Photo: Newly elected Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi ‘Farmajo’ Mohamed (C) after the votes where counted in the presidential election held at the international airport in Mogadishu, Somalia, 08 February 2017. Members of the upper and lower houses voted with 21 candidates for president. The war torn country is holding its first presidential elections in a quarter century. EPA/SAID YUSUF WARSAMEPhoto: Newly elected Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi ‘Farmajo’ Mohamed (C) after the votes where counted in the presidential election held at the international airport in Mogadishu, Somalia, 08 February 2017. Members of the upper and lower houses voted with 21 candidates for president. The war torn country is holding its first presidential elections in a quarter century. EPA/SAID YUSUF WARSAME
The odds, and the money, were tipped against Mohamed Abdullahi “Farmajo”. Nonetheless, the popular Somali-American academic trounced his more established rivals in Somalia’s presidential election on Wednesday, proving that even an imperfect democracy can deliver real change. By SIMON ALLISON.
It was difficult, in the run-up to the Somali presidential election, to find anyone to say nice things about the process or its chances of success.
It was fantastically corrupt, with votes being bought and sold for tens of thousands of dollars. It was barely representative, with 329 hand-picked members of parliament given the opportunity to anoint the country’s next leaders. It reinforced dangerous clan dynamics and ruling elites. It took place against the backdrop of chronic insecurity, forcing MPs to huddle under the protection of foreign troops in an aircraft hangar at Mogadishu airport as they filled in their precious ballots.
This is all true. This was not democracy as the rest of the world knows it. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t work.
“I live in the middle of the city, and I can still hear people chanting and celebrating on the streets,” said Abdihakim Ainte, a political analyst, on the phone from Mogadishu, speaking the day after the vote. Celebrations had started the night before, and hadn’t stopped. “I grew up here, and I’ve never seen this kind of jubilation before.”
In a dramatic, unexpected and popular result, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed on Wednesday defeated 20 other presidential candidates, including incumbent Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. It was the current president who had spent the most cash in an effort to buy his way to victory; and the challenger, Mohamed, who had spoken out loudest against this corruption.
“The outgoing president had been pumping huge money into buying MPs. He was so relentless and desperate in buying the votes, he was trying to actually buy all the MPs, and the process itself. But MPs took the money, and they turned the table on him,” said Ainte.
“It seems the MPs took the money but still voted with their conscience…Only in Somalia,” tweeted Rageh Omaar, the veteran British foreign correspondent of Somali origin.