Residents of Somalia’s capital are casting ballots in local council elections, marking the first time in more than 50 years that voters will directly choose their representatives, a milestone overshadowed by opposition boycotts.Polling stations across Mogadishu opened at 6am local time (03:00 GMT) on Thursday, with lines forming early as Somalis queued to participate in what President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has called a “new chapter in the country’s history”.Recommended Stories list of 2 itemsend of listAbout half a million people registered to vote for 390 district council seats, with approximately 1,605 candidates competing across 523 polling stations in the capital.Authorities deployed close to 10,000 police officers and imposed a city-wide lockdown, restricting vehicle and pedestrian movement, as well as stopping flights into the city’s main airport.Security in Somalia’s capital has improved this year, but the government continues to battle the al-Qaeda-affiliated armed group al-Shabab, which carried out a major attack in October.Information Minister Daud Aweis described the election as a “resurgence of democratic practices” after decades without them, while electoral commission chairman Abdikarim Ahmed Hassan assured voters they could trust security measures “100 percent”.Somalia last held direct elections in 1969, months before an October military coup that kept civilians out of power for the next three decades.After years of civil war following military leader Mohamed Siad Barre’s fall in 1991, the country adopted an unpopular indirect, clan-based electoral system in 2004, in which clan representatives select politicians, who in turn choose the president. The process has historically been deeply contested by candidates seeking top office. Advertisement The incumbent president, Mohamud, who won power twice through this system, announced in 2023 his commitment to transition to universal suffrage at the local, federal …
