By Abdiqani Haji Abdi

What is being presented as a democratic milestone increasingly reads like political theatre staged against the backdrop of a collapsing reality. The Federal Government of Somalia has announced that it will conduct simultaneous “one-person, one-vote” elections across parts of South West State on April 28, an exercise framed as historic, inclusive, and long overdue. The declaration came from Abdikarim Ahmed the head of the “Independent National Electoral and Boundaries Commission” a body widely dismissed as lacking both legitimacy and consensus, that operates under the direction of President Hassan; following his arrival in Baidoa and consultations with the interim regional leader Jibril Abdirashiid.

On paper, the plan is sweeping. Eleven districts—stretching across Bay, Bakool, and Lower Shabelle are expected to participate. Voter registration is to be reopened in Baidoa and Hudur. The language is confident, procedural, almost routine. But there is nothing routine about the terrain in which this “election” is meant to unfold.

Large parts of South West State remain deeply insecure, with Al-Shabaab maintaining a persistent presence across rural areas and key transit routes. In many of these districts, overland travel is not just difficult, it is functionally impossible without significant risk. Air transport, not roads, has become the default means of movement between towns.

This is the environment in which a universal suffrage election is supposed to take place. It raises a basic question: what does “one person, one vote” mean where one person cannot safely move, assemble, or even be reliably counted? The official narrative insists on feasibility. The reality suggests something closer to fiction.

More troubling is the attempt to anchor this exercise in precedent. The claim that Baidoa will replicate the “beautiful” election model of Mogadishu, supposedly conducted without coercion—has been met with disbelief and anger in equal measure. For many, that earlier process was defined not by openness, but by allegations of intimidation, forced participation, and heavy-handed security measures.

To present that as a benchmark is not reassurance—it is provocation. Because the question inevitably follows: if that was the model, what exactly is being prepared for Baidoa?

The involvement of external military support further complicates the picture. Turkish-trained forces and Turkish-supplied drones, already controversial after their perceived role in internal political confrontations, cast a long shadow over the process. In a context where trust is already absent, their presence does not guarantee security—it deepens suspicion.

The timeline only adds to the skepticism. A nationwide, consensus-driven electoral system is among the most complex political undertakings any state can attempt. It requires legal clarity, institutional capacity, logistical reach, and above all, broad political agreement. Somalia currently struggles with each of these elements.

Yet what is being proposed is the rapid implementation of such a system—in a matter of weeks. Not years of preparation. Not phased consensus. But a compressed, unilateral rollout in roughly 38 days. This is not unprecedented. It is, in fact, a familiar pattern.

In Afghanistan, elections were repeatedly rushed under the banner of legitimacy, even as large swathes of territory remained under insurgent control. The result was not democratic consolidation, but voter suppression, low turnout, and outcomes that few trusted. In Democratic Republic of the Congo, electoral processes conducted amid insecurity and weak institutions produced contested results that deepened political instability rather than resolving it.

Even in Iraq, where elections were held under heavy military presence following conflict, the act of voting alone did not create legitimacy. Instead, it exposed sectarian divides and governance failures that ballots could not fix. The lesson is consistent: elections held without foundational conditions do not stabilize states—they often harden divisions. Somalia now appears to be following that same trajectory.

Elections derive legitimacy not from their announcement, but from their acceptance. They require trust—between institutions, between regions, between the state and its citizens. In Somalia today, that trust is in short supply.  Instead, what exists is a deeply divided political landscape, where key Federal Member States have distanced themselves from the federal centre, and where the constitutional framework underpinning governance remains contested.

Against that backdrop, the insistence on pushing forward with a “one-person, one-vote” election does not read as reform. It reads as imposition. And in a country where even the basic conditions for participation—security, access, neutrality—are not guaranteed, the risk is not merely that the process will fail. It is that it will succeed only in name.

A result will be declared. Institutions will be formed. Legitimacy will be claimed. But on the ground, little will have changed—except that divisions may deepen, and the gap between political narrative and lived reality will widen even further.

The language of democracy is being deployed. But, as other countries have already shown, when the foundations are absent, elections do not build legitimacy. They manufacture its illusion.

Abdiqani Haji Abdi
Email: Hajiabdi0128@gmail.com