By Halima Ibrahim Ismail
The Supreme Court has ordered a rerun. The real test now is whether Somalia will conduct an election according to the law — or simply find a new way to reach a political outcome.
In recent days, Somalia’s political debate has been dominated by the decision of the Federal Supreme Court on 24th August to annul the results of the Galmudug election held on 30 July 2026 and order that the election be repeated.
The case, formally identified as MSF/DD/1/2026, was heard by the Supreme Court’s Electoral Division on 17, 18 and 19 August 2026. The five-member bench was chaired by Chief Justice Baashe Yusuf Ahmed, alongside Justices Salah Sheikh Ibrahim Dhiblaawe, Abdulhaq Omar Mohamed, Abdulaziz Mohamed Yusuf and Haydar Bargash Abikar.
The proceedings were between the Towfiiq Reconciliation and Development Political Organisation and the National Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.
The judgment was issued on 24 August 2026.
Much of the public debate has focused on whether the Court’s decision was genuine, politically motivated or whether particular political actors were behind it.
Some have pointed towards Villa Somalia, the Presidency; others have linked the matter to the NISA leadership and its alleged relationship with the Towfiiq Party. I do not intend to wage into that debate here.
The more consequential question is a legal one: if the election is to be rerun, can it simply be held whenever the political authorities choose, or must the entire timetable and procedure prescribed by law be followed?
That is not a technical footnote. It goes to the heart of whether Somalia’s elections are governed by law or by political convenience.
What does the Court’s decision actually require?
The Supreme Court stated that the previous election had not been conducted in accordance with the Constitution and Electoral Law, and that the procedural irregularities had affected the integrity and outcome of the election. The result was therefore annulled and a new election ordered.
But the ruling cannot reasonably be reduced to the political instruction: “Hold the election again.”
Its deeper legal meaning is clear: Hold the election again, but hold it in accordance with the Constitution and the Electoral Law. That distinction matters.
If the rerun simply reproduces the procedural shortcomings that led to the first election being annulled, then Somalia will not have solved the problem. It will merely have postponed it.
The election date: can politics set the clock?
The Electoral Commission has a responsibility to establish the electoral timetable in accordance with the law, including the formal determination and publication of election day. The Supreme Court’s decision specifically addressed the requirement that the election date be determined at least 90 days in advance. That raises a straightforward question.
If the authorities were to announce today that the election would take place tomorrow, or within a few weeks, would the statutory requirements have actually been met?
If the 90-day requirement is calculated from the date of the Court’s ruling, 24 August 2026, then even if election day had been announced on that date, the earliest possible polling date would have been 22 November 2026.
But that date has not been formally announced. And every day that passes without the required notice potentially pushes the timetable further back.
The point is not whether a particular date is politically convenient. The point is whether the date is legally permissible. The candidates’ lists matter too
The second issue is the submission and verification of candidate lists. The law provides a period within which political parties and organisations must submit their lists of candidates, followed by the Commission’s verification of candidates’ eligibility and the formal publication of the approved lists.
This is not administrative bureaucracy for its own sake. It is part of the integrity of an election.
Every candidate deserves sufficient time to prepare. Every political party deserves a reasonable opportunity to organise its campaign. And voters deserve to know clearly who is standing, which party or political organisation they represent and what choices are before them.
There is, however, an important legal question that requires clarification: does the 120-day requirement begin afresh following the Supreme Court’s annulment, or can the candidate-list process completed for the previous election legally carry over into the rerun?
That question should be answered before a new election timetable is imposed—not after another dispute reaches the courts.
Transparency begins before polling day
Once the Electoral Commission has verified the candidate lists, it must formally and clearly publish the candidates and the political organisations that have nominated them.
A credible election is not simply about what happens inside the polling station.
Voters must be able to see the entire process: Who is running? Who nominated them?
Who is eligible? When will the election take place? What are the rules of the contest? When these questions remain uncertain, public confidence inevitably suffers.
Campaigning is part of electoral fairness
The campaign period is equally important.
Under the electoral framework, campaigning is to begin 45 days before polling and conclude 48 hours before voting. Those periods exist for a reason.
They give political parties and candidates a fair opportunity to reach voters, explain their programmes and compete on something more meaningful than access to state power.
An election should not be judged solely by what happens on polling day. It should be judged by the fairness of the road that leads to polling day.
If the statutory timetable and procedures are applied in full, the Galmudug election could potentially move into January 2027, depending on the formal legal interpretation and implementation of the relevant provisions.
That is precisely why the timetable should be established through a clear legal process rather than political improvisation. What happens if the law is broken again? This is the most important question.
If the previous election was annulled because electoral procedures and legal requirements were not followed, but the rerun is conducted while disregarding the same statutory safeguards, another legal challenge is almost inevitable.
The obvious question would then be: What, legally, distinguishes the new election from the election that was annulled? Candidates or political parties affected by procedural violations could once again have grounds to challenge the process before the courts.
And Somalia could find itself trapped in a destructive cycle: Election → dispute → litigation → court ruling → annulment → new election → new dispute. That is not democratic consolidation. It is institutional paralysis. The law cannot be a political menu
Somalia repeatedly says that it wants free, fair and credible elections. But free and fair elections are not created by political declarations. They are built through: LAW + LEGAL TIMETABLE + DUE PROCESS + EQUAL OPPORTUNITY + TRANSPARENCY + ACCOUNTABILITY.
The law cannot be treated as a menu from which political actors select the provisions that suit them and disregard those that do not.
If the law is bent today to produce a preferred political outcome, the precedent can, and almost certainly will, be used tomorrow by those on the other side. That is why this issue is bigger than Galmudug.
It is about whether Somalia is building institutions in which the rules constrain political power, or a political system in which those rules are repeatedly adjusted to accommodate political power.
Galmudug is a test for Somalia
The Galmudug election can become one of two things. It can become another example of Somalia’s recurring cycle of contested elections, litigation and institutional uncertainty. Or it can become an opportunity to demonstrate something far more important: that when a court identifies a breach of electoral law, the political response is not to search for another way around the rules, but to strengthen compliance with them.
If the Supreme Court has said that the previous election violated the law, the appropriate response is not to search for a legal loophole. It is simple: Uphold the law.
The Constitution and Electoral Law must stand above the interests of an individual, a political party, a government or any political faction.
If the law can be breached to secure a political result, then that result will itself remain vulnerable to challenge.
Somalia cannot afford another cycle
Somalia cannot continue with a political culture in which elections become endless contests of legitimacy: an election is held, the result is disputed, a case is filed, the courts intervene, the result is annulled, and the entire process begins again. That does not build a state. It does not build public confidence. And it does not build democracy.
The lesson from Galmudug should therefore be straightforward: A new election cannot correct an old failure if it repeats the same failures. Galmudug deserves an election whose legitimacy does not depend on who wins. Somalia needs an electoral system in which political actors can trust the process—even when the outcome does not favour them.
That is the real test of democracy: Whether you uphold the rules when they work in your favour and, more importantly, when they do not. If we protect the law, we protect the election. If we protect the election, we protect public confidence. If we protect public confidence, we strengthen the state.
But if we replace one procedural failure with another, we will soon be asking the same question again: Was the election lawful? Somalia cannot afford another cycle. It is time for the law to stand above the political outcome.
Halima Ibrahim Ismail (Halima Yarey) is the Former Chairperson, National Independent Electoral Commission; former Chairperson, Galmudug Electoral Commission; and former Co-Chairperson, Parliamentary Selection Committee, Federal Parliament of Somalia.