The regime gerrymandered constituencies and pressured officials to rig Somalia’s 1969 election

Evidence

In the meantime Hussen was busy trying to file the party’s lists in Garowe, Galkayo, and Mogadishu. He went to Garowe, his old district, where local opinion makers supported him. He knew that the government had posted a new district commissioner and police commissioner in town to challenge DAP’s list. However, Hussen had a number of officers who kept him informed about what schemes the government had. Among them were a Hammari (an old resident of Hamar, or Mogadishu) regional judge based in Bossasso, a policeman who worked in the finance department, and another policeman. These individuals watched the process carefully without any favor to anyone, and when they saw illegal behavior on the part of the authorities they alerted Hussen. Despite the intimidation, Hussen took his party’s list to the district office, accompanied by a large crowd. The district commissioner could not find any problem with the application and had to submit it to Mogadishu. It pleased Hussen that the last newscast of the day from Radio Mogadishu announced that the DAP had successfully filed election papers. He then immediately went to Galkayo to do the same and then to Mogadishu. Galkayo used to have four parliamentary seats, but the government decided to move two of those seats to Jariiban, where the minister of Interior who authorized the transfer of the two seats also ran unopposed. The new governor of the region, Bille Musa, had grown up in a church mission and was first appointed to a governorship by Hussen. Bille Musa was a relative of the Somali president, and the regime had confidence in him when they transferred him to this region. Unfortunately for the regime, Bille had a lot of respect for Hussen and sent a message to him that he was under tremendous political pressure to rig the system but that he would not be happy to see Hussen wronged. The two men never met during this time, but Hussen sent a message to him requesting that he only uphold the law. The DAP submitted its papers to the district office, and it took two days for Radio Mogadishu to report the event. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 1019

Categorization

• XREF: Quiet official Bille Musa ‘uphold law only’ resonates with patterns in other sampled post-colonial electoral histories.