OPPOSITION coalition Somali Future Council plans to lead demonstrations today, 16 May, to protest the extension of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s mandate. Reports of troop deployments in Mogadishu suggest that authorities expect unrest.
The president’s term was set to expire on 15 May, but in March Parliament approved a constitutional amendment extending it a year.
The regional states of Puntland and Jubbaland, among others, rejected the amendment, saying it was passed without sufficient consensus.The opposition has continued to treat that deadline as a political red line.
Since 2020, political legitimacy in Somalia has been constructed through negotiation, clan consensus, and the credible appearance of constitutional process, said Samira Gaid, an analyst at Balqiis Insights, a think tank based in Mogadishu. That worked – more or less.
Somalia’s central government fell in 1991 and all administrations since have been fragile and contested. But “since the Arta conference, [there has been] a peaceful transition of power every four years”, said Anwar Abdifatah Bashir of the East African Institute for Peace and Governance.
The Arta conference was a Somali-led process hosted by Djibouti in 2000. It ended the civil war and established the Transitional National Government, but the March amendment is severely testing its settlements. In the Southwest state, electoral tensions have already triggered armed clashes.
Some people are now anxious that civil war could break out again.“Our security must be the priority… but [politicians] mostly care about their political interests,” Mustaf Abdullahi, a Mogadishu resident, told The Content. He urged the politicians to use “dialogue”.
The government says it wants the next presidential vote to be a “one person, one vote” poll, rather than indirect elections as in the past.
The infrastructure for that doesn’t exist yet and there are no visible preparations for the next election.
Extension supporters argue Mohamud needs a negotiated framework to continue governing in the interim.
Additional reporting by Yunis Dekow in Nairobi.
