The SYL won 83 of 90 seats in Somalia’s 1959 assembly election.

Evidence

The results of the assembly election were announced on March 11, 1959, and the SYL was victorious, claiming eighty-three of the ninety assembly seats. The SYL dominated the election partly because some opposition parties boycotted the election and HDMS and Liberale fielded candidates in only a small number of districts. Further, SYL candidates ran unopposed in many districts because other parties did not have the organizational capacity or resources to even register their candidates. HDMS, the main opposition party, was confined to Upper Juba, and even there the SYL had the edge. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 379

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in charting Somalia’s democratic history before 1960 — this is the eve-of-independence electoral landscape.