This is the date the fourth and last par­lia­men­tary elec­tions were held in So­ma­lia be­fore the coun­try fell in the grip of a mil­i­tary regime. The first par­lia­men­tary elec­tions were held in 1956, the sec­ond in 1959 and the third in 1964.

Whereas twenty-one po­lit­i­cal par­ties had con­tested the par­lia­men­tary elec­tions of 1964, this time sixty-four par­ties, rep­re­sent­ing sixty-four clans and sub-clans, most of which cre­ated just be­fore the poll and all seek­ing a slice of the na­tional pie, en­tered the field, with 2,214 can­di­dates for the 123 avail­able seats. Most of the or­ga­ni­za­tions con­tend­ing for the elec­tion as po­lit­i­cal par­ties were not in re­al­ity par­ties in the true sense of the word, but rather tem­po­rary clan group­ings, de­void of any clear po­lit­i­cal pro­gramme, formed solely for the pur­pose of putting up can­di­dates with the ul­ti­mate aim of join­ing the rul­ing party af­ter the elec­tions. As one au­thor elo­quently puts it, “Pol­i­tics in the Horn, like the pol­i­tics of in­dus­trial so­ci­eties, con­sist of com­pet­ing among groups for in­flu­ence in the man­age­ment of pub­lic af­fairs. The dis­tinc­tion lies in the char­ac­ter of the groups. In de­vel­oped in­dus­trial so­ci­eties the com­pet­ing groups are made of in­di­vid­u­als united by com­mon eco­nomic or so­cial in­ter­ests or per­haps a com­mon ide­ol­ogy. Among the So­ma­lis they are de­ter­mined by com­mon an­ces­try”.

The coun­try was di­vided into 48 elec­toral dis­tricts, out of which 5 had no con­test at all, since only the rul­ing party had reg­is­tered and pre­sented lists of can­di­dates who were au­to­mat­i­cally pro­claimed elected be­fore the count­ing of the bal­lots. The five ‘un­con­test­ed’ elec­toral dis­tricts were Aden Yaval, Ben­der Beila, Bur Hak­aba, Jer­riban and Zeila, all won by the rul­ing party. The elec­toral law had in­tro­duced two new in­no­va­tions with re­spect to 1964:(a) the sys­tem of pro­por­tional rep­re­sen­ta­tion was mod­i­fied by as­sign­ing each con­stituency an elec­toral quo­tient de­ter­mined by di­vid­ing the to­tal num­ber of votes cast by the num­ber of seats as­signed to each con­stituency. Con­se­quently, only par­ties which reached the elec­toral quo­tient were al­lo­cated seats. (b) pub­lic ser­vants, civil­ians or oth­er­wise, who wished to stand as can­di­dates were in­el­i­gi­ble from run­ning for the elec­tion un­less they re­signed from gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ment at least 180 days be­fore the date of vot­ing “on the ba­sis of the ex­ist­ing tra­di­tion in for­mer So­ma­liland.” By con­trast, in the south­ern re­gion, by pre­vail­ing tra­di­tion civil ser­vants were al­lowed to stand as can­di­dates on the as­sump­tion that they rep­re­sented the best ed­u­cated and most qual­i­fied mem­bers of the pop­u­la­tion and they would be able to im­prove the qual­ity of the leg­is­la­ture. Ac­cord­ingly, a num­ber of civil ser­vants had been elected to the Na­tional As­sem­bly in 1959 and 1964, and had been placed on leave with­out pay for the du­ra­tion of their elec­tive of­fice.

One ob­vi­ous flaw of the elec­toral law was the lack of elec­toral cer­tifi­cates which al­lowed vot­ers to cast their votes in the elec­toral dis­trict where they found them­selves on the day of vot­ing. Il­lit­er­ate vil­lagers and town dwellers had an equal say in choos­ing their can­di­dates. This short­com­ing en­cour­aged ir­reg­u­lar move­ments of the pop­u­la­tion from dis­trict to dis­trict. The se­cu­rity de­posit for the elec­tion of MPs was raised from Sh.So1,000 in 1964 to Sh.So 5,000, to be for­feited and cred­ited to State rev­enue in case the list failed to ob­tain the nec­es­sary votes for the elec­tion of at least one deputy. To pre­vent vot­ers cast­ing their bal­lot more than once, their left hand was marked with in­deli­ble ink be­fore vot­ing, a fa­mil­iar sys­tem that had been in use since 1959. In a highly po­lar­ized po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment, few ex­pected the build-up to the elec­tions to be any­thing other than vi­o­lent. Of­fi­cial re­ports said that about 25 peo­ple died dur­ing the elec­tions, but it is un­der­stood that this was a some­what con­ser­v­a­tive es­ti­ma­tion. Those who fell vic­tims to the pre­vail­ing po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence in­cluded two civil ser­vants in­volved in the elec­tion process: Abdi Omar and Has­san Omar as­sas­si­nated in Baidoa and Merca re­spec­tively, a can­di­date stand­ing as an MP, M. Sede, as­sas­si­nated in El Bur and a para­mount Chief, Is­mail Bo­gor, bru­tally mur­dered in Iskushuban.

Most of the trou­bles arose be­cause of com­pli­cated di­vi­sions of the ter­ri­tory into tribal bound­aries, in­au­gu­rated dur­ing the UN trustee­ship regime, with no at­tempt made af­ter in­de­pen­dence to rec­tify the sit­u­a­tion. Alula, Iskushuban, Galkayo, Dusa Mareb, Merca, and Lugh Fer­randi, to men­tion just a few, had been flash­points for years dur­ing elec­tion times. In an­tic­i­pa­tion of the gen­eral elec­tions, the gov­ern­ment ap­pointed new re­gional gov­er­nors and dis­trict com­mis­sion­ers.

The re­gional au­thor­i­ties, par­tic­u­larly those hail­ing from the south, were no­to­ri­ous for their ex­per­tise in elec­tion fraud. “The new ap­pointees were widely seen as mer­ce­nar­ies who were ap­pointed on ad hoc ba­sis to rig the elec­tions for the can­di­date favoured by the gov­ern­ment”, com­ments a well-in­formed an­a­lyst.

The fi­nal re­sults of the elec­tions were re­leased on April 7, 1969 by the Cen­tral Elec­toral Of­fice, chaired by the Pres­i­dent of the Ap­peal Court, Judge Giro­lamo Marotta-Gigli. The SYL party won the elec­tions, se­cur­ing 73 of the 123 of the seats in Par­lia­ment; the re­main­ing 50 seats went to a host of other po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

So­ma­lis had grown used to elec­toral ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties since the time of the United Na­tions trustee­ship regime, but were still shocked by the scale of the vote rig­ging in 1969, the likes of which had never been ex­pe­ri­enced in the past.

What­ever So­mali vot­ers may have wanted, it was ax­iomatic that the SYL did not lose elec­tions. So, gross ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the 1969 elec­tion should come as no sur­prise. The SYL was an ex­tra­or­di­nar­ily pow­er­ful, hard to de­feat money ma­chine.

Within a few weeks from the elec­tion, all but one of the new MPs who were not mem­bers of the SYL had joined the rul­ing party: The most well-known among the de­fec­tors were: Omar Arteh, Dr. Elmi Duale, Bashir Sheikh Hus­sein, Michael Mar­i­ano, Jama Ganni, Ab­dul­lahi M. Hi­rad, Omar Lu­laie, Ab­dul­lahi Is­na­nia, Hared Farah, Is­mail Dualeh, Ahmed Adda Mugne, Is­mail Giu­male, Mo­hamed Ra­jis and Mo­hamoud Mo­hamed Os­man. All were at­tracted by the ad­van­tages of be­ing in­side rather than out­side the rul­ing party. Such trans­mi­gra­tions from one party to the rul­ing party were not with­out his­tor­i­cal prece­dent in So­mali pol­i­tics.

Sim­i­lar in­stances of ‘cross­ing the floor’ were also ex­pe­ri­enced in the 1964 gen­eral elec­tions, but not to the scale ex­pe­ri­enced in 1969, which an­nulled par­lia­men­tary op­po­si­tion. The sin­gle op­po­si­tion mem­ber who re­sisted the temp­ta­tion to join the rul­ing party was Ab­di­razak Haji Hus­sein, who be­came, as one au­thor put it, “a rare ex­am­ple in the his­tory of democ­racy”.

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M. Trunji
 e-mail:trunji@yahoo.com