The Sitrep - February 2022

During the reporting month, The State Elections Implementation Team [SEIT] of the northern regions of Somalia/Somaliland concluded Lower House elections in the House of the People of the 11th Parliament. Parliamentary elections for the Northern Regions, which began on 1 November 2021, have seen the election of 46 MPs of the two Houses of Parliament representing Somaliland, with Deputy Prime Minister, Mahdi Mohamed Guled (Khadar) being the first member of Parliament to be elected in Mogadishu.

Somalia’s election stakeholders including the Prime Minister and five state leaders representing South West, Jubbaland, Hirshabelle, Galmudug and Puntland have once again extended the completion time of the election process to March 15, 2022. This new extension came upon failure to meet the previous deadline, which was February 25, 2022. The country’s election stakeholders struggled to hold election, with polls delayed by more than a year.

The announcement of the new election timeline came after the IMF warned that it might have to stop its programme in Somalia if the polls postponed once again. Moreover, The United States barred travel of Somali officials and other individuals to the United States, accusing them of "undermining the democratic process".

Parliamentary elections, which is an indirect process that involves clan elders picking the 275 members of the Lower House, began in November 2021. The elected lawmakers will then choose a new president. So far, only about two-thirds of the 275 seats in the nation’s two-house parliament is elected

Moreover, Somalia’s Electoral Dispute Resolution Committee has approved the election of a former Director of the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) Mr. Fahad Yasin. The dispute resolution committee approved the results on 23 February 2022. Fahad Yasin, a former NISA Director, emerged victorious in elections held on Sunday for the HOP#086 seat in HirShabelle. The nod of approval is a huge reprieve to Yasin. A day after the polls, the Federal Elections Implementation Team (FEIT) stated its disapproval of the results for seat HOP#086. Similarly, the dispute resolution committee also gave its seal of approval to five other House of the People (Lower House) seats.

Somalia’s international partners have repeatedly flagged concerns over the delayed elections in Somalia. Elections in Somalia follow a complex indirect model, whereby state legislatures and clan delegates pick lawmakers for the national parliament, who in turn choose the president.

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