184 97 55.93% 29.48% | 97 45 29.48% 13.80% | |
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Winner Mohamed Abdullahi | ||
The 2017 Somali presidential election was held in Somalia on 8 February. Parliamentarians elected in the autumn-2016 parliamentary election elected former Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed to the post of President of Somalia for a four-year term.
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The presidential election was to be held in August 2016 and promised to be a one-person, one-vote national poll, but had been postponed several times and shifted to an electoral college system due to security concerns. On 26 January 2017, the election was set for 8 February, with candidates required to register by 29 January. The election was held in an airport hangar at Aden Adde International Airport, Mogadishu.
Mohamed was declared president in a peaceful transition of power after incumbent President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud conceded defeat and congratulated the victor.
Security
Due to the ongoing civil war, security for the ballot was a significant concern. The vote was initially planned to be held at a Mogadishu police academy but was moved to the more secure Aden Adde International Airport, considered as the safest place in Somalia's Capital. On the voting day, traffic was banned in the city, schools were closed and flights to and from the airport were suspended.
Electoral system
In the previous presidential election in 2012, the president was elected by a parliament that had been picked by 135 elders. Plans in 2016–2017 for a full election involving all adult Somalis were scrapped due to security concerns relating to the ongoing civil war. The election costs were 60% funded by donor countries in Europe, the United States and Japan, with the remainder from the Somali government and candidate registration fees.
The president was elected by the 328 members of the Lower House and Upper House of the Somali parliament. The Parliament's members were elected in the 2016 parliamentary election which itself was limited to 14,025 clan elder-appointed delegates. The election's foreign financiers described the extension of the franchise as a "modest step forward".
The procedure for the election—a form of runoff voting—is outlined in section 89 of the Constitution of Somalia. There were over twenty registered candidates in the first round of voting.
Candidates
A total of 23 or 24 candidates declared themselves, though withdrawals—including that of Abdirahman Mohamed Farole—reduced the field to 21 by the time of the vote. The field included the incumbent President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, incumbent Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, former President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, and former Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed.
Results
No candidate achieved the required two-thirds of votes to win in the first round, so the top four candidates (Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, and Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke) advanced to the second round. Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke then dropped out, reducing the field to three candidates. No candidate reached the required threshold in the second round of voting, and third-place Ahmed was eliminated. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud conceded defeat, negating the need for a final vote.