Mogadishu – Archyde.com
Hundreds of Somali lawmakers will gather on Sunday at a high-security airport to choose a new president in elections needed to ensure the impoverished and strife-torn country continues to receive financial aid from abroad.
The elections have been postponed more than once due to disagreement within the government, but must be held this month in order to continue the IMF’s $400 million program.
The elections are taking place during the worst drought in Somalia in forty years and once morest the backdrop of violence that the country is witnessing as usual due to the war waged by the rebels, the internal conflict between the security forces and the rivalry between clans.
A suicide bombing claimed by the terrorist “Al-Shabab” movement, on Wednesday, wounded seven people during political rallies near the hangar where members of parliament will meet, and rebels clashed, on Friday, with government forces to control the capital of one of the states.
Analysts said it was unlikely that current President Muhammad Abdullah Muhammad would be re-elected following his allies failed to win top posts in parliament last month.
This makes two former presidents among the front-runners, Sherif Sheikh Ahmed (2009-2012) and Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud (2012-2017).
Analysts say that the president of the semi-autonomous Puntland region, Said Abdullahi Dani, also has a good chance.
Of the 36 candidates, only one is a woman, former Foreign Minister Fawzia Yousef Adam. About 329 parliamentarians from both the House of Representatives and the Senate are entitled to vote.
African Union peacekeepers will guard the site during the expected two or three rounds of voting, which many Somalis say is traditionally influenced more by bribery than politics.
Ahmed, a former leader, assumed the presidency of the transitional government in 2009, established the national army and helped expel the Al-Shabab movement from Mogadishu. Mahmoud, a former academic and peace activist, was accused by donors of not doing enough to fight graft while in office.
