When blessing becomes a ballot: Elders, Fātiḥa, and the Democratic Deficit in Garissa

By Abdullahi Abdi

There is a Somali proverb whose wisdom should trouble anyone concerned about the direction of electoral politics in Garissa: Hal xaaraan ahi nirig xalaal ah ma dhasho . Loosely rendered, this means that an unlawfully acquired she-camel cannot give birth to a lawful calf. Its political meaning is compelling. A fundamentally defective process cannot be sanitised merely by producing a desirable outcome. If the procedure by which political authority is allocated is opaque, exclusionary, and unaccountable, the legitimacy of what emerges from it will always remain open to question.

That is precisely the difficulty confronting the increasingly institutionalised practice of elder-mediated political selection in Garissa, and more broadly, in parts of northern Kenya.

The problem is not the existence of elders. Somali society has for centuries relied on them for mediation, reconciliation, communal deliberation, and the settlement of disputes. Nor is there anything objectionable about elders expressing political preferences; they are citizens, and they possess the same constitutional rights to political expression and association as everyone else. The problem arises when moral authority quietly becomes political jurisdiction, when consultation becomes selection, and when endorsement hardens into an informal veto over another citizen’s constitutional right to seek elective office.