Baidoa (Somalia Today) – Somalia’s national electoral commission said on Monday that South West State will hold one-person, one-vote elections on April 28.
The move makes the federal member state, recently taken over by federal forces, the first regional administration where Mogadishu will try to put its disputed electoral reforms into practice.
Abdikarim Ahmed Hassan, chairman of the Independent National Electoral and Boundaries Commission, announced the date in Baidoa, the interim regional capital.
He spoke at a press conference after meeting interim regional leader Jibril Abdirashid Haji at the presidential palace.
Hassan said the commission had extended voter registration to give residents more time to sign up before polling day.
“We assure the public that April 28 is the official date on which the one-person, one-vote election in South West will begin,” Hassan said.
Democratic drive
The combined poll will elect both district councils and the regional assembly.
It marks a major step in President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s drive to replace Somalia’s decades-old, clan-based indirect voting system with universal suffrage.
The commission and the interim administration said their Baidoa talks focused on ensuring a transparent electoral process after the collapse of the previous South West leadership.
The announcement came barely a week after federal troops entered Baidoa and South West leader Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed, known as Laftagareen, resigned.
That confrontation turned the region into the sharpest front in Somalia’s widening constitutional crisis.
Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre later appointed Jibril as interim leader, while parliamentary speaker Sheikh Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe promised a reconciliation conference followed by elections accepted by the people of South West.
Political reset
Mohamud has moved quickly to give political weight to the transition.
The president travelled to Baidoa last week to meet traditional elders and publicly backed South West as the first federal member state where one-person, one-vote elections would be rolled out.
The message from Mogadishu is clear: the federal government intends to turn its military victory into a political reset.
That makes South West a test case with consequences far beyond Baidoa.
Parliament approved constitutional changes last month that critics warn could extend Mohamud’s term by a year and delay broader elections, though the precise legal implications remain disputed.
The president defends the reforms as overdue steps towards direct democracy, but opposition figures and regional leaders say they lack the broad consensus required in Somalia’s fragile federal system.
Analysts have also warned that elections due by mid-May are under-prepared and likely to slip because there is still no agreed national framework.
The clash in South West grew directly out of that dispute.
The state suspended all cooperation with Mogadishu in March, accusing the federal government of arming militias to unseat Laftagareen.
The row halted commercial flights between Mogadishu and Baidoa, though humanitarian operations continued in a city that serves as a vital aid hub.
Election test
For Mogadishu, pressing ahead with an April 28 vote offers a chance to prove its universal suffrage project is no longer theoretical.
Somalia has not held direct national elections since 1969, shortly before a military coup that eventually led to state collapse in 1991.
The federal government has already tried to establish a precedent, holding district council elections in Mogadishu in December.
But what the government calls democratisation, critics see as an attempt to impose reform without broad agreement.
Analysts warn the federal takeover of Baidoa could make a broader national election agreement harder to reach, even if it handed Mohamud an immediate political win.
They argue the move is likely to further alarm semi-autonomous states like Puntland and Jubaland, whose leaders already accuse the centre of imposing change rather than negotiating it.
By setting a swift date in South West, the commission is signalling that Mogadishu intends to press ahead even without a wider political settlement.
If the election proceeds smoothly, Mohamud can argue that direct politics can work outside the capital and that regional resistance reflects political opposition.
But if it falters, or if major local actors boycott the process, the vote could reinforce accusations that the central government is rewriting Somalia’s political order without the consensus needed to keep the federal system intact.
While South West now has an election date, observers note that Somalia as a whole still lacks a national consensus on its democratic future.
