Sharmarkee won the first presidential ballot by sixty-three votes to Osman’s fifty-seven.

Evidence

It took nearly two hours to go through three ballots, as neither candidate won a two-thirds majority in the first vote. In the first round of voting, Sharmarkee received sixty-three votes and Osman fiftyseven, with three illegible ballots annulled. The six-vote difference between the two candidates was accounted for by the four ministers who had escaped justice in parliament and a few of Hussen’s ministers who betrayed their own government. In the end Juujo voted for Sharmarkee and was appointed minister in the Egal regime, only to be unceremoniously fired shortly thereafter while he was on an overseas trip. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 941

Categorization

• QUESTION: The passage notes Hussen’s own ministers betrayed their prime minister; worth checking the earlier chapter text on who these ministers were and what motivated the betrayal.