Baidoa (Somalia Today) – The Justice and Solidarity Party has won a commanding majority in South West State elections, officials said Thursday, giving it a strong position in a regional transition unfolding amid Somalia’s deepening national election dispute.
The National Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission said JSP secured 51 of the 95 seats in the South West House of Representatives after voting took place across 13 districts.
The NPU won 14 seats, Karaama 11, SINCAD six and Tiir three. Smaller political associations won single seats, while others failed to gain representation.
Commission chairman Abdikarim Ahmed Hassan said 32 political associations contested the parliamentary vote, with about 132,430 people who had collected voter cards taking part.
The commission also announced results for local council elections in the same 13 districts, where 32 associations competed for 297 seats.
JSP majority
Residents in Bay, Bakool and Lower Shabelle voted for members of the regional legislature and district councils under Somalia’s expanding one-person, one-vote programme.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud hailed the South West polls as “a new chapter in Somalia’s history”, saying voters in 13 districts had exercised their democratic right “to elect local councils and representatives of the South West State administration”.
“As we speak near the end of the day, no major security threats or disruptions have occurred, and people continue to stand in long queues to vote,” Mohamud said, praising security forces for protecting the process from “Al-Shabaab militants and other anti-state actors”.
The result gives JSP a decisive advantage ahead of South West State’s presidential election.
The party last month named federal parliament speaker Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe as its candidate, with party officials saying they had come to Baidoa “to announce that the JSP candidate for the South West presidency is Aden Madobe”.
It remains unclear whether rival associations and regional powerbrokers will accept the outcome.
Before officials announced the results, presidential contender Ilyaas Ali Nuur warned he would reject any result he believed had been manipulated.
“Should the South West election results not align with our expectations, we will withdraw and disassociate ourselves from the outcome,” Nuur said.
Former parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden also warned against fraud.
“We cannot accept the outcomes or any vote tampering,” he said. “Nevertheless, if the election results are confirmed as authentic, we will collaborate with the elected individual.”
South West has also become an important testing ground for the federal government’s direct election agenda, which Villa Somalia says will help move the country away from the indirect clan-based system used for more than two decades.
National dispute
The vote comes at a highly sensitive moment in Somalia’s political calendar.
Opposition leaders say Mohamud’s four-year mandate expires on May 15 unless the country holds elections or reaches a consensual political arrangement.
The Somali Future Council, an opposition alliance that includes Jubaland, Puntland and other political figures, has rejected the government’s electoral course and accused Villa Somalia of using direct elections to extend its grip on power.
“The President’s term officially terminates on May 15, 2026,” the council said in a recent statement. “Beyond that date, there will be no legal foundation for him to continue in office without an election based on consensus.”
The federal government rejects that argument.
It says that constitutional amendments approved in March extended federal terms from 4 to 5 years and created a legal basis for delaying national elections while Somalia shifts from indirect selection to direct parliamentary voting.
Analysts remain divided over whether the amendments automatically extend the president’s mandate or only create a framework for the next electoral cycle.
Somalia has long chosen lawmakers and presidents through indirect clan-based bargaining, a system adopted because of insecurity, weak institutions and the presence of Al-Shabaab across large parts of the country.
The government says recent direct votes in Mogadishu and South West show the country can introduce universal suffrage in phases.
But opposition leaders, Jubaland and Puntland, say the process lacks national consensus and risks deepening Somalia’s fragile federal crisis at a time when the country already faces security threats, constitutional disputes and unresolved election deadlines.
