prepared to continue funding the mission.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has also recalled its ambassador to Mogadishu as part of a broader pullback of US diplomats from Africa, a move widely seen as signalling a downgrading of American interests in Somalia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Residents of Somalia\u2019s capital are casting ballots in local council elections, marking the first time in more than 50 years that voters will directly choose their representatives, a milestone overshadowed by opposition boycotts. Polling stations across Mogadishu opened at 6am local time (03:00 GMT) on Thursday, with lines forming early as Somalis queued to participate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
\u2018More of a symbolic vote\u2019<\/h2>\n
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