Sagal Absir, New African Magazine

The four-year term of Somalia’s first internationally recognised government in over 25 years comes to an end in 2016. Somali elections do not look like any other election in the world, representing instead a hybrid of traditional and modern, selection and election, fierce debate and pragmatic compromise.

1.The contest:

The 275-member parliament is up for grabs, and a new 54-member Upper House will be constituted. Together, the two houses will elect the president. The Somali president has always been elected indirectly, including in the 1964 and 1967 elections and the transitional processes since 2000. The president appoints a prime minister who sets up a cabinet.

The current parliament’s term ends on 20 August 2016, and the president’s on 10 September 2016. However, preparations will not be completed by August or September. Observers are expecting a few months’ slippage, although anything longer could lead to political unrest and constitutional dilemmas that could threaten to undo the last 12 years of Somalia’s painstaking political progress.

2. The players:

Aside from the incumbent, Somali presidential contenders rarely openly declare their candidacy until a few weeks before the date of the election. There are no real political parties and so each contender appeals directly to parliamentarians (with all the implications that entails). The box overleaf has a rundown of current and past office-holder political heavyweights who have either publicly declared they will seek the presidency or whom observers speculate will run. Nevertheless, a political track record is no guarantee – the current president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, was a civil society figure with no political background who yet managed to snatch the top seat from the incumbent last time.

Many more presidential aspirants will appear when the election details are finalised and the date is set – the presidential field could expand to as many as 20 contenders. (The first round of the 2012 presidential contest had 22 aspirants.)

3. The playing field:

The 2016 elections were supposed to be general elections, with Somalia’s approximately 12 million people having the opportunity to vote directly for their MPs. It was only in mid-2015 that analysts, diplomats, and finally, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud himself admitted that general direct elections would not be possible in 2016 – despite constitutional requirements and  the president’s early promises in Vision 2016, and to the bitter disappointment of many Somalis.

A proposed term extension to give him time to get the country ready (i.e., to conduct a census, create voter districts, craft political parties legislation, and set up an independent electoral commission) met with stiff opposition, both domestically and internationally.

Instead, an alternative process is being debated and negotiated by a newly convened National Leadership Forum, made up of the president, the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, the parliamentary speaker; and the four state presidents of Puntland State, Jubbaland State, Southwest State and Galmudug State.

In addition to the president, who has declared that he will seek a second term, observers speculate that this leadership group includes at least two potential presidential candidates and more would-be kingmakers, giving them the unique (and somewhat problematic) opportunity to influence the rules of the game.

4. The faultlines:

Because of the failure to develop voting districts, the question of how parliamentary seats would be apportioned remained open. Bitter debates took place in late 2015 and early 2016 about whether a new district-based system needed to be quickly developed, or whether the country should continue to use the “4.5 Formula” – a clan-quota power-sharing formula developed as a reconciliation tool in 2000 and that has been used in the formation of every Somali parliament since then, including the 2012 one.

The formula assigns one in four seats to each of the four major Somali clans with half of one seat to go to minority clans.

Read more: Delayed democracy: 12 things you need to know about the Somalia elections 

Source: New African Magazine