By Ismail H. Warsame
WARSAME POLICY & MEDIA NETWORK (WAPMEN)
Critical Analysis, Commentary and Political Satire
Somalia has become a strange republic where leaders whose mandates expire do not leave office — they squat in power like tenants refusing eviction after the lease expired years ago. In functioning nations, the expiration of a constitutional mandate is a solemn legal and political event. In Somalia, it has become a comedy of arrogance, manipulation, tribal mobilization, and naked appetite for power.
This disease has infected both the Federal Government and Federal Member States alike.
Any Somali leader who knowingly stays in office after the expiration of their constitutional mandate without broad political consensus, lawful extension, or credible electoral transition has committed a grave betrayal of the nation. It is a political fraud against the Somali people. It is constitutional sabotage. It is a national disgrace masquerading as leadership.
The tragedy is not merely that this has happened once. It has become normalized.
Somalis now watch presidents, prime ministers, state leaders, speakers, and parliamentarians overstay their legal terms while continuing to issue decrees, appoint officials, loot public resources, sign contracts, intimidate opponents, and pretend legitimacy still exists. They behave like constitutional corpses still walking among the living.
The Somali political class has invented a dangerous doctrine: “Power first, legality later.”
Under this toxic doctrine, elections become optional, constitutions become decorative documents, and mandates become elastic chewing gum stretched endlessly according to personal ambition.
Both Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo stand accused in the court of political history of normalizing this reckless culture of mandate extension, constitutional manipulation, and governance through uncertainty. One cannot condemn one while glorifying the other. The disease is bipartisan. The infection is systemic.
And let us not pretend Federal Member State leaders are innocent victims watching from the sidelines.
Many regional leaders who lecture Mogadishu about constitutionalism often perform the same circus in their own administrations. They denounce overreach at the federal level while extending their own mandates quietly at home through manufactured crises, captive parliaments, clan calculations, and choreographed “consultations.”
What hypocrisy!
A leader whose mandate expired but still clings to office is not defending stability. He is defending privilege. He is defending access to contracts, patronage networks, foreign travel, diplomatic immunity, security convoys, and state coffers.
The slogan is always the same: “We cannot create instability.”
But Somalia’s instability is precisely born from leaders refusing peaceful and constitutional transfers of power.
The irony is devastating. Somali politicians endlessly preach democracy while fearing elections. They praise constitutions while violating them. They invoke patriotism while undermining the very institutions that make nations survive.
A government without a valid mandate becomes morally weak, politically illegitimate, and strategically dangerous. Such a regime enters what constitutional scholars call a “lame-duck” period. Its role should be limited to routine administration and facilitating transition — not constitutional rewriting, political intimidation, major resource deals, or security manipulation.
Yet Somali leaders behave differently.
Once mandates expire, some become even more aggressive — as if the ticking constitutional clock drives them into panic mode. They weaponize state institutions, silence critics, distribute public money to loyalists, and attempt to reshape the political landscape before legitimacy completely evaporates.
It becomes less governance and more survival politics.
Somalia’s greatest crisis today is not merely terrorism, poverty, or foreign interference. It is the collapse of constitutional culture. The country suffers from leaders who believe the state belongs to them personally rather than temporarily entrusted to them by the people.
That mentality is the true national security threat.
No republic can survive if every election cycle becomes a constitutional hostage crisis.
No federation can function if mandates are treated as suggestions instead of binding legal limits.
No society can mature politically when leaders refuse to leave office honorably.
Power is not private property. The presidency is not inheritance. Public office is not a family business. The state is not a personal farm.
Somalia cannot build democratic legitimacy on expired mandates and political improvisation.
The nation must establish a new political doctrine: When the mandate ends, power ends.
Anything else is organized constitutional fraud.
And history is merciless toward leaders who confuse temporary authority with permanent ownership of the state.
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