In Mogadishu, gunfire rang out—for once not in anger but in joy. The celebration was of the unexpected victory in Somalia’s long-delayed presidential race of Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known by his nickname “Farmaajo” (the Somali word for cheese, from the Italian formaggio).
The “election” was not a conventional one. The United Nations and Somalia’s Western backers, who have overseen much of the process, abandoned the idea of holding a one-man, one-vote contest years ago because it would have been impossible to organise. Instead, some 14,000 electors, picked on the basis of clan, voted in members of parliament. The MPs then, on February 8th, trooped into the heavily fortified compound at Mogadishu airport—the only place safe enough—to pick a president.
Nor was it a particularly clean process. According to Transparency International, Somalia is the most corrupt country in the world, and its election was no exception. At the end of December a joint statement from a group including the European Union, America and the UN pointed to “egregious cases of abuse of the electoral process”. Analysts warned of huge bribes being paid in exchange for support.
Yet the surprise result suggests that the corruption roughly balanced out. Farmaajo was not the favourite; many people expected the incumbent, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who himself won a surprise victory in 2012, to win again. As the street celebrations showed, the new president, who previously served as prime minister from 2010 to 2011, is genuinely popular.
Nonetheless, the task ahead will be tough. According to Matt Bryden, an analyst, the biggest test will be whether Somalia’s federal states accept the result and work with the new president. The government in Mogadishu has almost no power of its own. Its revenues, mostly from the port and airport, are tiny; it has a small police force that is concentrated in the capital and an army that some jokes say doesn’t actually exist. If it is to achieve anything, it will have to have the consent of other states and the politicians at their heads.
And it needs to achieve a lot. The biggest problem is security. Al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militia, does not hold any major towns, largely because of the presence of 22,000 African Union troops in Somalia, but it remains capable of causing chaos. In the months before the vote, it launched a series of bomb attacks in Mogadishu. It also continues to attack AU forces; last month it claimed to have killed at least 50 Kenyan troops at a base in the south of the country. If Somalia is to become a functioning state, the government will have to gain control of its territory; that means building security forces that are genuinely national, rather than simply clan militias. Only then can the work of building roads, educating children and fostering economic growth begin.
Whether Farmaajo will be capable of this is unclear. His reputation for probity will be quickly tested. (In the government he served as prime minister, some 80% of revenues allegedly went unaccounted for, according to some reports. Will that improve?) Some worry he may try to exercise power by central diktat; something previous Somali presidents have been fond of, but which never works because outside Mogadishu they are simply ignored. For the moment however, there is a burst of optimism. That has been rare in Somalia of late
Source:Economist.com