DHUSAMAREB, SOMALIA – The 89 members of Galmudug’s new assembly are due to choose the state’s president on Thursday 22 October from two candidates, Liibaan Ahmed Hassan of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s Justice and Solidarity Party and Abdulkadir Abdullahi Diriye Adawe of Sincad, after the electoral commission registered both tickets on Tuesday 20 October. The ruling party holds 67 of those seats and Sincad holds seven, and on Sunday 18 October the party’s candidate for Speaker took 79 votes. Liibaan Ahmed Hassan, known as Liibaan Shuluq, has carried President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s endorsement for the Galmudug presidency since May, and by his party’s account he was deputy chairman of the federal body that ran the indirect elections of 2022. A day before the tickets were registered, the Supreme Court certified a Hirshabelle result that gives the same party 78 of 99 seats.
Two Tickets and Eighty-Nine Votes
The commission registered four names in all, two for president and two for vice president, and the ruling party completed its ticket the same Tuesday. Senator Abdiweli Ibrahim Garyare received the party’s candidacy card for vice president at its Mogadishu headquarters after the executive committee chose him by majority vote, before ministers, members of parliament and party officials. Sincad entered a running mate of its own for the vice presidency. Under the state’s arrangement the assembly elects both posts, and the assembly itself was filled in the rerun of 30 September, when the ruling party took 110,072 of 146,374 valid votes and 67 seats.
Sincad won 10,895 votes and seven seats in the same rerun, Karaama won six, Madalsan and Ramaas took two each, and five other organisations took one seat apiece. On Sunday 18 October the ruling party’s Hussein Mohamed Nur Mohamed won the Speaker’s chair with 79 votes against Sincad’s Ismail Abdi Jimale Alasow, twelve votes more than his party’s own seats. The two deputy speakers, Abdulkadir Ahmed Ali Quri and Mursal Abdi Adan Elmi, both from the same party, were elected unopposed by a show of hands with 87 votes each.
Towfiiq, the party that came second in the voided July count with 12 seats and brought the petition that overturned it, holds no seat in the new assembly. The commission said Towfiiq missed the deadline for submitting candidates for the rerun, while the party said it was ready to take part and that the commission already held its candidate information. Its repeated requests that the decision be reversed were refused, and it did not contest the September vote.
Abdulkadir Abdullahi Diriye Adawe was nominated by Sincad at a gathering in Dhusamareb on Friday 17 July, before officials of the Galmudug administration, federal representatives and traditional elders. He promised reconciliation between the communities of Galgaduud and Mudug and said, “We want to build an inclusive administration that listens to the people.” Liibaan Ahmed Hassan received his commission certificate on Tuesday ahead of Thursday’s vote, and he is expected to win it.
Liibaan Ahmed Hassan, the President’s Choice Since May
On 23 May President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud gave Liibaan Ahmed Hassan his exclusive endorsement for the Galmudug presidency, at a time when the sitting president, Ahmed Abdi Karie Qoorqoor, wanted a second term. Within days the president was reported to be in open dispute with Mahad Salad, director of the National Intelligence and Security Agency, who wanted the seat for himself and was told to back the party’s candidate or face dismissal. Mahad Salad answered with three conditions: his own endorsement, an end to federal efforts to remove Qoorqoor, or a free and inclusive election. He had already resigned from the agency once, in 2024, to pursue the same presidency, and the cabinet reinstated him as its director on 31 May 2025.
Qoorqoor announced in Dhusamareb at the end of June, after talks with federal officials, that he would not seek re-election. “I have decided to withdraw from the current electoral process and step aside,” he said, adding that he would serve until the process ended. The ruling party handed Liibaan Ahmed Hassan its nomination certificate at its Mogadishu headquarters on 28 June, after an executive committee vote, with Deputy Prime Minister Salah Jama, the party’s deputy chairman, speaking at the ceremony, and party insiders said Mahad Salad had stepped aside by then.
The party’s own account of its candidate lists service in the Galmudug administration from 2014 to 2020, a part in operations that recovered Wisil, Xarardheere, Ceeldheer and Masagawaay from al-Shabaab, drought relief and the deputy chairmanship of the federal electoral body in 2022. On 16 June the Galmudug government accused the chairman of the National Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, Abdikarim Ahmed Hassan, of campaigning for Liibaan Ahmed Hassan, whom a December 2023 profile described as a former militia commander from south Galkayo with ties to the khat trade committees. In remarks published on 21 June, Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, leader of the Wadajir Party, described the contest as “one person, one gun”.
A Court That Voided One Vote and Signed Another
Galmudug’s first direct vote, on 30 July, gave the ruling party 63 seats and Towfiiq 12, and on 24 August the Supreme Court annulled the whole result. Chief Justice Bashe Yusuf Ahmed said the parliamentary and local council elections held together that day “were not administered or conducted in accordance with the constitution and electoral law.” The July count had recorded 215,860 registered voters across Galgaduud and Mudug, and the judges held that its defects had reached the declared results and could not be cured. Liibaan Ahmed Hassan, who had opposed the ruling at first, accepted it by 27 August and urged voters to “come out again and vote in even greater numbers”. The court ordered a rerun without setting a date, and it left the commission whose vote it had voided in charge of the replacement.
The rerun took place on 30 September in eleven districts of Mudug and Galgaduud, on the same day as Hirshabelle’s first direct regional vote, and the ruling party won 67 of the 89 seats. Fewer people voted in September than in July: 149,475 ballots were cast in the rerun, against more than 190,000 valid votes in the count the court threw out. In Hirshabelle the party won 78 of 99 seats with 88,130 of 112,451 valid votes, and Karaama and Iftiin Qaran followed with six and five seats.
On Monday 19 October the Supreme Court gave final approval to the Hirshabelle result at the commission’s request, on the ground that no complaint had been filed against the figures declared on 30 September, and it cited Article 73 of the national elections law of 23 November 2024. The party has renominated President Ali Abdullahi Hussein Gudlawe, with the former Hiiraan governor Abdifatah Hassan Afrah as his running mate. Vice President Yusuf Ahmed Hagar Dabageed and Hawadle traditional leaders objected that the presidency should rotate to Hiiraan under the 2016 power-sharing arrangement, and the commission has set no date for that assembly’s vote.
Galkayo, Baidoa and the Seats in Between
Speaking in Galkayo on 27 September, Liibaan Ahmed Hassan said, “We will pursue peaceful reconciliation in Galmudug. The first place where peace will be established will be Gaalkayo.” He spoke three days before the rerun, at a public gathering in the southern half of the city, which Galmudug administers. He proposed that the two administrations governing the city cooperate on security and on the problems residents face, and he pledged that those accused of killing would not be allowed to stay in Galmudug without consequence. Puntland administers the northern half of Galkayo and has taken no part in the federal electoral process since rejecting the constitutional amendments of March 2024 as decisions the federal parliament could not take alone.
South West State went through the same sequence first. Federal forces entered Baidoa on 30 March, the sitting president, Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen, resigned within hours, and a managed assembly vote on 10 May, certified by the Supreme Court on 25 May, preceded the 10 June election of Villa Somalia’s candidate, President Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe. By Saturday 17 October the Darawish loyal to former President Laftagareen held Qansaxdheere, Buurhakaba, Bardaale, Diinsoor and Awdiinle, every district of Bay except Baidoa, and President Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe spent the following days in Mogadishu.
The electoral commission’s chairman said on Saturday 17 October that seats won in Karaan, Galkayo or Baidoa can stand for areas that hold no vote, because the 2027 federal elections will run as a single national constituency. On Tuesday 20 October the Future Council, which joins the Puntland and Jubaland administrations with opposition leaders and federal lawmakers, rejected the timetable for both chambers and the presidency and said it would take “further constitutional and political measures” if President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud pressed ahead. Its members are expected to meet in Nairobi in the coming days. On Thursday, in Dhusamareb, an assembly in which the president’s party holds 67 seats is due to choose between Liibaan Ahmed Hassan and the candidate of a party that holds seven.
