Somali election starts in Kenya

2004-10-10 14:20

Nairobi - Somali members of parliament on Sunday began the process of electing a new president for their anarchic Horn of Africa state at a ceremony in the Kenyan capital.

The election process, held in Kenya because of inadequate security in Somalia itself, began with a speech from the speaker of Somalia's newly formed national assembly at a packed sports stadium on the outskirts of Nairobi.

Twenty-eight candidates are running for president.

They include Abdulkassim Salat Hassan, who was elected president of Somalia's Transitional National Government in 2000 by a previous legislature, but who never managed to exert authority far beyond a few pockets of the battle-scarred capital.

The incoming president is immediately to appoint a prime minister, whose government will be the fourth of its kind to be set up outside Somalia by peace conferences since 1991, when the country's last central government, led by dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, was toppled.

The election is the culmination of two difficult years of talks in Kenya, which differed from previous negotiations in that they included most of the warlords who have battled for control of parts of Somalia since Barre's fall.

Since under power-sharing deals the jobs of president and prime minister must be distributed between two of Somalia's four largest clans, the Hawiye and Darod, there are clear frontrunners in the race for the head of state.

As well as Salat (Hawiye), they are Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed (Darod), the current president of Puntland, a semi-autonomous state in the northeast, and former finance minister Abdullahi Mohamud Addow (Hawiye).

The 275 MPs will cast their votes by secret ballot. In the likely event of no candidate winning more than two-thirds of the ballot, the top six runners will go to a second round. If none secures a two-thirds majority, the two leading candidates will face off in a third round, on a simple majority basis.

- AFP