The government packed the Supreme Court to suppress election fraud appeals.

Evidence

Immediately after election results were released, a storm of petitioners claiming fraud flooded the Supreme Court, asking it to reexamine seats claimed by the SYL. Similarly, the DAP launched appeals to the court for the seats in Garowe. Unfortunately for the petitioners, the government anticipated this and had packed the Supreme Court with its supporters. The president of the court, Abdirahman Sheikh Ali, dismissed all the petitions, leaving the opposition without any options. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 1023

Categorization

• XREF: A key causal step in the story of how Somalia’s democratic institutions were captured before the 1969 coup.