By Bashir M. Sheikh Ali, J.D., Ph.D.
Any serious discussion of abolishing the 4.5 power-sharing formula must begin with a difficult reality: many Somalis will feel deceived, threatened, or misled if 4.5 is challenged. For years, it has been presented as a guarantee against exclusion, domination, and renewed conflict. Many people organized their political expectations and sense of security around that promise. That reliance is real and cannot be dismissed. But it must be weighed against what the system has produced over time.
Historically, the 4.5 formula was adopted during post-1991 reconciliation efforts as a negotiated method of allocating parliamentary representation among clans in the absence of elections or a functioning state. Like other temporary power-sharing arrangements used in post-conflict settings, it was designed to serve two narrow purposes: to prevent the re-emergence of domination by any single group and to make it possible to constitute a legislature capable of authorizing a transitional government. Its function was therefore facilitative, not foundational. By allocating seats in parliament, it aimed to enable basic state functions—law-making, government formation, and minimal national coordination—while the country stabilized and prepared for a constitutional order grounded in citizenship and elections. From the outset, it was a temporary conflict-management tool, not a system of governance. It was never intended to regulate executive authority, define citizenship, determine long-term political entitlement, or substitute for constitutional institutions.
That temporary character was debated and reaffirmed during the 2011–2012 transition. The Garowe Principles provided that the lower house of the new federal parliament would be selected using the 4.5 formula “for this selection process only.” They further stated that subsequent parliaments would be chosen through “universal polling of one person one vote,” and warned that 4.5 “shall never become the basis for power sharing in any future political dispensation.” This understanding carried into the constitutional framework. The Provisional Constitution makes no reference to clan quotas and provides that members of the House of the People shall be elected by the citizens of the Federal Republic of Somalia through “a direct, secret and free ballot.” Somalis were told that the first federal parliament would be the last to rely on 4.5.
That transition never occurred because moving beyond 4.5 would have required changes to political authority that the existing elite had no incentive to accept. By preserving the system, political actors removed accountability from the center of political life. Parliamentary seats were obtained through negotiated allocation rather than public consent. Once in office, officials were primarily accountable to the arrangements that secured their positions rather than to citizens. Oversight weakened, responsibility diffused, and corruption flourished because no institution possessed both the authority and legitimacy to impose discipline.
Over time, this produced more than weak accountability. It produced a political order built around accommodation rather than correction. Each electoral cycle that relied on 4.5 reinforced it as the default rule. Temporary workarounds became precedents. What began as a stopgap hardened into an informal governing logic that operates alongside, and often above, the written Constitution.
Many of Somalia’s recurring political and legal disputes arise from the same practice of preserving temporary power-sharing arrangements while avoiding institutional resolution. These disputes are not caused by 4.5 alone, but they become difficult to resolve because 4.5 converts public office into negotiated entitlement. Election delays persist because seats are allocated through bargaining rather than vote-based consent. Efforts to introduce one-person-one-vote trigger crises because they threaten fixed quotas. Federal–member state conflicts escalate because offices and mandates are treated as shares rather than functions. Even legally governed processes, such as the nomination of Somalia’s representatives to the East African Legislative Assembly, have been drawn into controversy when selection is shaped by accommodation instead of transparent criteria. In each case, what should be a procedural or legal question becomes a political settlement exercise. Rules exist, but enforcing them carries political costs leaders often avoid.
As 4.5 persisted, it reshaped political behavior and expectations. Public office came to be viewed as a share allocated to groups rather than a responsibility owed to the public. Political competition focused on negotiating positions instead of debating policy or performance. Electoral reform stalled because genuine elections would disrupt a system built on predictable quotas. Institutions failed to mature because leadership selection prioritized balance over competence or results.
Federalism was particularly damaged by the persistence of 4.5. Federal systems rely on territory, functional authority, and institutions capable of exercising constitutionally defined powers. The 4.5 system operates on a different logic. It fixes political outcomes in advance, based on identity, before institutions act and before constitutional authority is applied. Once outcomes are predetermined through quota allocation, federal design becomes secondary. There is little incentive to clarify federal and state competencies or resolve disputes through constitutional mechanisms.
Instead of enabling decentralized governance based on residence and law, federal member states reproduced the same quota logic internally. Authority was redistributed among elites rather than devolved to accountable local governments or service-delivery institutions. Each accommodation solved a short-term political problem while adding another layer of actors with fixed claims on the state. Over time, this multiplied offices, fragmented authority, and created a structure that future leaders inherit but cannot easily unwind.
As this structure expands, reform becomes increasingly costly. Removing positions angered those who relied on them. Enforcing constitutional limits threatens those who benefit from earlier exceptions. Strengthening institutions alarms actors accustomed to negotiated outcomes. Even leaders who recognize the system’s dysfunction face incentives to preserve it, because dismantling any part of it risks resistance from multiple directions at once.
Today, 4.5 no longer functions as a stabilizing mechanism. It blocks credible elections, weakens institutional authority, sustains corruption, and prevents leadership from being judged on performance. Its continued defense rests more on fear of disruption than evidence of success. After years of use, it has not produced accountable governance, durable federalism, or public trust.
For Somalia, the danger is not sudden collapse but long-term institutional entrapment. A political structure that denies accountability, normalizes exception, and raises the cost of reform with each cycle cannot sustain sovereignty, security, or social cohesion. If 4.5 remains in place, institutions will continue to weaken and public confidence will continue to erode. Failure, if it comes, will not arrive as a shock. It will arrive as the delayed consequence of a system that made itself difficult to correct.
Defending 4.5 as unavoidable assumes that the costs of change outweigh the accumulating costs of preserving a system that no longer functions as intended and locks the state into a structure that is progressively more difficult to unwind. Avoiding reform may feel politically safer in the short term, but Somali leaders will ultimately have to dismantle a system that has become an obstacle to accountable governance.
Bashir M. Sheikh Ali, J.D., Ph.D.
Email: bsali@yahoo.com
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The author is a Somali American lawyer based in Nairobi. The views expressed in this analysis are his own and do not reflect those of any organization with which he may be affiliated.