Somalia and the perils of premature OPOV

Somalia’s journey toward universal suffrage has been turbulent ever since the country emerged from its transitional government. Successive administrations have repeatedly come to power promising to deliver one-person-one-vote elections and move the country away from the indirect voting system that has been in place for decades. When the current administration assumed office, the pursuit of universal suffrage took on heightened political importance, dominating the national agenda for nearly two years. However, this effort has since been overshadowed by the administration’s parallel and contentious push for unilateral constitutional amendments aimed at centralizing authority.

On March 30, 2024, the bicameral Federal Parliament of Somalia, in a joint session, approved sweeping amendments to the first four chapters of the 2012 Provisional Constitution. These changes — passed without broad-based consensus from the Federal Member States (FMS) — fundamentally altered the country’s federal structure. Key amendments included extending the presidential and parliamentary terms from four to five years and, more significantly, a comprehensive restructuring of the system of governance. The reforms granted the President exclusive authority to appoint and dismiss the Prime Minister, a power that previously rested with Parliament, which alone had the authority to approve or remove the Prime Minister. This shift effectively transforms Somalia from a mixed-parliamentary system into a highly centralized presidential model, directly undermining the spirit of the 2012 Provisional Constitution, which was designed to safeguard federal power-sharing.

The unilateral approval of these amendments immediately triggered a constitutional crisis. Major Federal Member States declared that the changes had effectively dismantled the federal compact. The strongest response came from the semi-autonomous state of Puntland, which swiftly withdrew its recognition of the Federal Government in Mogadishu and declared the new amendments null and void due to the lack of consensus.

Additionally, two former Somali presidents and several prominent opposition leaders condemned the move as a blatant power grab intended to concentrate unprecedented authority in the hands of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.

In an attempt to contain the backlash and prevent further political fragmentation, the incumbent administration sought to co-opt key opposition figures. It reached an agreement with a faction led by former Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, who later claimed that the President had accepted compromises on 90 percent of the contentious provisions in Chapter 4, the chapter that outlines executive powers and the electoral system and had been at the center of the crisis. However, this purported compromise did little to address the core issue: the legitimacy of the amended constitution remains fundamentally disputed by the most influential federal actors.

Critically, the government has prioritized restructuring national executive authority and parliamentary functions before reaching consensus on the foundational principles of federalism. Long-standing disagreements over the status, responsibilities, and modalities of power and resource sharing between the federal member states (FMS) and the federal government remain unresolved. By imposing a centralized system without broad political buy-in, the Federal Government has pushed the country into political stalemate.

As a result, FMS leaders increasingly view the one-person-one-vote (OPOV) agenda not as a democratic advancement but as a strategic attempt to erode their autonomy. In this environment, political competition has become zero-sum: whoever wins the presidency gains near-absolute power.

This strategy also carries the unmistakable scent of political cynicism, particularly regarding term extension. The government’s insistence on holding a national OPOV election by 2026 is widely regarded by technical experts and political stakeholders as logistically impossible. If the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) genuinely prioritized delivering universal suffrage, the immense political capital expended on unilateral constitutional restructuring would instead be directed toward building broad national consensus and establishing the minimum-security conditions necessary for such an election.

Opposition leaders argue that the unrealistic timeline is intentionally designed to fail, creating a credible justification for a “technical” extension of the current administration’s mandate. This tactic has clear historical precedent and exposes deep hypocrisy. Some of the President’s current allies are now championing the very extension arguments they vehemently opposed under the previous administration. This reversal reinforces the widespread belief that the pursuit of power, rather than principled reform, is driving the government’s agenda.

The Federal fault lines: opposition, defiance, and boycott

The FGS’s increasingly centralized approach has dramatically widened the divide between Mogadishu and key Federal Member States. This fragmentation guarantees that any election conducted under the current framework will lack national participation and meaningful legitimacy.

The strongest and most organized resistance comes from Puntland and Jubbaland, whose leaders view the reforms as a calculated effort to secure the President’s re-election. Puntland, a foundational pillar of the federal system, formally withdrew from the National Consultative Council (NCC) in early 2023. This boycott signaled its rejection not only of the electoral process but of the entire reform trajectory.

Jubbaland’s President Ahmed Mohamed Islam (Madobe) escalated defiance further by amending his regional constitution to secure another term in office, directly contradicting federal directives. The FGS responded decisively by declaring Madobe's regional election invalid and issuing an arrest warrant against him. In retaliation, Madobe responded by issuing his own arrest warrant for federal officials. Tensions quickly spiraled into open conflict. Federal and Jubbaland regional troops clashed in December 2024 in key areas such as Ras Kamboni. This confrontation has drained political energy and security resources at a time when both are desperately needed for the national counter-insurgency campaign against Al-Shabaab.

A high-profile attempt at de-escalation occurred in October 2025 when President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud traveled to Kismayo for his first visit since the crisis began. But negotiations collapsed almost immediately, reportedly within hours, due to the federal government’s refusal to fully recognize Madobe’s contested electoral legitimacy. As a result, the core political and constitutional dispute remains unresolved.

Meanwhile, the FGS has weaponized its control over the NCC by convening meetings with compliant FMS leaders (South-West, Galmudug, Hirshabelle) while excluding dissenting states. The government has also leveraged its engagement with newly emerging FMS structures, most notably SSC-Khatumo, to pressure Puntland and manipulate territorial disputes for political advantage. This behavior illustrates that the federal government views federalism not as a constitutional contract but as a tool to reward allies and punish opponents.

Given this level of fragmentation, most independent analysts, ranging from the International Crisis Group (ICG) to domestic think tanks such as Somali Public Agenda (SPA) and the Puntland Development and Research Centre (PDRC), advocate for a pragmatic hybrid electoral model: direct voting in secure districts combined with an improved, more inclusive indirect system elsewhere.

In Mogadishu, Al-Shabaab continues to execute complex, high-casualty attacks deep inside supposedly secure areas, including hotels, restaurants, and government facilities.

The government’s refusal to seriously engage with these proposals reinforces critics’ claims that the OPOV timeline is politically calculated — a “scorched-earth” strategy that maximizes volatility and risks escalating conflict. ICG warns that pressing ahead with elections in which large parts of the country are not involved will further harden divisions within the federation, potentially destabilizing the political system for years.

A ballot box in the battlefield: the security deficit

From a security standpoint, the government’s OPOV objective is fundamentally incompatible with Somalia’s current realities. A national direct election requires secure registration sites, safe mobility, and sustained territorial access across vast areas, capabilities the Somali Security Forces (SSF) do not yet possess.

Al-Shabaab, the country’s most entrenched Jihadi militant threat, has recently regained momentum. Throughout 2024–2025, the group reclaimed territory in Middle and Lower Shabelle and parts of Hiiraan, reversing gains made during the 2022–2023 offensives. In Mogadishu, Al-Shabaab continues to execute complex, high-casualty attacks deep inside supposedly secure areas, including hotels, restaurants, and government facilities. The recent assault on the Godka Jilacow maximum-security prison underscores the severity of the security crisis, even the capital’s most fortified sites remain vulnerable, undermining the government’s narrative of security and stability.

For elections, this reality is disastrous. Voter registration and polling centers would present thousands of soft, geographically dispersed targets, perfect for Al-Shabaab to exploit. Successful OPOV implementation requires the Somali security forces to project force deep into contested regions, a capability they currently lack. Any large-scale registration effort would inevitably provoke targeted attacks designed to demonstrate state weakness and discredit the democratic process.

The promise of universal suffrage collapses before the process even begins. The National Independent Electoral Commission (NIEC) itself has acknowledged that roughly half of Somalia’s 12 million people cannot realistically be reached due to displacement, Somaliland’s separate political trajectory, and extensive Al-Shabaab control. Combined with active boycotts from key FMS like Puntland and Jubbaland, the result is that an OPOV election held only in secure federal enclaves would not constitute a national mandate. Instead, it would formalize Somalia’s territorial and political fragmentation, producing a government lacking the legitimacy needed to govern or unify the country.

The electoral calendar also coincides with a critical shift in the international security environment. ATMIS completed its withdrawal on December 31, 2024, handing responsibility to the new African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM). This transition requires intense coordination, planning, and oversight to prevent dangerous security vacuums. Yet political infighting over constitutional amendments and FMS defiance has consumed the government’s attention during this period of heightened vulnerability.

Preparing for a nationwide OPOV election demands a massive logistical and security effort — one that diverts the FGS from effectively engaging with AU and UN partners on AUSSOM’s force structure, funding, and operational design. This distraction risks opening security gaps precisely when the state can least afford them, leaving electoral infrastructure exposed and the broader political project dangerously unstable.

Marginalization and the crisis of citizenship

Even if the FGS were somehow able to navigate the political and security quagmire, the social and technical foundations required for genuinely inclusive suffrage remain profoundly inadequate. A rushed transition risks creating new, and potentially violent, forms of exclusion.

The shift to OPOV, which requires mass voter registration, runs directly into Somalia’s most sensitive political fault line, citizenship. The country lacks a cohesive, nationally accepted identity system. Existing forms of identification suffer from limited coverage and deep public mistrust, and the provisional constitution offers no clear legal definition of who qualifies as a Somali citizen.

The political nature of this identity crisis is starkly illustrated by the standoff between Puntland and the federal government. While the FGS is pushing a unified National ID system through the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) as a prerequisite for voter registration, Puntland has categorically rejected it. In direct defiance of Mogadishu, Puntland has established its own identification agency and begun issuing the Puntland Identity (PID), arguing that the federal initiative is politically motivated and an infringement on regional autonomy. The creation of parallel identity systems fundamentally undermines the feasibility of a unified national ID database, which is essential for a centralized voter roll.

The exacerbated sense of injustice provides fertile ground for local unrest and for Al-Shabaab recruitment, as the group actively exploits political grievances to weaken the state.

This ambiguity is particularly explosive for the country’s large population of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Hundreds of thousands of IDPs, many fleeing conflict and drought, live in urban centers such as Mogadishu. Host clans often do not consider them full citizens, reflecting a persistent tension between “rights by blood” and “rights by birth.” If IDPs are excluded from voter registration, the OPOV exercise loses any claim to universality. But if they are registered and allowed to vote where they currently reside, host communities may perceive this as a demographic and political incursion, potentially destabilizing local power arrangements and triggering localized conflict. Thus, the logistical mechanics of voter registration become inseparable from political conflict.

Moreover, OPOV threatens to further marginalize minority groups who have historically relied on the controversial but guaranteed 4.5 clan power-sharing formula. These minority clans lack both the demographic weight and financial resources to compete with major clans under a pure universal suffrage model. Their fear is that OPOV will not end marginalization but deepen it, transforming guaranteed representation into structural exclusion. This exacerbated sense of injustice provides fertile ground for local unrest and for Al-Shabaab recruitment, as the group actively exploits political grievances to weaken the state.

Turning away from the abyss

The FGS’s centralized push for a premature OPOV election is a political gamble rather than a viable democratic strategy. The current process is structurally incapable of producing a legitimate national vote by 2026: it is undermined by unilateral executive actions, deep federal fragmentation, and security and logistical constraints. Persisting with this trajectory risks provoking electoral violence, intensifying the constitutional crisis, and opening the door to a contested extension of the presidential term.

To avoid this outcome, Somalia’s political leadership must urgently recalibrate. First, the FGS should halt all rhetoric and maneuvering related to term extensions and suspend the unilateral constitutional amendments that have heightened political tensions. Restoring political legitimacy, not consolidating central authority, must be the priority. Second, the FGS must adopt a pragmatic, consensus-based hybrid electoral model. This means scaling back national ambitions and focusing immediate efforts on conducting OPOV local council elections only in genuinely secure districts, building trust and capacity incrementally. In parallel, the FGS and FMS should negotiate an improved and more inclusive indirect system for the next national elections, acknowledging the country’s current security and infrastructural constraints.

Third, a comprehensive national dialogue involving all FMS — including boycotting states such as Puntland and Jubaland — must be revived to address the foundational constitutional disputes over power and resource sharing. International partners should move beyond rhetorical commitments to “universal suffrage” and condition financial support on the FGS engaging in good-faith negotiations toward a consensus-based electoral framework.

Pursuing a high-risk national election while the security architecture is fraying and the political federation is deeply divided is not democratic progress, it is political malpractice. Somalia needs stability, trust, and consensus before it can credibly advance toward universal suffrage. Failing to recognize this reality risks plunging the country back into the political abyss it has only recently begun to escape.