The United States con­grat­u­lates the peo­ple of So­ma­lia on the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of their na­tional elec­toral process. We con­grat­u­late Mr. Mo­hamed Ab­dul­lahi Mo­hamed on his se­lec­tion as the next Pres­i­dent of the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment of So­ma­lia and look for­ward to work­ing closely with him and a new gov­ern­ment.

We commend the Somali Security Forces and the African Union Mission in Somalia for their efforts over the past six months to allow the electoral process to unfold in a relatively safe and secure environment.

This tran­si­tion rep­re­sents an im­por­tant step for­ward for the coun­try. We com­mend the thou­sands of So­ma­lis from across the coun­try, in­clud­ing youth and women, who were able to vote in greater num­bers than in the 2012 elec­tions, but re­gret the nu­mer­ous cred­i­ble re­ports of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the elec­toral process. We en­cour­age So­ma­li­a’s new ad­min­is­tra­tion to take cred­i­ble steps to stamp out cor­rup­tion and to es­tab­lish strong elec­toral in­sti­tu­tions to en­able a free and fair one per­son one vote poll in 2020.

The United States looks for­ward to the timely for­ma­tion of a new gov­ern­ment, and to work­ing in part­ner­ship with the Pres­i­dent and new gov­ern­ment to ad­vance rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, drought re­lief, se­cu­rity, and build the strong in­sti­tu­tions to de­liver good gov­er­nance and de­vel­op­ment for the So­mali peo­ple.