Somalia’s parliament voted to change its constitution and extend the term in office for lawmakers and the president, the president and the parliament’s speaker said, pushing back planned elections by a year. Somalia has endured conflict and clan battles with no strong central government since the fall of autocratic ruler Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
While an African Union peacekeeping mission has pushed back the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group, it still controls vast areas of the countryside and has the ability to conduct regular strikes on major population centres. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud had reached a deal last August with some opposition leaders stipulating that, while lawmakers would be directly elected in 2026, the president would still be chosen by parliament. A 2024 law restored universal suffrage ahead of the vote.
On Wednesday, 222 lawmakers from the parliament and senate out of a total of 329 voted by acclamation to change the law, extending their term and that of the president to five years, from four years previously. “Today is a historic day for it is the official completion of the constitution which had dragged for a long period,” the president told a press conference on Wednesday. Opposition party leaders, including former presidents and former prime ministers, rejected the amendment and called for elections in May as planned.
Somalia’s bicameral parliament on Wednesday approved the country’s new constitution following a protracted process that spanned more than 13 years. Sheikh Aden Mohamed Nur, speaker of the House of the People, the lower house of the Federal Parliament, announced that 186 members of the lower house and 37 #senators from the Upper House voted in favor of the new constitution during a joint session.
“Today is a historic day, worthy of remembrance as our constitution transitions from a provisional one to an official, lawful one,” Nur said. The new constitution will be formally signed into law by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. It replaces the provisional constitution adopted in 2012, when more than 800 delegates adopted it at a conference in Mogadishu while the country was under a transitional government.
“Today marks a defining milestone for Somalia as we fulfill our constitutional mandate to complete and adopt our Constitution, transitioning it from provisional status to the supreme law of the land,” said Khadija Mohamed Al-Makhzoumi, a lawmaker and minister of family affairs and human rights. The new constitution extends the presidential term from the current four years to five years. It also stipulates that the president will be elected by parliament, while members of parliament will be chosen directly by citizens. Under the new constitution, the prime minister is appointed by the president, but may be removed by parliament.
Somalia has been under a provisional constitution since 2012, and repeated efforts to finalize it have exposed deep divisions over governance and power-sharing between the federal government and regional states. A similar attempt to extend political mandates under former president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed triggered a constitutional crisis in 2021 and led to armed confrontations in Mogadishu, pushing the country to the brink of wider unrest.
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