Legal Form, Coercive Substance: Somalia’s Road to 2027

By Isha Qarsoon

On 15 October 2026, Somalia’s National Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission scheduled parliamentary elections for 15 April 2027 and the presidential election a month later. Puntland, Jubaland and the major national opposition groups reject the amended constitution under which the government is proceeding. Somalia has a timetable but no agreement on the authority behind it.

The government presents the timetable as the end of electoral arrangements renegotiated before every vote, a legitimate goal. Yet constitutional provisions and electoral statutes show little on their own about whether power is becoming subject to law. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has used them to extend his tenure, narrow competition and justify the force he has used to entrench his power. He is building a new legal order around himself. Political scientists have a name for this: authoritarian legalism.

The government’s case has historical force. Somalia’s post-1991 institutions are products of political settlements, from the Transitional National Government formed at Arta in 2000 to the Transitional Federal Charter of 2004.

Because successive governments, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s two among them, never turned these bargains into rules of succession, each transition had to be negotiated, leaving political actors in control of the machinery that would choose their successors. The European Union found that the 2016 and 2017 elections substituted political agreements and indirect selection for the universal suffrage the Provisional Constitution envisaged.

The 2022 cycle was again protracted, and when Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was elected that May, the United Nations urged leaders to turn to neglected national priorities, among them finishing the constitutional review. The Provisional Constitution itself prescribed that review.

For amendments after the first parliamentary term, a stage Somalia passed in 2016, Article 132 requires a joint committee of both houses to consult the public and engage member state legislatures, a separate two-thirds vote in each house no sooner than three months after its report, and a referendum. Meanwhile, recurrent disputes over succession crowd out the business of governing: protecting citizens, managing public finances and providing services.

Negotiation remains indispensable; the problem lies in what it has failed to produce. In a divided federation, an inclusive settlement may be the precondition for constitutional order. The test is whether an agreement sets enforceable rules for future contests or allocates positions for one more cycle. The government’s legislation faces the same test: it creates a credible framework for succession only if it protects participation, supplies effective remedies and binds those who administer it. Otherwise it uses statute to entrench incumbents, the defining purpose of authoritarian legalism.

Authoritarian legalism uses lawmaking, legal interpretation and selective enforcement to entrench incumbents and weaken the institutions able to hold them to account. [1] It writes new laws, bends existing ones and ignores those in its way.

In a state of Somalia’s limited capacity, one flawed reform may be mere incompetence; the diagnosis rests on the pattern. Somalia’s case also differs from democratic backsliding: successive governments never built its key institutions, the Constitutional Court among them, and its territorial authority remains fragmented.

The 2026 constitutional and electoral reforms are consolidating executive power before any constitutional restraint can take hold. The record shows how: amendments extending their authors’ terms, federal troops replacing South West’s leadership, a Galmudug rerun excluding the party that won in court, presidential nominations reserved for the three largest parties, and four Mogadishu districts denied councils of their own.

The government calls the March 2026 amendments the completion of constitutional review. Measured against Article 132, they fall short.

That article requires a final vote in each house; the government’s own record shows a single joint sitting on 4 March with 222 members present, 185 votes from the House of the People and 36 from the Upper House, exactly two-thirds of that chamber’s 54 seats. Critics dispute the attendance, and at that margin a single miscounted senator defeats the vote.

No referendum was held, as Article 132(10) requires, and the new text itself, in Article 195, still anticipates one.

Puntland and Jubaland rejected the process outright. Critics also ask whether matters reserved for negotiation with the member states, notably powers and resources, could be settled unilaterally, and whether the amendments respected Article 132(1), which bars Parliament from even considering amendments to the founding principles of Chapter 1, or kept the language of the separation of powers while weakening the institutions behind it.

The constitutional court that should decide these questions was never established. Article 191(3) gives its powers in the interim to the Supreme Court, whose judges are appointed by presidential decree.

The Judicial Service Commission meant to insulate those appointments has fared no better: a presidential decree dissolved the first one within a year of its creation in 2014, and the 2026 text, adopted by a procedure of questionable legality, rebuilds it with its legal members nominated by the ministry and approved by the cabinet, an arrangement that places the judiciary’s gatekeeper in Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s hands.

The political consequence is clear. A parliament and a president elected for four years now serve five, until April and May 2027. Lengthening future terms is a legitimate choice; extending the terms of those making it turns a constitutional rule into an allocation of positions. On 15 October the commission dated the presidential vote by the extended term, three days after the Supreme Court reportedly admitted a challenge to the amended text.

The party rules are subtler. Article 54 grants national-party status only to parties holding 10 per cent of parliamentary seats, and Article 107(3) lets only the three largest nominate presidential candidates.

Thresholds curb fragmentation, and more than 40 candidates registered for the presidency in 2022. Their fairness depends on the election that first applies them, and April’s will be held on uneven ground.

The Justice and Solidarity Party (JSP) holds the assemblies of South West, Galmudug and Hirshabelle, two by supermajority, and those assemblies choose the state presidents who control local security and shape registration and access to polling. Rivals will campaign under their opponent’s administrations, while Puntland, Jubaland and al-Shabaab areas will largely be absent.

JSP candidates will win their seats at the ballot box, in a contest whose reach and conditions their party has set, and those seats will decide the presidential field. An opposition outside the three largest parties cannot nominate a candidate of its own, leaving the President’s party to shape the field he faces.

How the JSP came to govern those states is itself the method: regional leaders line up behind the President, are bought out or are removed. Hirshabelle’s Ali Guudlaawe lined up, Galmudug’s Ahmed Qoorqoor made way, and South West’s Abdiaziz Laftagareen was driven out. Each time, an election ratified what had already been decided. The method fails only against equal force: when Jubaland re-elected Ahmed Madobe in November 2024, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud rejected the vote and sent troops to Ras Kamboni, where they were routed and some 600 sought refuge in Kenya.

In South West, force decided what the law was meant to settle. Mogadishu tolerated Laftagareen’s prolonged tenure while he backed the President, then rejected his 28 March re-election as unlawful once he broke ranks.

Two days later federal troops entered Baidoa and he resigned. On 6 April the commission called an assembly election on 22 days’ notice; the Supreme Court validated the result, though it would later hold that the law requires 90 days.

On 10 June the new assembly elected Aden Madobe by a reported 88 votes to one, after Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden withdrew alleging breaches of ballot secrecy. The vote ratified a field force had arranged and settled nothing.

Fighting returned to Baidoa in September. The government branded Laftagareen’s forces allies of al-Shabaab without independent verification, the state cabinet resolved to treat them as terrorists, and airstrikes were announced.

By 20 October they held most of Bay, including Qansaxdheere, Buurhakaba, Bardaale, Diinsoor and Awdiinle, thirty kilometres from Baidoa. They control the roads into the city, where residents describe a blockade, and Madobe has fled to Mogadishu.

Galmudug reached the same end by arrangement. In April Mogadishu flew weapons into Dhusamareb and troops into Guriel, amid unconfirmed reports that a regional leader had asked $2 million to step aside; in June Qoorqoor withdrew, and the JSP nominated Liibaan Ahmed Hassan.

When the Supreme Court annulled the July elections on Towfiiq’s petition on 24 August, citing the commission’s failures, the commission held a rerun five weeks later without Towfiiq, invoking a deadline its own compressed schedule had set and disregarding the 90 days’ notice the same judgment required. The Court certified the result, reportedly because no challenge was filed in time.

Towfiiq won its case and lost its place on the ballot.

Hirshabelle took the third route. Vice President Yusuf Dabageed says the President promised the Hawadle the state presidency for their support, then endorsed Guudlaawe instead. The vote went ahead on 30 September over Dabageed’s warning that Hiiraan could not vote without a political agreement, and the JSP won a supermajority. The war against al-Shabaab paid the price: in early October some Hawadle elders reportedly agreed a truce with the group, pledging to deny recruitment and shelter to the Macawiisley militias that had fought beside government forces.

Mogadishu needed no such management. Its mayor, who is also governor of Banadir, serves at the President’s pleasure and has joined his party. The December 2025 council elections denied four newer districts, among the city’s largest hosts of displaced people, councils of their own because the law recognises only pre-1991 boundaries; their residents were sent to vote in neighbouring Dharkenley.

Territory compounds the problem. Al-Shabaab’s hold on much of the countryside leaves many citizens unable to vote, and the JSP’s majorities, 51 of 95 seats in South West, 67 of 89 in Galmudug and 78 of 99 in Hirshabelle, say nothing about them. Before the federal vote, the authorities must explain how displaced citizens and areas beyond federal control will be represented. The law permits postponement in adverse conditions, a power that must be exercised transparently and remain subject to challenge.

The opposition has offered more than a return to indirect elections. In June it proposed a transitional model of direct elections; accounts differ on its treatment of parties and clan allocations, but it is a substantive alternative.

In July the civil society coalition Somalia Non-State Actors proposed direct, constituency-based elections with a real role for the member states, independent dispute resolution and observation, showing that consensus and direct voting can coexist. On 15 October Sharif Sheikh Ahmed confirmed he had petitioned the Supreme Court to set aside the amendments and the decisions taken under them.

The obstacle has been a government that chose to impose a disputed framework.

Taken together, the evidence describes authoritarian legalism, and its author is Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, acting through the federal government and the regional leaders who owe him their positions. The pieces reinforce one another: the extension bought another year in office, allied administrations control the conditions of the vote, and judicial restraint remains uncertain. The Galmudug annulment and the pending petition show that legal challenge is possible; whether it can restrain the government is another matter.

A different course would require an independent constitutional court, published reasons for contested decisions, independent observation, security that protects competition, and remedies that arrive before exclusion becomes irreversible, which Article 130(7)(g) empowers the Supreme Court to grant but sets no timetable for granting. International partners should hold the process to these conditions before calling it a democratic advance, as the United Nations’ own commitment to meaningful participation requires.

Somalia needs an electoral order that survives disagreement and changes of government. The present course delivers the opposite: law that secures incumbency and leaves the opposition’s rights to administrative discretion and force. A constitution can organise succession or entrench power. Somalia’s is being used to entrench it, and the road to 2027 is the road of authoritarian legalism.

Isha Qarsoon

Email: [email protected]

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Isha Qarsoon is a platform for Somali governance, law, and political science.

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Endnote

[1] Under the rule of law, public power is bound by predictable rules, fair procedures and effective challenge. Under rule by law, government acts through legal instruments that need not bind it.

The difference lies in the direction of constraint, whether citizens and opponents can use the law against the state. Authoritarian legalism, close kin to what Scheppele calls autocratic legalism, is the deliberate case in which law keeps incumbents in power and disables the institutions that could remove them.

See Jothie Rajah, Authoritarian Rule of Law (2012); Kim Lane Scheppele, ‘Autocratic Legalism’, University of Chicago Law Review 85 (2018); and Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa (eds), Rule by Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes (2008).