Rigged elections and corruption provoked the 1969 murder and military coup

Evidence

Moreover, civil service reform was set aside and then overturned. Corruption flourished and the professional independence of the judiciary and civil service were fundamentally compromised. Finally, short of abolishing the constitution and disbanding parliament, the regime strove, in some instances successfully, to reverse democratic gains made in the previous seven years. The absence of a serious political agenda to focus the attention of the population, the proliferation of corrupt practices, and the rigging of the 1969 parliamentary election precipitated the murder of the president. Just when the regime was on the cusp of turning the country into a single-party state, the military staged a coup that dropped the curtain on the third republic and foreclosed any prospects for a return to democracy for decades to come. Herein lies the beginning of the wrong political turn in the country’s history. The rise of sectarian, authoritarian, and deeply corrupt political leaders has been the source of all the mayhem rather than some deep-seated traditional tribalism. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 1093

Categorization

• SEED: The claim that corruption and rigging, not tribalism, caused Somalia’s collapse is a strong corrective essay angle against conventional tribalist explanations.