Somalia: the way forward — fourteen years later - WardheerNews

Featured, opinion, Politics, Slideshow<br>June 2, 2026June 3, 20263 0

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Facebook<br>Twitter<br>Pinterest<br>From 4.5 Political Entrapment to a Two-Year Technocratic Transition for One-Person-One-Vote Democracy<br>Dr. Abdirahman Mohamed Abdi Hashi, PhD<br>Executive Summary<br>In 2012, I warned that rushing Somalia into a so-called permanent government without completing the constitutional, security, institutional, and electoral foundations of the state would be catastrophic. I argued then that the country needed a carefully designed two-year transitional government to prepare the nation for a genuine constitutional order, credible elections, accountable institutions, and a government chosen by citizens rather than selected through elite bargaining. [1]<br>Fourteen years later, that warning has become Somalia’s political reality.<br>The 4.5 clan-based power-sharing arrangement, defended for years as a temporary mechanism for inclusion, has become the machinery through which Somalia’s political class reproduces itself. It has normalized indirect elections, weakened citizenship, institutionalized clan arithmetic, excluded ordinary Somalis from meaningful political participation, and created a political marketplace in which power is negotiated among elites rather than earned from the people. Scholarly work on Somalia’s peace and constitution-making process has similarly shown how 4.5, initially tolerated as a transitional conflict-management device, became embedded in political practice even though the constitutional project was supposed to move Somalia toward broader citizen-based legitimacy. [S6] [S7]<br>Somalia’s crisis today is not the failure of democracy. It is the failure to reach democracy.<br>Since 2012, successive administrations promised one-person-one-vote elections, constitutional completion, judicial independence, security-sector reform, and national reconciliation. None delivered. The country has instead moved from one indirect electoral cycle to another, each time accompanied by disputes over legitimacy, allegations of manipulation, delayed transitions, fractured federal relations, politicized security forces, and renewed mistrust between Mogadishu and the Federal Member States. [2] [3] [4] Independent analysis by the International Crisis Group has warned that the 2026 electoral dispute risks deepening political turmoil unless the government, opposition, and Federal Member States reach a credible compromise. [S2]<br>The present crisis is therefore not accidental. It is the predictable result of a system that I warned against in 2012: a political order built on temporary arrangements made permanent, elite bargains disguised as national consensus, and constitutional deadlines repeatedly sacrificed to the survival interests of incumbents.<br>Somalia now needs a national reset. Not another extension. Not another elite bargain. Not another indirect election under the same failed formula. And not a rushed one-person-one-vote slogan without the infrastructure, security, public trust, or institutions necessary to make it real.<br>Somalia needs a two-year inclusive technocratic transitional government with a self-denying mandate: its leaders must not contest the next election or benefit politically from the process they supervise. Its sole purpose should be to complete the constitution, establish the Constitutional Court, depoliticize security institutions, rebuild electoral infrastructure, protect public resources, review strategic national contracts, prepare a credible voter registration system, and deliver Somalia’s first genuine citizen-based democratic election.<br>This is not a call to prolong the political life of any incumbent. It is a call to end the cycle that has allowed incumbents and opposition elites alike to manipulate weak institutions, clan formulas, and constitutional uncertainty for political survival.<br>The choice before Somalia is clear: continue the 4.5 trap and drift toward deeper fragmentation or use this exceptional moment to build the foundations of a real republic.<br>I. The Warning of 2012<br>When Somalia’s transitional period was ending in 2012, the international community and Somali political elites were determined to produce a permanent government by a fixed deadline. The argument at the time was that Somalia had to “end the transition.” But ending the transition in name without completing the work of transition in substance was always dangerous.<br>In my 2012 paper, The Way Forward for Somalia, I argued that forming a permanent government prematurely would only recycle the same political class, deepen corruption, provoke regional resistance, and leave Somalia vulnerable to exploitation by internal and external actors. I specifically warned that, unless the necessary foundations were first laid, Somalia would likely face greater disintegration, disenfranchisement, public revolt, regional tension, continued corruption, and the misuse of the country’s...