Challenges ahead for the Somali elections
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Alaina
- . August 25, 2020
- . Update: August 25, 2020 2:40 pm
The electoral model of the Federal Republic of Somalia is known as Electoral Constituency caucuses. Three-hundred and one voter will express their preference for each of the 275 members of the Parliament (MPs) of Somalia. That means each federal state will have at least three caucuses that will elect MPs for the Lower House. These MPs will choose a President.
The delegates will be nominated jointly by national and federal state electoral bodies. The Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) and Federal Member States (FMS) reached this agreement during the meeting Dhusamareb III without the presence of the governors of the provinces of Puntland and Jubaland.
Somali leaders delegated the National Independent Electoral Commission (NIEC) to implement the new electoral model. The seats of the legislators from breakaway Somaliland will be in an indirect voting, known as Doorasho dadban. The vote will not take place in their regional constituencies, but in assigned areas such as in the capital Mogadishu.
All this explains why Western and African political experts agree on the need for international monitoring of the upcoming meetings that take place in the presence of regional governors and president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed also known as Farmaajo.The election was promised to be a one-person, one-vote national poll, but now it shifted to an electoral system. Therefore, the elections may be postponed. According to local political observers, the promises of President Abdullahi Farmaajo to hold elections on time is a tactic that he practices to relieve himself of Western pressures, especially the United States.
Apart from establishing a productive economy and national unity, the new president will have to improve relations of Somalia with its neighbors. But the biggest challenge is security. After the Doha’s man Fahd Al-Yassin took control of the Somali National Intelligence and Security Agency, terrorist activities in the Horn of African country have risen considerably. In coordination with Al-Yassin, Al-Shabaab terrorist movement, affiliated to al-Qaeda, launches attacks from time to time on the bases of Somali and African forces in the state of southwestern Somalia, setting up traps for them during the movements of those forces.
