OP-ED: Hassan Sheikh’s Mobile Theater of Democracy is Eroding Political Order

Hassan Sheikh’s Mobile Theater of Democracy is Eroding Political Order

Somalia’s president, who was elected on May 15, 2022, completed his legal term on May 15 this year. Under his leadership, the country’s political culture has entered an unprecedented and increasingly drastic phase. National politics has taken on the peculiar character of what some Somalis describe as a mobile theater—tiyaatarka wareego—a performance that moves from one stage to another while the country’s deeper crises worsen.

Hassan Sheikh’s political theater began from state to state, where the rituals of democracy were assembled around outcomes that appeared increasingly predetermined. Galmudug State followed a fate similar to that of South-West State, with candidates, parties, electoral bodies, ballots and cameras providing the setting while political arrangements determined the script. Now the traveling performance has arrived at Villa Hargeisa, home to the House of the People, where Parliament’s term expired in April, while the regime continues to stage a speaker election as though the institution were still intact.

As this unconventional political performance unfolds, Hassan Sheikh has many cards to play, but they all serve the same daylight deception. His public admission that he often changes his position by the day and even by the hour appears intended to turn inconsistency into political flexibility, while the traveling political theater and party arrangements serve to cover a growing loss of personal credibility. In doing so, he overlooks the importance of personal integrity in building alliances and sustaining party-centered politics.

At its beginning, many perceived this culture as a mischievous attitude that would not last and would soon come to an end. That perception was reinforced by screenshots of WhatsApp messages showing crowded gatherings in Mogadishu attended by municipal workers who were threatened with jeopardizing their jobs if they did not participate. What initially appeared to be a political practice confined to the capital gradually moved beyond Mogadishu, eventually reaching Jubaland and Puntland, where political differences developed into direct and increasingly serious confrontation.

It was in December 2023 that Villa Somalia conducted a large-scale deployment of military personnel and logistical resources into Ras Kamboni in Jubaland State, an area where former President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo had previously chosen to wait until certain military conditions were met. Neither al-Shabaab fighters nor the complications of the terrain could easily exploit Farmaajo’s decision to leave the area untouched. Hassan, however, arrived with another theatrical performance, this time under the name of “registering defected Jubaland security forces” into the national forces. The drama did not last long. Young patriots in uniform soon confronted the consequences of a political calculation in which personal interests had placed brave national military personnel in a confrontation that ended in a defeat they had never experienced in their service.

The same political gamble resurfaced early this August, first in Galkayo on August 5 and the following day in Bosaso, where Puntland Security Forces (PSF) disarmed forces that Hassan Sheikh had been organizing as part of a strategy to destabilize Puntland. The move had been foreshadowed in July in a public Independence Day speech, when Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre spoke of intervening in Puntland to demand what he described as the PSF’s rights.

Behind this public defense of the PSF was the use of the Somali National Army to pursue a political objective, exposing national forces to confrontation and potential damage for personal political gains. The real injustice was the regime’s decision to expose the national army to such risks for political purposes, while pushing Puntland into another confrontation with fellow Somali.

Hassan Sheikh seems unable to leave any sphere of public life untouched. This week’s announcement of the Form Four and Grade Eight examination results in Mogadishu also seemed theatrical, as usual. Academics and education experts had received confidential reports from the municipality’s examination management indicating a crackdown that left many students facing widespread failure. The resulting failure was followed by mass evictions in Mogadishu, creating a shelter crisis on an industrial scale. Together, these challenges have priced students out of graduation and university enrollment, leaving a generation discouraged about its future and feeling mistreated by the state.

Scholars of state-building have often described such a style of governance as kleptocracy, essentially “rule by thieves”—a system that fails to protect its people.

Hassan Sheikh has been an actor throughout his term, playing what the history of Somali politics could scarcely have imagined as a mobile theater, moving the country from one political stage to another while the real crises remain unresolved. His unconventional theater of democracy has come at a high cost, eroding institutions, deepening political confrontation, and leaving citizens to bear the consequences. The curtain may eventually fall, but Somalia will have to live with what this performance has left behind.

Mohamed Ibrahimrashid is a political strategist, state-building researcher, and Senior Fellow at several think tanks and research institutions.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Garowe Online's editorial stance