GAROWE (Halbeeg News) – Preparations to hold the election of a parliamentary seat is underway in Garowe, the administrative capital of Puntland State.
The seat was vacated by Dahar Ali Farah, who resigned from the post after he was appointed as Somalia’s consul in Djibouti.
Security of the polling station was beefed up as 51 delegates electing the new member of the parliament have been readied, according to Somalia’s National Independent Electoral Commission (NIEC).
Mohamud Abdullahi Mohamed and Jamal Mohamed Hassan who is Somali minister for Planning, are the potential candidates who were registered by the poll agency to participate the election of the parliamentary seat scheduled to take place today.
The country has relied on a clan-based formula in which the lawmakers were selected by the clan delegates and then the legislators elect the president.
The electoral college system was instituted in 2016 whereby over 135 clan elders chose 14,025 delegates who then voted for each of the 275 seats in the lower house of parliament, distributed according to the clan system.
Since 2004 Somalia has held three polls. But regular Somalis are yet to cast any ballots.
Somali government initiatives to hold universal suffrage in 2020 for the first in over 52 years.
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