The country has engulfed in a political crisis caused by long-running disagreements over delayed elections. Somalia’s elections follow a complex indirect model, whereby state legislatures and clan delegates pick lawmakers for the national parliament, who in turn choose the president.
Voting for the upper house concluded last year, while clan delegates have so far elected around 40 percent of the 275 MPs who sit in the lower house. Somalia’s President, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, and Prime minister Mohamed Hussein Roble have been at loggerheads over the process
The electoral impasse has worried Somalia’s backers, who fear it distracts from the battle against Al-Shabaab, the Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group which has been fighting the central government for over a decade.
