At the United Nations on September 24, 2026, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud declared that Somalia was laying the foundations of “universal suffrage, accountable institutions and a multi-party system that allows every Somali citizen to have a voice.” He asked international partners to support that transition while “respecting Somali ownership of Somali democracy”. The demand is legitimate. But it carries an obligation at home: Somali ownership must belong to Somalis, not merely to the government speaking in their name. If ownership protects the country against external imposition, it must also protect citizens against domestic imposition.
Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer, poet and Nobel laureate, offers a way of understanding this obligation. In The Quest for Dignity, the fourth of his 2004 BBC Reith Lectures, he declared: “Dignity is simply another face of freedom.” Applied to Somalia, that principle turns the president’s international promise into a domestic test. Can citizens challenge decisions, opponents compete under impartial rules, and institutions restrain those who govern? These questions also test the name of his Justice and Solidarity Party, or JSP. Justice requires protection against arbitrary power; solidarity requires room for disagreement. Neither can be reduced to a party label.
Somalia’s 2012 provisional constitution locates power in the people and provides for public debate and engagement with federal member-state legislatures in constitutional amendment. Yet the March 2026 changes extended presidential and parliamentary terms from four to five years amid rejection by Puntland, Jubaland and opposition leaders over insufficient consensus. The government maintains that parliamentary approval was lawful and the reforms advance direct elections. But a majority cannot make meaningful participation dispensable, particularly when incumbents benefit. Its own February report to the UN acknowledged that the Constitutional Court remained unestablished, promising completion by 2027. Those rewriting the constitutional settlement should be equally committed to establishing its restraints.
The electoral record makes the problem concrete. On August 24, the Supreme Court annulled Galmudug’s July elections for non-compliance with the constitution and electoral laws. Towfiiq, the party that successfully challenged those elections, was excluded from the rerun: the commission cited a missed candidate-list deadline, while the party alleged retaliation. Without Towfiiq participating, JSP won 67 of 89 state assembly seats. The judgment demonstrated why independent courts matter; the subsequent exclusion requires transparent justification. Repeating a ballot does not automatically restore genuine competition.
Concerns about electoral neutrality had already surfaced publicly. In June 2026, Galmudug’s information minister questioned the commission’s impartiality following reports that its chairman had attended a political gathering, and called for an independent electoral body that treated all candidates and parties equally. (Dhacdo) The episode highlights a basic requirement: public confidence depends not simply on an electoral commission being called independent, but on its conduct demonstrating that independence.
Eligibility rules require the same consistency. The commission’s resignation requirement for government employees holding federal or state positions should have applied to Adan Madobe as federal Speaker before he contested the South West presidency. He won on June 10 and resigned on June 20. Earlier contenders relinquished ministerial office before state presidential elections: Laftagareen in 2018, Wehliye in 2020 and Huruse before Puntland’s 2024 election. These involved different offices, but eligibility must rest on consistent, publicly explained rules, not political convenience.
Soyinka’s understanding of dignity included the tenant facing eviction without protection or legal redress. That connects constitutional argument to everyday vulnerability. The European Union Agency for Asylum’s 2026 reporting documents increased government-led evictions in Mogadishu and accounts of inadequate notice, consultation or alternatives. Human Rights Watch records that police temporarily detained at least 22 journalists and media workers following reporting on the March 2025 presidential-convoy attack. Recovering public land does not extinguish occupants’ rights; protecting security does not extinguish scrutiny. Citizens are rights-holders, not obstacles to a government’s programme.
International partners have not simply endorsed the government’s approach. Their June 1 joint statement called for dialogue and consensus on an electoral roadmap. Those standards must shape their support. Partnership with Somalia cannot mean certifying every process its government calls democratic, and respecting Somali ownership cannot mean recognising only the ownership claimed by its officeholders.
These demands are not unfamiliar to Hassan Sheikh. Writing in Foreign Affairs on January 26, 2022, in “Somalia’s Dangerous Authoritarian Turn,” he supported building consensus around an electoral process “acceptable to all parties” and called for consultation with opposition candidates and participation by civil society, including women and young people. He also criticised international partners for handling his predecessor’s government with “kid gloves.” The demand today is straightforward: apply those same principles in office. Consensus cannot be essential when one seeks power and dispensable once one possesses it. The standard should survive the election of the person who articulated it.
Soyinka described nations seeking to become “partners of consent” rather than “slaves of imposition”. The distinction should travel home with every leader demanding respect abroad. A country’s dignity is not its government’s immunity. It is its people’s freedom to question, participate and obtain redress. Justice and solidarity must describe how Somalis are governed, not merely the party governing them.
Awale Kullane is a Somali diplomat and political analyst who writes on institutions and political leadership in the Horn of Africa. Find him at www.linkedin.com/in/awale-kullane-2632a5388.
