Opposition to the 1961 constitution was driven by patronage disputes, not charter content.

Evidence

The dissidents assumed that if voters turned down the constitution, then the government would be discredited, and as a result, they could sail to power. Thus, their campaign was about portfolios in government rather than the substance of the draft constitution. Unfortunately, however, they politicized kin identity to such an extent that it enabled them to mobilize substantial proportions of their respective genealogical groups to oppose the constitution. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 586

Categorization

• XREF: Politicized genealogy as a mobilization tool echoes clan-based factionalism recurring throughout the reader’s Somali democracy research.