This comment reviews parts of the political debate on power sharing and war termination, in a peculiar state where an ancien regime is long gone 25 years ago. This touches on some key features of long-running peace-building that is now finally focused on actual power sharing as basis of state-building in Somalia. These remarks belie any belief in power sharing as a miracle formula, which is rare in failed states, particularly, in Africa, but bringing together different issues should only lead to further debate. What is meant by power sharing? Who has to share power with whom and who can still be excluded from equal sharing arrangement? A major point of contention in the following discussion centers around limited power seats reserved for certain marginalized clans and caste groups, while none of the four major groups are contesting or complaining about the allocated shares.

Defenders of power-sharing generally claim that ethnic groups could be integrated into institutional arrangements which would in turn guarantee a meaningful participation in political power. Observers of power-sharing arrangements as the core element of post-conflict peace frequently base their arguments on the work of the Dutch political scientist Arend Lijphart on consociational democracy.

They assert that power sharing would basically maintain a strategic distance from further secessions and convey more prolific answers for conflicts in plural social orders. The cases of ethnic and different parts of society could be coordinated into institutional courses of action which would thus ensure a significant support in political power. This would maintain a strategic alternative from all the more excessive options of a completely fledged war. "Spheres of autonomy" for the distinguished gatherings would be a necessity as would be proportional representation and some veto rights.

These inquiries are fundamental as power sharing can be constrained to just a certain ranges of administration, as power might be shared between an existing administration and just hand-picked rebel groups (as in Afghanistan), or as radical developments involving a stateless vacuum, comprising of a unbelievable environment of no peace, no war, where all political groups are in a state of generalized opposition to each other, and that typically the regular citizens are frequently forgotten.

In Somalia, where all of this is happening following a state collapse of over two decades ago, and that is bordered by a stable secessionist state, Somaliland, in what had been the northern regions, which complicates state-building in Somalia. In addition, Somali government operates under the shadow of international intervention directed against a deadly terror group, al-Shabab, who similar to the Taliban, is fighting for Islamic rule, and who is the main spoilers of the existing peace process, which they see as unjust and imposed from outside.

Distributing seats

What the 4.5 power-sharing means is about sharing power on the basis of 4 major clans (Hawiye, Dir, Darood and Digil-Mirifle) and a cluster of about six minor or marginalised groups (i.e., Gaaljecel, the Banadiris, the Somali Bantus, Gabooye/Baidari/Madhiban, Barawans, and Bajuni, etc). The total representation alloted to the latter groups will be equal to half the representation of the one of major clans, or namely 31 parliamentary seats. These seats are divided up among the minority clans (which includes both ethnic minorities like the Bantu "Jareer Weyn" and Bajuni and "livelihood" minorities who are considered caste groups, as explained in Clanship archives.

The Isaaq clan, notably, finally wasn't included as they don't reside in southern Somalia, but the Mogadishu's strategy, long pushed by the Darood and Dir clans, still called for including a handful of token representatives as a part of seats which are allocated to the Dir clan. More than anything else, this issue alone played a major role in the delay in moving negotiations from Sodere-Ethiopia, Arta-Djibouti, Mbagathi-Kenya, to the Baidua-Mogadishu conferences. For example, the current Deputy Prime Minister Mohamed Omer Ghalib and several other shenanigans were hand-picked to serve as the clowns of that mythic Dir-Isaaq representation. Somaliland government does not recognize their activities and representation, although recently, in an attempt to deprive Mogadishu's courtship with its former politicians, the government issued an amnestyto Somaliland politicians and clan chiefs now based in Somalia, although it is unlikely they will give up their political ambitions.

Back to the so-called 4.5 power sharing, in practice, the 4.5 system formed the foundational basis to the recent caucus-style elections of interim legislative bodies of federal Somalia, SW Somalia, Galmudug and Jubba states and the future Hiiraan and Middle Shabelle state. The political convention since 2000, when the Arta conference adopted the 4.5 power-sharing system, Somalia's two highest political offices, president and prime minister, have been held by only two Somali clans. In practice, this means that a Darood or Hawiye president must select a Darod or Hawiye prime minister. The remaining 2.5 (Dir,Digil and Mirifle and minority clans) have been excluded by the rotation convention. The logic follows that the speaker of parliament is to be conventionally held by a member of Digil Mirifle.

Unlike anywhere else, the assembly and cabinet representatives were based on clan membership. The National Constituent Assembly would consist of total of 135 representives, or 30 elders drawn from each of the country's four major Somali clans and 15 from a coalition of minority groups based on the 4.5 formula. This body is supposed to choose the first of 275 new legislators, who are tasked with electing the president, the speaker and two deputy speakers.

The 275 members of the parliament would consist of equal 61 members from each of the four major clans, while the remaining groups together received a total of thirty-one seats. In short, according to the transitional charter of 2012, the federal assembly would consist of eventual 275 member bicameral parliament, including of an upper house seating 54 members.

Notably, it also earmarked 30% of the National Constituent Assembly consisting of women in order to mitigate universal male domination in political leadership common in Somalia. This was based on the recommendations of the UN Beijingconference on women in 1995, which delegates called on, among many recommendations, all governments to have women represent 30% of their governments' ministers and of other appointed members in similar bodies.

Throughout Africa, women are less likely to become cabinet ministers or randomly appointed legislators where ethnic 'big men' incumbents use such appointments to build patronage-based alliances with politicians or 'ethnic patrons', who act as advocates for tribal constituencies - a role that women are often not well-placed to play as they are less suited to recruit supporters and deliver votes in order to ensure widespread support. Thus, sidelined into poltical cheerleading and supporting marginal political roles in ruling groups and holding a junior state functions, females have had limited chances to participate in the allocating of state resources and claiming definitive political credit for doing as such. Accordingly, women by and large do not have the traditional political followings expected to effectively negotiate themselves into bureau positions as ethnic benefactors.

Overall, the system produces a rough proportionality by dispensing with voting altogether: the random selection of representatives from the populace segments as once used in ancient Rome, known as sortition. Conversely, the more commonly used system of party-list proportional representation, is where political parties define candidate lists and voters vote for a list. The relative vote for each list thus determines how many candidates from each list are actually elected. This system, however, is not currently possible in Somalia as there are no political parties in existence.

The reason behind the voting for a party list in this sytem is that the delegate-based majority-rule government can't work appropriately without political parties. Political parties give the vehicle to the electorate to express their various interests and allegiances through vested parties and offering voters distinctive political choices. They likewise are key organizations for comprehensive investment and responsible representation, reacting and conveying to the requirements of the general population.

"Condemnation of the 4.5 arrangement"

In emerging public discourse, although there's total condemnation of this temporary system, and there's also a dearth of in-depth analysis, most of it happens to be negative. This paper offers a minority group's perspective lambasting the 4.5 formula for what they called it an apartheid system of representation. It fails, though, to point out how electing legislative assemblies and filling up cabinet posts using a fixed set of representatives from various groups could create a more segregated society. The society is already famously segregated enough along clan and sub-clan lines. And, for example, in the war-torn Iraq, the new legislative assemblies and the cabinet were allocated to party groups based on sectarian and ethnic memberships, like Sunis, Shites, Kurds, while certain seats were reserved for the marginalized groups, such as Turkeman, Yazidis, Assyrians and Chaldeans, etc.

As an illustration, as in the Oct 2005, a general election was held to elect the permanent 275-member Iraqi Council of representatives. The elections took place under a list system, whereby voters chose from a list of parties and coalitions. 230 seats were apportioned among Iraq's 18 governorates based on the number of registered voters. Throughout this process coming in the end of the civil war there, an increased social and public segregation was the least of Iraq's problems.

In addition, this account singles out that one clan family, the Digil-Mirifle, a diverse group of agro-pastoral-urban communities, was a main beneficiary as to have been elevated to a major clan status under the 4.5 formula. This is absurd in that, in a mainly pastoral society that endlessly highlights differences within a myriad groups structured along genealogies, how could some geographical cohesive unity within disparate groups be considered a bad thing? This particular and generally peaceful clan family consists of much amalgamated groups, who practice both the patrilineal cleavages as well as some stable and unique farming settlements and residential communities, where district-based representation could take root more easily.

Another piece characterized this arrangement as 'crude and simplistic' solution for a socially complex society. This formula is blamed entirely for the lack of emergence of cohesive political class representing the totality interests of various groups, although it was only during the Arta conference of 2000 that this formula was first discussed. What would be an alternative option to share power among social groups in a bitterly divided society?

The Somali political dilemma has many roots but it's also mainly about yearning for or demanding a 2 levels of representation at once: Individual level of voters casting their votes and that of social groups wanting to be represented along side all other groups -proportionality and balance- which seems to be the more important one. After all, the pervasive quest for group recognition is central pillar of the clan identity.

Beyond gaining of individual voting rights, or universal suffrage, how could social groups, who otherwise share basic commonalities like language, ethnicity and religion, as well as being proud of sharing a common Samaale tribal heritage, but, due to prolonged statelessness, are still organized as a separate and rival patrilineal-based clans and sub-clans, could share power after 25 years of war?

Also, how could measures of incremental democracy, however small and cosmetic, and within a particular clan culture, however large it's imagined to be, be mixed together, in an evolving fashion, in building of a working nation-state like those found throughout the rest of Africa?

Finally, is Somalia and its constituent states ready for one person, one vote system? That system of modern representation, meaning, at least legislatively, one based on district-based voting system, that of sending elected representatives to a local, regional and national assemblies is not currently feasible. It will take decades of community-building efforts and sustainable economic development for such a system of representation to take root.

In the meantime, regular and timely elections starting with electoral districts (also known as a constituency, ward, electoral area or electorate) which is a territorial subdivision for electing members to a legislative bodies ranging from village councils to regional and national parliaments, using any feasible and working formulas, will go long ways to entrench local community identities and residential group interests that would eventually overlap clan identities, which are socially fine and useful but politically problematic.

"Nominated Ministers and Their Clans" Source: Goobjoog Dated: January 28, 2015 Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid has named 20 new crop ministers last night, here we publish their names along with their clans. There are 4 major clans and half in the Somali power sharing system, they are Dir, Darod, Digil & Mirifle , Hawiye and Others (0.5) Dir 1.Mohamed Omar Arte : Deputy Prime Minister , Minister of Labor, Youth and Sports (Dir, Isak, Habar Awal) 2.Ahmed Hassan Gabobe : Minister of Justice and Religious Affairs (Dir , Biyomaal) 3. Abdisalan Hadliye Omar : Minister for Foreign Affairs (Dir, Godabiirse) 4. Noor Farah Hersi : Minister For Constitutional Affairs (Dir, Isak, Habar-Yonis) Hawiye 1. Abdirahman Mohamed Husen : Minister for Interior and Federal Affairs (Habar Gidir) 2.Abdirahman Yusuf Hussein Aynte : Minister of Planning and International Cooperation (Murusade) 3.Mohamed Moktar Ibrahim : Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources (Gal Je'el) 4.Abdirizak Omar Mohamed : Minister of Petroleum, Water and Natural Resources (Hawadle) Digil and Mirifle 1. Mohamed Adan Ibrahim (Fargeti) : Finance Minister (Rahanweyn, Disow) 2.Ali Hassan Osman : Minister for Agriculture (Rahan Weyn) 3. Hawo Hassan Mohamed : Health Minister (Rahanweyn, Hadamo) 4.Salah Sheikh Osman Mose : Minister of Public Works and Resettlement (Digil, Gelledi) Darod 1.Abdikadir Sheik Ali Dini : Defense Minister (Marehan) 2.Guled Hussein Kasim : Information and Telecommunication Minister (Ogaden) 3.Ali Ahmed Jama (Jangali) : Minister for Air Transport And Aviation (Dhulbahante) 4.Khadra Bashir Ali : Education Minister (Lelcase) Others 1.Hassan Ahmed Modey: Minister for Commence and Industry (Jarer Weyn) 2.Sahra Mohamed Ali Samatar : Minister for Women and Human Rights (Tumal) 3.Fahad Yasin Haji Dahir : Minister for Ports and Marine Transport (Rer Aw Hassan) 4.Saed Hussein Eid : Minister for Livestock, and Pasture (Meheri, Arab Salah)

The above article shows how the current government leader, PM Sharmarke, the fifth appointee to the post since the end of TFG government in 2012, has used the Prime Ministerial power of ministerial selection and portfolio allocation within the context of the 4.5 power-sharing. It consists of 20 members, whereby each of the major groups receiving four portfolios and shows that the four or five marginalized groups sharing four posts. In this context, above all other considerations, the president and his prime minister are using cabinet appointments to send a strong signal about what social groups they wish to prioritize or which issues they will give more prominence during their mandate, all based on the formula.

The second consideration is striking out a balance between cabinet post constraints and the power sharing expectations. Specifically, it shows the significance of his use of patronage in terms of not only proportionality (numbers), which is the main focus of the formula, but also about portfolio distribution or prestige within the cabinet and expectations in the future reshuffles (renegotiation of numbers and prestige).

Political observers are thus mainly left to consider political background and educational experiences important in regard to ministerial positions since the skills and abilities acquired within the previous political or professional careers might be transferred into the cabinet. With regards to educational level, ministers' degree is considered to matter in the type of portfolio which ministers are appointed, since education may shape ministers' skills, knowledge, and their performance in cabinet.

By M.Bali. Feb 17, 2017