Galmudug votes as all eleven districts open on time

DHUSAMAREB (SONNA): Voting is under way across Galmudug, after the Chairman of the National Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, Abdikarin Ahmed Hassan, formally opened polling in the state capital Dhusamareb this morning. The Chairman said all eleven districts taking part opened at seven, and that voting is proceeding in an orderly manner.

Voters across Galguduud and Mudug are electing local councils and representatives to the state parliament in a combined ballot. The Chairman said more than 200,000 people are registered, and eleven political associations are contesting. It is the second one person one vote election held in a Somali federal member state, following South West, and the third organised by the Commission after the Banaadir local elections.

Polling runs for twelve hours in a single day. The Chairman said voters may use either their permanent registration card or the temporary card issued in its place, and that any registered resident of Galmudug is entitled to vote today. In Dhusamareb, he said, voting is taking place at fourteen locations, ten of them inside the town and four in the surrounding area, with more than twenty thousand people registered in the district.

Addressing residents, the Chairman said the last time Somalis chose their leaders in this way was in 1969, and that the opportunity in front of them had been long in coming, built through registration, the issuing of cards and the work of the past months. He urged people to leave their homes, go to the nearest polling station and vote for the party or association of their choice, saying the process is peaceful and the choice is free.

Queues formed before stations opened. In Dhusamareb, men and women stood in separate lines outside a polling centre in the centre of the city. Reporting from there, Radio Mogadishu Director Abdifatah Jeyte said many of those waiting were preparing to vote for the first time in their lives.

In Abudwak, voters had gathered at the gate of a polling centre in the early hours, most of them women, seated on the ground waiting for the doors to open. In Bandiradley in Mudug, two lines formed outside a polling centre, among them elderly voters. In Guriel, correspondent Abdirahman Isse Qalad reported large numbers at polling centres in the minutes before voting began, with government officials registered in the district casting their ballots there and observers monitoring the process. Residents of Balanbale district in Galguduud turned out through the morning.

The scenes follow a gathering in Galkayo on the eve of the vote, where residents came together in the centre of the city. Several of those who spoke to SONNA said they had waited years for the chance to choose their own representatives. Asked what a first vote meant to him, one young resident said it meant as much to him as his own birthday.

The most striking feature of the day lies in where some of the voting is taking place. Among the districts and settlements taking part are areas liberated from Al-Shabaab within the past two years. Jeyte said those communities would not have had the opportunity now in front of them had the group remained in control, and that some of the most significant accounts of the day would come from them.

The Commission spent the days before the vote preparing the people who would staff and observe it. At a training session in Dhusamareb on Monday, it set out the duties of the agents of political associations, told participants that candidates are barred from serving as agents, and said each association may assign two agents to a polling station, who are to remain until counting is complete and are responsible for reporting their station’s figures. The Galmudug vote sits within a sequence the Commission has set out publicly, which began with the Banaadir local elections in December 2025, continued in South West, and is to run through Hirshabelle and Jubaland before direct elections to the Federal Parliament.

No turnout figures have been issued and results will come from the Commission when counting is complete. What the morning established is narrower and still substantial. Every district opened on schedule, people queued in places that were fought over until recently, and the machinery the Commission built for Mogadishu and Baidoa has been carried into a third state. Whether the day holds through counting is the question that remains, and it is the one the Commission and the people standing in those lines will answer between now and the declaration.