Somalia’s latest political confrontation is more than a quarrel over election dates. It is a stress test of the country’s post-debt-relief political order—and, by extension, of the international state-building model that has underwritten Mogadishu’s progress for more than a decade.
At the center is the National Consultation Conference, an opposition-aligned gathering that closed this week in Kismayo with a stark indictment of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s government. Its communiqué accuses the presidency of constitutional violations, governance failures, and allowing the fight against Al-Shabaab to drift. The group warns that unilateral decision-making and delayed elections risk “political collapse, insecurity, and economic breakdown.” The message is pointed, but the messenger matters more: the coalition spans Puntland State’s Said Abdullahi Deni, Jubaland’s Ahmed Mohamed Islam (Madobe), former President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, former prime ministers Abdi Farah Shirdoon, Hassan Ali Khaire, and Mohamed Hussein Roble, sitting lawmakers, and multiple presidential aspirants—a breadth rarely seen in Somali politics unless a structural line is perceived to have been crossed.
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What is at stake is not simply whether elections occur on time, but whether the post-transition order—codified after the provisional era, reinforced by 2023 debt relief, and sustained by donor backing—can survive an increasingly centralized presidency. The communiqué rejects unilateral constitutional amendments, declaring them “null and void” and reasserting the supremacy of the 2012 Provisional Constitution. That stance reflects a deeper anxiety: that Somalia’s federal system is being hollowed out not through overt renegotiation but via legal and procedural shortcuts that accumulate power in Mogadishu.
This matters because the Somali state’s equilibrium has never depended primarily on courts or coercive authority. It has rested on negotiated consent—elite bargains that have underwritten each step forward since 2000, from federalism’s architecture to indirect elections. When those bargains fray, Somalia does not break all at once; it quietly fragments. National processes are replaced by parallel tracks, and authority devolves into competing claims that are costly to reconcile.
The opposition’s categorical refusal to entertain term extensions beyond April and May 2026 sits squarely in this context. Somalis have seen “technical delays” morph into open-ended mandates before. In a system without an independent constitutional court to arbitrate, legitimacy becomes binary: elections are either agreed upon in advance or contested by default. Hence the ultimatum—one month, until Jan. 20, 2026—for President Hassan Sheikh to convene all stakeholders around an inclusive electoral framework. The warning of a “parallel electoral process” should not be dismissed as theater. Somalia has run parallel political tracks before, and each instance has weakened federal cohesion, emboldened spoilers, and siphoned security bandwidth at pivotal moments.
Complicating the picture is Banadir, the Mogadishu region. The opposition’s constitutional objections to the capital’s election process resurface a long-avoided question: Banadir’s ambiguous legal status and representation. Successive administrations have sidestepped a comprehensive settlement because any resolution would redistribute political power. Proceeding unilaterally in the capital risks delegitimizing the national process itself. The Banadir debate is not a technicality; it is the hinge between centralized authority and an equitable federal bargain.
President Hassan Sheikh’s initial response has been cautious. He publicly dismissed the Kismayo forum but signaled openness to dialogue—if the opposition presents a unified position. That formulation shifts the burden back to his rivals, even as their communiqué suggests rare alignment. Former President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (Farmaajo) was absent but reportedly supports the conclusions—a hint that the opposition’s center of gravity may be broader than it appears.
For international partners, the dilemma is acute. Donors and security allies have invested heavily in framing Somalia as a country moving beyond perpetual transition, a narrative underwritten by debt relief, normalized financial relations, and the planned drawdown of the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS). Those gains assume political predictability. A disputed or fragmented election would not only erode domestic legitimacy; it would undercut the premises of international engagement and unsettle a security environment still contending with Al-Shabaab.
The deeper question is whether Somalia’s post-transition state can function without continual external arbitration. If every major disagreement requires mediation to avert collapse, the governance model remains incomplete. The promise of debt relief and institution-building was that Somali leaders could internalize the rules of competitive politics—implementing reforms and resolving disputes through agreed mechanisms rather than brinkmanship.
The next steps will shape whether that promise holds. The Kismayo communiqué is a call for process: inclusive talks, a clear electoral calendar, and a cessation of unilateral constitutional moves. The presidency can test the opposition’s unity by inviting a structured dialogue under mutually accepted terms. The opposition can test the presidency’s intent by presenting a coherent, time-bound roadmap rather than a list of vetoes. Either side can seek neutral facilitation, but the goal must be a Somali-owned bargain that does not outsource legitimacy.
A few principles can help prevent a return to crisis politics:
- Anchor any electoral timeline in a broad political compact, not a single-branch decree, to avoid disputes becoming zero-sum.
- Freeze unilateral constitutional changes and recommit to the 2012 Provisional Constitution’s supremacy pending consensus-based reform.
- Undertake a good-faith, time-limited negotiation on Banadir’s status to prevent the capital from turning into a constitutional fault line.
- Synchronize political timelines with security realities, including ATMIS drawdown and ongoing operations against Al-Shabaab, so that state-building and stabilization reinforce rather than undermine each other.
This is not the moment for maximalist demands or performative hard lines. Nor is it the time for procedural improvisation that chases short-term advantage at the expense of institutional credibility. Somalia’s recent gains—from fiscal normalization to a more coherent federal dialogue—have been hard-won and are easily reversible if electoral politics reverts to brinkmanship.
What is unfolding is not simply an opposition challenge to an incumbent. It is a referendum on whether Somalia’s leaders can absorb a rules-based political culture. The presidency’s impulse to consolidate, the opposition’s instinct to mobilize, and the international community’s reflex to mediate will all be tested. The stakes are larger than one election. They encompass the viability of federalism, the resilience of security gains, and the credibility of an international model that was supposed to make crisis the exception rather than the norm.
The coming weeks will reveal whether consensus politics can be restored, or whether Somalia is slipping toward another prolonged impasse—this time with far more to lose. The choice, ultimately, is between revalidating a political compact that can carry the country through 2026 and beyond, or permitting parallel tracks to harden into fragmentation that could take years to unwind.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
