Unblocking Somalia’s Federal Arrangements

Mogadishu, SOMALIA: Over the past four years, the federal arrangement in Somalia has been dysfunctional, uncooperative and invariably confrontational. Instead of being a magic wand for resolving or mitigating the country’s prolonged political divisions, communal grievances and misrule, federalism has become a new spectrum for political wrestling with limited progress.

Consequently, compromise and consensus within a constitutional order has been replaced by antagonistic politics. Inter-governmental relations have worsened.

The central government has been accused of undoing the skeletal arrangement of federalism in a bid to usurp power and install its allies as presidents of the federal member states. Where it failed to unseat regional presidents, Mogadishu has branded opponents as enemies of the state.

Meanwhile, federal member states such as Puntland and Jubbaland have presented the federal government as a bogeyman that is determined to snatch political authority from the member states.

Independent and formal federal institutions have not evolved to mediate the political infighting. This is why there has not been a meaningful push for power redistribution in the country’s federal context both at the national and regional levels.

The overly confrontational practice of politics has created an overly hostile political climate which is an unconducive environment for meaningful negotiations on the implementation of federalism as well as being para-constitutional and arbitrary.

With no constitutional mechanism in place and no independent federal institutions to lubricate political frictions, six antagonistic political actors have taken over the federalism project. They are President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo and the five regional leaders. Their actions are often interest-driven, self-centred and highly personalized rather than systematic, debated and decentralized.

In practical terms, the continuous political infighting has narrowed the space for stakeholder participation in the federalism project. As one former regional president explained, federalism “has no wheels to move forward”. The essence of federalism is deeply misunderstood and its progress is blocked.

Ironically, over the past two years, there has been a steady increase in expressions of support among the political elites for federalism as a system of governance in Somalia. These elites that were previously perceived as anti-federalists have become its vehement defenders.