Somalia deploys over 10,000 security personnel in Mogadishu for its first direct local elections in nearly 60 years, with 400,000 registered voters.
MOGADISHU: Somalia will deploy more than 10,000 security personnel in the capital ahead of next week’s historic local elections.
Security Minister Abdullahi Sheikh Ismail stated that authorities have managed to secure the city for the December 25 polls.
These will be the country’s first direct local elections in nearly 60 years, moving away from a complex clan-based indirect system.
Somalia is battling a bloody Islamist insurgency as it tries to emerge from decades of conflict and chaos.
Voter registration launched in April, a key step toward universal suffrage after the system was abolished in 1969.
More than 1,600 candidates will contest 390 local seats in the southeastern Banadir region.
The opposition is boycotting the vote, accusing the federal government of “unilateral election processes”.
Nearly 400,000 people are registered to vote, according to the country’s electoral body.
Electoral Commission chairman Abdikarin Ahmed Hassan said all movement would be restricted on election day.
Voters will be transported to polling stations by bus, with Hassan declaring the whole country will be shut down.
“It is a great moment for the Somali people to see elections for the first nearly sixty years,” he said.
The one-person, one-vote model elections were postponed three times this year before being set for Thursday.
Somalia’s political system has revolved around a clan-based structure since the fall of Siad Barre’s authoritarian government in 1991.
The country is expected to hold its presidential election in 2026 as President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s term ends. – AFP
