(a) Foreign community representation (b) the single seat assigned to Mogadiscio and (c) the tribal Assemblies (shir)

The first gen­eral elec­tion law in So­ma­lia was en­acted on 31 March 1955 (Or­di­nannza no. 6 Marso, 1955).

In the face of the dif­fi­cul­ties in­volved in or­ga­niz­ing a cred­i­ble cen­sus of the no­madic pop­u­la­tion, the Ad­min­is­ter­ing Au­thor­ity (AFIS) had in­tro­duced a mixed elec­toral sys­tem un­der the terms of which res­i­dents liv­ing in the cities and in pos­ses­sion of an elec­toral card could di­rectly cast their vote, while no­madic pop­u­la­tions liv­ing in the rural ar­eas ex­pressed their vote through their tribal lead­ers. Tra­di­tional as­sem­blies (shir) to des­ig­nate elec­toral rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the no­madic pop­u­la­tion were or­ga­nized from Au­gust 1 to No­vem­ber 30, 1955 through­out the ter­ri­tory. (De­creto n° 93, Mag­gio 27, 1955).

A to­tal of 616 tribal shir were or­ga­nized through­out the ter­ri­tory for a pop­u­la­tion of 772,000, a fig­ure greatly ex­ceed­ing that which was ex­pected from an es­ti­mated pop­u­la­tion of 1,270,000, con­sid­er­ing women and per­sons un­der the age of twenty-one did not have the right to vote. (UN Doc. T/​1245, May 1, 1956).

The man­i­festly ex­ag­ger­ated num­ber of rural vot­ers had to be ac­cepted and was added to the 86,000 mu­nic­i­pal elec­tors to give a to­tal of 858,000 po­ten­tial vot­ers na­tion­wide. Then on the day of the elec­tion, elec­toral rep­re­sen­ta­tives and mu­nic­i­pal elec­torate voted to­gether. With the adop­tion of the tribal shir and the in­di­rect elec­toral sys­tem, a clan in­sti­tu­tion was be­ing for­mal­ized, at­tach­ing dif­fer­ent tribes to des­ig­nated elec­toral dis­tricts ar­ti­fi­cially cre­ated by the ad­min­is­ter­ing au­thor­ity with the Lega party not stand­ing up against this un­fair sys­tem.

The suc­ces­sive post-in­de­pen­dence civil­ian ad­min­is­tra­tions were un­able or un­will­ing to re­form or re­peal the con­tro­ver­sial elec­toral law en­acted dur­ing the trustee­ship regime. The in­jus­tice as­so­ci­ated with this elec­toral sys­tem has haunted the Lega-led gov­ern­ment for all the time it ruled the coun­try (1956-1969).

The ter­ri­tory was di­vided in 25 con­stituen­cies of which six had no con­test at all, as, ex­cept Din­sor, (HDMS strong­hold) only SYL can­di­dates were reg­is­tered and pre­sented lists (Lista unica). Elec­tions took place in re­main­ing 19 dis­tricts.

Mo­gadis­cio and the sin­gle seat

One ques­tion fre­quently asked is why Mo­gadis­cio, the most pop­u­lous ur­ban cen­tre of So­ma­lia, was so un­der­rep­re­sented in the first gen­eral elec­tion of 1956 with only one seat al­lo­cated to it. The an­swer to this ques­tion is sim­ple, al­though it may sound un­con­vinc­ing to many: In Mo­gadis­cio, there were no tribal vot­ers or com­mu­ni­ties of rural pop­u­la­tion tak­ing part in the elec­tion process, as was the case in the out­ly­ing dis­tricts where overzeal­ous So­mali lo­cal of­fi­cials had in­flated the num­ber of vot­ers.

Grossly in­flated fig­ures were given in many rural ar­eas, par­tic­u­larly where lo­cal of­fi­cials were So­ma­lis be­long­ing to the same tribe or group as the vot­ers, with the con­nivance of salaried chiefs. Many out­siders were en­cour­aged to at­tend the shir thus swelling the num­bers of tribes­men pre­sent at the shir in breach of the elec­toral sys­tem.

In fact, in a num­ber of cases, it was nec­es­sary to in­val­i­date the shir vote ow­ing to the ef­forts of the tribes con­cerned to in­flate their own im­por­tance by mag­ni­fy­ing their fig­ures.

The sixty seats in the Na­tional As­sem­bly were al­lo­cated to elec­toral dis­tricts on the ba­sis of 14,302 votes per seat. This rate was con­sid­ered by the United Na­tions, as a very low pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion of the ter­ri­tory (UN Doc.T/​1245, May 1, 1956).

Seats were dis­trib­uted in an ar­bi­trary man­ner to dif­fer­ent elec­toral dis­tricts be­fore even the re­sults of the elec­tions were known. In this hap­haz­ard method, dis­tricts such as Bulo Burti, Bur Hak­aba and Baidoa, for in­stance, were al­lo­cated the high­est num­ber of seats (5 each). As far as Mo­gadis­cio was con­cerned, only vot­ers reg­is­tered in the mu­nic­i­pal elec­toral roll could cast a vote: con­se­quently, with only 18,153 reg­is­tered vot­ers, Mo­gadis­cio got one sin­gle seat. One ad­di­tional seat was added in 1958.

Elec­toral sys­tem for the For­eign Com­mu­ni­ties

In the 1950s, there was a strong pres­ence of dif­fer­ent for­eign com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing in Mo­gadis­cio; the largest one was the Arabs, mainly from Yemen and Aden, fol­lowed by Ital­ians, Er­itre­ans and In­di­ans.

For the elec­tion of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the for­eign com­mu­ni­ties, a sep­a­rate elec­toral sys­tem was en­vis­aged (Or­di­nanza n° 6 Marzo 31, 1956).

Each can­di­date was to be se­lected by an Elec­toral Col­lege cho­sen through a pri­mary elec­tion in which all the mem­bers of the mi­nor­ity con­cerned had the right to vote.

The can­di­date was re­quired to be over twenty-one years old and have been twelve months in the ter­ri­tory (TNA FO/​371/​118674). The num­ber of Na­tional Rep­re­sen­ta­tives com­posed of 70 seats, 10 of which were re­served for for­eign eth­nic mi­nori­ties liv­ing in the ter­ri­tory, the Ital­ian and Arab com­mu­ni­ties be­ing al­lo­cated four seats each, and the In­dian and Pak­istani groups one seat each.

All the four Ital­ian rep­re­sen­ta­tives elected as Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment were well-known ar­dent fas­cists. (1) Carlo Quaglia, an out­stand­ing Lawyer, elected as Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment to rep­re­sent the Ital­ian com­mu­nity of Lower Juba, had a record of hav­ing be­trayed to Mus­solini an anti-fas­cist plot in which he was in­volved in 1925, sav­ing his own neck at the cost of his friends. (2) Dr. Vin­cenzo Calzia, a for­mer ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cial of the Ital­ian Min­istry of Africa, rep­re­sent­ing the Ital­ian com­mu­nity of Vil­l­abruzzi (Jowhar), was one of the main ag­i­ta­tors in the in­ci­dent of 11 Jan­u­ary 1948 in Mo­gadis­cio. (3) Colonel Camillo Gio­rio, rep­re­sent­ing the Ital­ian com­mu­nity of Merca, was a mem­ber of the mil­i­tary es­tab­lish­ment prior to 1941. (4) Only Francesco Boero, a lead­ing busi­ness­man rep­re­sent­ing the Ital­ian com­mu­nity of Mo­gadis­cio, had held no gov­ern­ment po­si­tions dur­ing the Fas­cist era.

Haji Mo­hamed Ali Bin Quer and Haji Nasser Ali rep­re­sented the Arab com­mu­nity of Mo­gadis­cio, Said Mo­hamed Salim rep­re­sented the Arab com­mu­nity of Margherita (Ja­mama) and Ali Maiub Ali the Arab com­mu­nity of Baidoa.

Mr. Damador Trib­honar Shah rep­re­sented the In­dian com­mu­nity and Ahmed Fadel Hasham the Pak­istani com­mu­nity.( Cor­riere della So­ma­lia, Marzo 1, 1956).

The vet­eran scholar and leader of the Er­itrean Com­mu­nity in So­ma­lia, Cav­a­liere (Cav­a­lier) Sheikh Nour Hus­sein sat in the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Cul­tural As­so­ci­a­tion.

Ital­ian MPs usu­ally voted with the gov­ern­ment; the Arabs also voted with the gov­ern­ment, ex­cept when re­li­gious fac­tors were in­volved; the In­di­ans and the Pak­istani rarely spoke and were watch­dogs of their com­mu­ni­ties’ in­ter­ests (TNA FO 371/​131460). “The Ital­ians, Arabs and In­di­ans were elected, but they were ex­pected only to con­tribute to­wards re­solv­ing eco­nomic and so­cial prob­lems and not to en­gage in par­ti­san de­bate on po­lit­i­cal ques­tions”, (Castagno)

The 1956 gen­eral elec­tions brought about a new de­vel­op­ment in the sense that they trans­formed the Ter­ri­to­r­ial Coun­cil, the Ad­vi­sory Body whose mem­bers were ap­pointed by the Ad­min­is­tra­tor, into a fully-fledged elec­tive leg­isla­tive body, with full statu­tory pow­ers over leg­is­la­tion deal­ing with do­mes­tic af­fairs (Or­di­nanza n° 6 Gen­naio 5, 1956)

M. Trunji
 E-mail trunji@ya­hoo.com