Somalia ex-PM Mohamed wins hotly contested polls

Mogadishu, Wednesday

Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has accepted defeat in elections, handing power to ex-Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo.

Farmajo beat him in the second round of voting, and the president pulled out of the third and final round. MPs elected the president in a heavily guarded aircraft hangar in Mogadishu, as the rest of the country is not safe.

Traffic was banned and a no-fly zone imposed over the capital to prevent attacks by militant Islamists. Despite this, suspected militants fired mortar rounds close to the venue on Tuesday night.

Somalia, marred by religious and clan conflict, has not had a one-person one-vote democratic election since 1969. That vote was followed by a coup, dictatorship and conflict involving clan militias and Islamist extremists.

The elections are part of a lengthy and complex process to help the East African state rebuild its democracy and achieve stability.

More than 20,000 African Union (AU) troops are stationed in Somalia to prevent militant Islamist group al-Shabab from overthrowing the weak government.

About 20 men ran for the presidency, but the number was reduced to two after two rounds of voting. Farmajo obtained 184 votes, compared with the outgoing president’s 97.

Yesterday, the groundbreaking presidential election moved into a second round yesterday as the number of candidates dropped from 21 to three, while a security lockdown closed the capital’s international airport and cleared major streets.

With at least one of the remaining candidates having dual citizenship, Farmajo’s win has seen Somalia end up with a president who also holds a US passport.

This Horn of Africa nation is trying to put together its first fully functioning central government in a quarter-century. Years of warlord-led conflict and al-Shabab extremist attacks, along with famine, have left this country of about 12 million people largely shattered. -AFP & BBC

The post Somalia ex-PM Mohamed wins hotly contested polls appeared first on Mediamax Network Limited.