There is an old rule, older than any constitution: no man may be judge in his own case. Every child who has argued over a football knows it. Every elder who has settled a dispute under a tree knows it. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud knows it too. That is why he did not try to become the judge. He fired the judge instead, and gave the chair to his party’s legal adviser.
Picture the courtroom. On one side stands the opposition, holding a petition against his constitution. On the other stands his government, its lawyers still gathering their papers. Between them sits the bench. Then the accused rises, walks to the bench, removes the man sitting there and seats his own adviser. He returns to his place and declares his faith in the rule of law.
That is what happened on 4 November, when President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud removed Chief Justice Bashe Yusuf Ahmed and put in his place Ibrahim Idle Suleiman, the man he had first appointed to the post in 2016. The decree spoke of complaints from judges and the need for reform. It said nothing about the case sitting on the Chief Justice’s desk.
The new man in the chair is no stranger to the party in the dock. After 2022, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud made him his special legal adviser. A JSP document listing the committee that runs elections for the party’s youth, women and professionals names him as the party’s Legal Affairs Adviser. In October 2024, the Senate leadership tried to give him a seat in the upper house, and senators blocked his swearing-in. The robe is new. The loyalty beneath it is not.
The case on that desk is E-Som 21/2026, the opposition’s petition against the President’s constitution. It is a constitutional petition, not a criminal charge, and the respondent is his government. Its verdict would still decide whether his constitution lives or dies. In the court of public opinion, that makes him eedeysanihii, the accused. The accused has now fired the judge and handed the gavel to his own party’s legal adviser.
He did not put the Chief Justice in handcuffs. He did something quieter: he handcuffed the court.
Three Seats, One Man
Every courtroom needs three seats: one for the judge, one for the side that brings the case, and one for the side that answers it. Justice lives in the distance between them. Somalia’s constitutional case now has one man reaching for all three.
On 11 October, the opposition asked the Supreme Court to annul the constitutional amendments. The court accepted the case, which also covers the extension of terms, and ordered the Attorney General to respond.
The government said it welcomed the challenge. Its Justice Minister called the case a sign of confidence in the rule of law. Confidence is a fine word. It lasted three weeks. On 2 November, the Attorney General was still gathering records from Parliament to prepare the defence. On 4 November, the judge who would hear that defence was gone. The lawyers were still writing when the bench was cleared.
Let no one mistake the fired judge for a hero. He was not all kosher, and most of the time his court stood out of the government’s way. In August, it annulled the Galmudug vote that had handed the ruling party a landslide. When the party that won that case was then left off the ballot for the rerun, the court let its own ruling go hollow.
Still, once or twice, he tried to do his job. Even that was too much. A system built around one man cannot afford a judge who says no, not even now and then.
The Judge in the Party Vest
The new Chief Justice has already said where he stands. He said it on camera.
In a video from a JSP gathering, Ibrahim Idle Suleiman stands in the party’s vest and cap. Behind him, the party’s emblem repeats across the wall, banner after banner. Microphone in hand, he tells the room that their appointment is with the JSP and with 15 May.
That date is no accident. The commission his government appointed has fixed 15 May 2027 for the presidential election. In a few words, the referee named the team he plays for and the day of the match.
A judge’s robe can cover many things. It cannot cover a party vest worn before the cameras, under the party’s banners. The fault does not lie with a man’s loyalty to his party. It lies with the decision to give a party man the court that must rule on the party leader’s constitution.
One Person, One Vote, One Man
The court is only the last act of a long play. The first act was the ballot. The capital’s December 2025 vote was presented to the nation as one person, one vote. On 25 October, in a televised address, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud called it a success.
The councillors that vote elected were sworn in on 2 April. Their first task was to elect the capital’s mayor, who is also the governor of Banadir. Seven months later, they have not elected him, and they have not been allowed to work a single day. This week, they came to blows at the JSP headquarters over it. The President’s success is fighting in his own party’s house.
Meanwhile, in the states, the same JSP-led polls moved at speed. New state MPs were sworn in and chose presidents within days: South West in 11, Galmudug in 5, Hirshabelle in 4. Where the vote delivered power to the party, it ran. Where it would have delivered power to the public, it sat down. The goal was to look like an election, not to be one.
The Collection
Count the steps. The President’s term was extended by a year through a constitution rewritten by a Parliament that answers to him. The elections are run by the commission his government appointed. The capital’s councillors were elected and shelved. Now the court weighing the whole arrangement is headed by the legal adviser of the party whose leader made it.
Other countries have walked this road, and scholars have mapped it. Kim Lane Scheppele (2013) studied how Hungary’s ruling party gathered power after 2010 by “disempowering the constitutional court”, redrawing the electoral map and “decapitating the judiciary”. Her warning is simple. Each step, alone, can be dressed up as normal. Together, they destroy democracy. The danger is never one decree. It is the collection.
Frank Nullmeier, Steffen Schneider and Andreas Hepp (2015) explain why the court is the last piece any collector wants. Judicial review, they write, is “a safety valve against autocratic tendencies.” Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal built strong constitutional courts straight after dictatorship, because they had learned what happens when nobody can tell the ruler no. Somalia’s court was a weak valve. It has now been shut, and the key handed to the party.
Orders to Armies That Are Not There
In April 1945, in a bunker under Berlin, Adolf Hitler stood over his maps and ordered a counterattack by forces that existed largely on paper. The divisions had been bled dry. His generals knew it, and few dared tell him. He moved pins across a map while the ground beneath them belonged to someone else.
The comparison is with the scene, not the man. Somalia is not Berlin, and Villa Somalia is not a bunker. Look at the map, though, and the picture is familiar.
When President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud returned to power in 2022, the federal member states stood with him. They shared one constitution they could all work under. His policies have driven them away, one by one.
Puntland and Jubaland walked out of the talks on 22 July, and both have cut ties with the federal government. On 1 July, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud himself declared that there was no room for talks with Puntland. Hirshabelle is divided: Hiiraan’s elders rejected an election held without agreement, and Beledweyne is now talking of a separate administration.
South West is worse. It is at war. Forces loyal to South West’s President are fighting federal troops on the outskirts of Baidoa. In mid-October, they took every major town in Bay except Baidoa. The spokesman of the administration the JSP installed has admitted that even Baidoa could slip from its hands. Of the five member states, only Galmudug still stands with him.
Decrees still go out from Villa Somalia. Chief Justices are fired, forums are called, and elections are scheduled for 2027. Fewer and fewer places obey. On paper, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud governs a federation. On the ground, his writ barely runs beyond the capital and Galmudug.
The Bill Always Comes
Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg (1982) gave this a name: personal rule. Power flows from the person of the ruler, not from offices and rules, and institutions survive only as tools in his hand. Personal rule looks efficient. Decisions are quick, and nobody inside the house can say no.
The efficiency is borrowed, and the debt is heavy. Anna Grzymała-Busse and Pauline Jones Luong (2015) call personal rule “too costly”, because it “concentrates all responsibility for both success and failure in the ruler’s hands.” A President who can say “I am only following the court” has a shield. A President who has seated his party’s adviser on the court has thrown his shield away. Whatever the new court decides, the public will read the party’s handwriting on it.
The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1963) described “Big Man” systems, where authority rests on one man’s standing rather than on any office. When the Big Man fails to deliver, his followers walk away, and when he falls, everything built around him falls too. Somalia’s member states are already walking. The country learned in 1991 how the rest of that story ends.
No Time Left to Play
The time for advice about building courts and commissions has passed. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has played with every institution he could reach: the constitution, the Parliament, the commission, the ballot and now the bench. Each move was meant to tighten his grip. Each one has loosened it. He no longer has the trust to rebuild what he bent.
He also has no time. His four-year mandate expired on 15 May. He is governing on borrowed time, under an extension much of the country does not accept. A President on borrowed time cannot also borrow the courts.
Soyinka once wrote that “the man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.” Somalia is not keeping silent. The states are walking out, the opposition is in court, and even the President’s own councillors are fighting in his party’s house. The more he plays, the more the power he is fighting for slips from his hands.
He told the nation that the court case showed confidence in the rule of law. Three weeks later, he fired the judge. He told the nation that the capital’s vote was a success. Seven months on, its councillors are fighting in his party’s house. In 2022, the states stood with him. Today, only Galmudug does.
History keeps two records of every leader: what he said, and what he did. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has little time left to make them match, and only one place where they can meet. He must come back to the table and put everything the opposition has raised on it: the mandate, the constitution, the electoral model, the commission that runs it, and now the court. The forum he has called for 14 to 18 November will fail if the opposition is invited as consultants to hear decisions already made. They must sit as negotiators, with the power to change the outcome.
A defendant who fires the judge does not win his case. When he seats his own party’s adviser in that chair, he only tells the public how he expected it to end. The verdict now belongs to the people.
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
