Somalia’s Supreme court has defined a lawful election. Two it approved fall short.

Analysis 

MOGADISHU, 25 August — Somalia’s Federal Supreme Court annulled Galmudug’s state assembly and local council elections on Monday, ruling that they “were not conducted in accordance with Somalia’s Constitution and Electoral Law” and that the results are therefore void. In reaching that conclusion the court rejected the National Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s argument that a result cannot be challenged when no complaint was lodged on polling day. That was the argument on which the same court certified Mogadishu’s district council elections five months earlier.
 
On 28 March the court ratified the Banadir results on the stated ground that “no official complaints were filed during the legal period.” On 25 May it validated South West State’s assembly and council elections, finding they “strictly comply with the country’s legal framework.” On 24 August it voided Galmudug’s and ordered a re-run. All three votes were administered by the same commission, under the same 2024 National Electoral Law, under the same chairman, within eight months.
 
The judgment does not address the earlier votes. But the standards it sets out, the first time a Somali court has enumerated them, are the deadlines those votes are documented to have missed.
 
What the court said the law requires
 
The five judges, sitting as the court’s Electoral Division under Chief Justice Baashe Yusuf Ahmed, held that a polling date must be fixed at least 90 days in advance, and that a meeting with parties producing no written date does not satisfy the requirement. Campaigning must open 45 days before the poll and close 48 hours before it. Voter registration must be completed before the process moves on, with a provisional roll published within two months and the final register shared with the Interior Ministry and the parties 30 days before polling. Parties must lodge candidate lists 120 working days before the vote, and the commission must verify and publish a final list roughly 100 working days out. Results must be declared as named winners and their seats — not as party seat totals. Station-level results must be posted and returned for every polling station.
 
The court further held that the commission cannot vary a statutory deadline by internal regulation, declaring one such attempt beyond its powers; that breach of the electoral law is not mere procedural error but, where it touches the credibility or integrity of the outcome, renders the election void under Article 82; and that party members are competent witnesses against the electoral authority, on the reasoning that those closest to the process are best placed to describe it.
 
It also rejected the commission’s two procedural defences that the petition was out of time, and that no complaint had been filed on polling day. 

Mogadishu: a final candidate list published the day before the vote

Banadir voted on 25 December 2025 for 390 district councillors in 16 of the capital’s 20 districts. Four districts — Kahda, Daarusalam, Garasbaley and Gubadley, among the city’s largest hosts of displaced people — were excluded because they were created after 1991, and their residents were directed to vote in neighbouring Dharkenley.
 
The polling date was announced on 30 November for 25 December: 25 days’ notice, against the 90 the court has now affirmed. Parties submitted candidate lists between 25 November and 11 December, two to four weeks before the vote rather than 120 working days. The commission published its final candidate list on 24 December — the day before polling. Voter card collection opened on 22 December, three days before. No provisional or final voter register was published; the commission announced aggregate registration totals only, on 18 October. Results were declared on 27 December as party vote and seat totals, and parties publicly complained that the commission had not disclosed which seats each party had won in which district, or the names of the winning candidates.
 
Registration itself was contested. Of 923,220 records, 4,330 were discarded as duplicates, leaving 918,890; roughly a third of the capital’s estimated population. A survey of 201 residents published by Somali Public Agenda in December found that 62 per cent of those registered were never asked for any form of identification, that 29 per cent said they had been registered without their consent, and that 39 per cent were registered in a district other than the one they lived in.
 
Somali Guardian and Garowe Online separately reported roundups at Bakara market and bus stations to compel registration; a researcher with PeaceRep recorded that proof of registration was required to pass city checkpoints. The commission’s chairman, Abdikarim Ahmed Hassan, called the coercion allegations “false, baseless, and deliberately misleading.”
 
Turnout is disputed. Reports of the commission’s announcement carried two irreconcilable figures: 233,314 ballots cast, of which 210,586 were valid, in the itemized version; and 503,916 in others. The lower figure implies a turnout of about 25 per cent.
Six days after the count, the commission revised the Waaberi district tally of Hormar iyo Midnimo Qaran, the party of the former South West president Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, from 2,968 votes to 407, transferring the difference to the ruling Justice and Solidarity Party. The commission called it a data-entry error found in internal verification. The party rejected the explanation, said the commission was undermining the credibility of the process, and signalled a Supreme Court challenge. Three months later the court certified the results on the basis that no complaints had been filed in the legal period. The 390 councillors were sworn in on 2 April.
 
Baidoa: a candidate deadline moved the day before the scheduled poll

South West State voted on 10 May 2026 for 95 assembly seats and 297 local council seats across 13 districts in Bay, Bakool and Lower Shabelle. The election followed the seizure of Baidoa by the Somali National Army on 30 March and the resignation of President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed “Laftagareen”, who later retracted the resignation, said the letter bearing his name was fabricated, and said he had left under two months of military pressure.
 
The commission announced the polling date on 6 April for 28 April — 22 days’ notice. It then postponed the deadline for candidate applications, announcing the postponement on 27 April, one day before the poll was due to be held. The vote was moved to 10 May. Voter registration, which the electoral law requires to be closed and the final register circulated 30 days before polling, was reopened in Baidoa and Xudur for a further ten days in April at the request of political parties. Results were announced on 14 May as party seat totals. Of 376,212 registered voters, 132,430 cast ballots, a turnout of about 35 per cent.
 
Two candidates, Ilyaas Ali Nuur and Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, publicly alleged tampering before the results were declared. The Justice and Solidarity Party took 51 of 95 assembly seats and 148 of 297 council seats. The Supreme Court validated the outcome eleven days later, finding that it satisfied all legal requirements.
 
Galmudug: 92 per cent

Galmudug voted on 30 July for 89 assembly seats and 243 local council seats across 11 districts, after two postponements; from 20 July to 25 July to 30 July. Days before the second slip the commission chairman had said publicly: “We will not change the election schedule that was previously set for July 25.” Registration had opened in Dhuusamareeb in June 2025, thirteen months before the vote; voters were permitted to use temporary certificates in place of voter cards.
 
The commission recorded 197,971 ballots cast against 215,860 registered voters, a turnout of about 92 per cent, against 35 per cent in South West and, on the itemised figure, about 25 per cent in Mogadishu. Results announced on 3 August gave the Justice and Solidarity Party 63 of 89 assembly seats and 115 of the council seats. The Towfiiq party, awarded 12 assembly seats, published a parallel tally claiming 47, demanded an independent audit of ballots from ten districts, and petitioned the court.
 
One commission, three verdicts

The commission was created by law in November 2024 and its 18 commissioners approved by the Council of Ministers, both houses of parliament and presidential decree. Its chairman, Abdikarim Ahmed Hassan, elected in December 2024, managed President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s 2022 campaign. Writing in Al Jazeera in December, the academic Afyare Abdi Elmi said the government “has appointed 18 commissioners, all backed by the ruling Justice and Solidarity Party.” The International Crisis Group has written that the commission “lacks clear independence mechanisms.” In June, Kaab TV reported that the chairman attended a Mogadishu gathering convened to build support for the ruling party’s Galmudug candidate.
 
In January the UN Office for Project Services, using European Union funding, tendered for an “independent assessment of the Banadir local elections”, citing “concerns about limited independent oversight, uneven participation, and transparency issues”. Its findings have not been published.
 
What Next

The court ordered the commission to hold fresh elections in Galmudug “at the earliest reasonable time” and left the existing state institutions in office until lawfully elected successors replace them. It attached no supervisory mechanism and ordered no observation, although the petitioner had asked for it: the body that ran the annulled election will run the new one. No date has been set.
 
The ruling landed in the middle of an unresolved dispute over the federal mandate. Parliament’s four-year term expired in April and the president’s in May; contested constitutional amendments passed in March declare they extended both to five years, pushing national elections to 2027. Opposition groups, Puntland and Jubaland reject the amended text. Talks between the government and the opposition collapsed on 28 July after more than two months of mediation by the Quad+1 – the UN, the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and Turkey.
 
Reaction to the judgment has been narrow. Towfiiq’s chairman, Sheikh Shakir, welcomed it and urged supporters to respond peacefully. It divided the ruling party’s own bench: the Galmudug MP known as Cagaweyne called the ruling “oppression, with no transparency or explanation,” while other party figures supported it. The commission has not responded. Neither the federal government nor the Galmudug administration has issued a statement. No international partner has commented.
 
Nor has the court explained why the standard it applied in August was not the standard it applied in March and May. The question it leaves open is not whether Galmudug’s election was lawful. It is what, on this reasoning, the other two were.
 
GAROWE ONLINE