By Abdirahman Jeylani Mohamed
MOGADISHU – In Mogadishu, the symptoms are all too familiar. The speeches get sharper. The rumors multiply. Parliamentarians count heads, whisper in corridors, and test the winds. A sitting government has hit its third year, and Somalia is running a high political fever.
It is a cycle as old as the country’s fragile experiment with federalism: the closer the election, the hotter the politics. And in Somalia, “hot” often means more than rhetoric.
It means the specter of parliamentary motions to oust the prime minister, open disputes over the constitution, and backroom deals that can redraw the political map overnight.
Survival in this climate is rarely a matter of parliamentary loyalty — it hinges on the protective hand of Villa Somalia, the presidential palace.
Waiting for Parliament’s Opening
This year, the fault lines will be tested when Parliament reconvenes. Until then, the tension hums in the background, sharpened by a scheduled meeting between President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and opposition presidential contenders.
On paper, the talks are just one round in a broader dialogue. In reality, they are an early skirmish in a fight over the shape of the 2026 elections and the still-unfinished federal constitution.
These two issues — election design and constitutional completion — are the twin engines of Somalia’s political gridlock. And both are playing out against the backdrop of a stubborn insurgency.
Al-Shabaab’s attacks, now a grim constant, raise the stakes for political stability even as they erode trust in the government’s ability to deliver security.
The Unity Government Gambit
One solution floated in political circles is a national unity government. It would bring together Hassan Sheikh’s allies and his fiercest critics in a single transitional cabinet tasked with steering the country through the next year.
The upside? It could buy the time needed to agree on the type of election — direct or indirect — while lowering the temperature of partisan brinkmanship.
The catch is a “technical extension” of the government’s term, a phrase loaded with suspicion in Somali politics. Opposition leaders have long feared that term extensions are a pretext for leaders to entrench themselves in power. Even under the flag of unity, the idea could be a hard sell.
Indirect Elections, Expanded
The more pragmatic camp favors a modified version of Somalia’s indirect electoral system — the one that delivered the current government.
The change would be in scale, expanding the number of electoral constituencies from two to three or four, theoretically widening representation without inviting the logistical chaos of a full popular vote.
This model sidesteps the need for a term extension, a political plus. But it also risks cementing the same clan-based horse-trading that critics say keeps Somali politics in a permanent loop of transactional alliances and fragile coalitions.
Hassan Sheikh’s Preferred Future
The president himself has made clear that he wants Somalia to take the leap to a one-person, one-vote election. It is the gold standard — and a goal Somali leaders have promised for decades.
But it is also the most difficult path. The security challenges are obvious; the political resistance from an opposition wary of shifting power dynamics is even greater.
Without concessions from his rivals — and they show little appetite for compromise — Hassan Sheikh would need more time to prepare. That means, again, a technical extension. For the opposition, this is a red flag. For the president, it is a necessary evil.
Missing voices, missing legitimacy
All of these scenarios share a critical flaw: the absence of Puntland and Jubaland from the negotiating table. These states hold enough political weight to block or delegitimize any electoral deal they do not sign onto. Their exclusion is not a technicality — it is a fatal weakness in a process already prone to collapse.
Somalia’s fever will break one way or another. It could break into consensus — the kind that offers a credible roadmap to elections, a finished constitution, and a united front against insurgency. Or it could break into crisis, with political paralysis feeding security vacuums and militant momentum.
The stakes are not abstract. They are measured in the country’s ability to hold a functional election without sliding into a constitutional abyss.
That demands leadership willing to take risks not for personal gain, but for the survival of the state. In a country where political fevers have a habit of burning down the house, the next few months will decide whether Somalia can cool the temperature — or whether the fever will finally become an inferno.
The author is Abdirahman Jeylani Mohamed, the director of Arlaadi Media Network, foreign policy journalist and communications specialist.
