For years, Somalis learned to live with a painful political reality: election disagreements and manipulation. At both the federal and state levels, elections were often shaped by elite bargaining, manipulation, corruption, and closed-door settlements. Parliamentary seats were secured not by public choice but by elite influence. Yet despite all this, many Somalis, including myself, held one stubborn hope: the course would be corrected and that local government would be the place where the country’s democratic crisis could be repaired.

That hope was never naive. It was grounded in the simple reality that local governments are the institutions closest to the citizen. It is where people encounter public authority most directly: through service delivery, local dispute handling, taxation, accountability, and the everyday grievances that shape whether citizens trust public institutions or not. It’s for that reason that Somali reformers, including international donors, diaspora actors, and traditional leaders, invested heavily in the local governance initiative. District council formation, decentralisation, citizen engagement, strengthening accountability mechanisms, and service delivery support are not just mere technical interventions. They are part of a larger effort aimed to rebuild trust and legitimacy from the bottom up. Studies on Somali local governance have repeatedly shown that community-owned local institutions can reduce social and political friction, build citizen confidence, and create the first real building blocks of a democratic state.

That is why the current electoral cycle is so troubling. What we are now witnessing is the poisoned federal and state politics dripping down into the local level: the one tier of Somalia’s governance structures that still seemed capable of loosening the country from the elite chokehold and accountability paralysis. 

To understand why this matters, we must first understand how local government in south-central Somalia was established. These institutions did not emerge out of the blue. They were formed through painstaking processes of reconciliation, district council formation, clan power-sharing, and substantial donor support designed to revive and operationalise them. As someone who has been part of these efforts, I can say those arrangements were never perfect. Even after formation, local governments struggle with weak political and fiscal decentralisation, inadequate revenue sources, administrative fragility, and questions of trust and legitimacy. But for all their weaknesses, they represented something fundamental: the possibility of building democratic and locally embedded institutions that are better positioned to gradually link citizens to the state.

In the current disputed election cycle in Galmudug, public debate on elections is heavily focused on the state presidency and state parliament elections, and although local council elections are taking place simultaneously, they have largely slipped out of the media and public spotlight. This neglect is not only unfortunate; it is also dangerous. It leaves local council elections at the mercy of recycled gatekeepers and electoral party manipulation. In the current electoral model, voters are supposed to cast their votes directly for parties, but parties retain substantial control over candidate rankings and replacements. This kind of arrangement weakens the relationship between the voter’s choice and the individual they are electing. It also reduces the incentive for candidates to build rapport with their voters by presenting their manifesto and commitment to serve. If things go the way they are going, over time, these systems will produce councils that are formally elected but weakly accountable. 

Even more worrying is the lack of involvement of the social buffers that protect local institutions. Traditional elders play a central role in many district council formation processes. They lend legitimacy, mediate disputes, and help communities navigate political tensions. These arrangements are not democratic in a pure liberal sense, but they provide fragile institutions like ours with something indispensable: a backstop of social authority. My years of experience in Somalia’s local government taught me that while elders can be difficult actors, immediately excluding them without building alternative mediation channels can leave local governments exposed and socially isolated. When local institutions lose both local neutrality and citizen trust, they are left with little more than formal authority — and in fragile settings like Somalia, formal authority alone rarely governs much.  

The literature on Somali democratisation has long pointed toward gradualism: local participation, institutional reform, negotiated inclusion, and the careful expansion of democratic practice from the bottom up. ISS has argued that only a gradual and consensus-based process can reconcile Somalia’s competing political systems without reproducing crisis. That insight matters now more than ever. What is at stake is not just who wins a cycle of elections, but whether Somalia can still preserve a sphere that citizens can experience a meaningful, trusted, and socially grounded democracy.

That is why this moment deserves attention. Somalia is not just mishandling another election. It is squandering one of the last arenas where ordinary citizens could still plausibly believe that politics might one day belong to them. And if local government loses that democratic promise, the consequences will extend far beyond a single disputed cycle. They will be felt in the slow erosion of state-society trust, public legitimacy, and faith in the very idea that democratic reform in Somalia can still come from the ground up.  

Sadik Anod

Research Fellow