Somalia: Presidential Elections - Six Ways to Win Power

ANALYSIS by Abdi Aynte - After 12 years of feeble transitional governments, Somalia is slated to have a permanent administration that theoretically will be able to borrow money from the World Bank, sign binding bilateral treaties and buy weapons from the world markets - some of the many things transitional governments were unable to do.

Editorial Keydmedia Online
3 July 2012

If it all goes according to plan, 135 clan elders who represent a convoluted power-distribution model that arbitrarily compartmentalizes Somalis into four and half clans, will select 225 members to the new parliament sometime in July. The new MPs will in turn elect a speaker and his deputies on August 4, and a president on August 20.

More than 60 men have declared their candidacy for the top job, but fewer than a handful stand a realistic chance to becoming the 8th president of the Somali Republic, since independence in 1960.

And even among the few who are considered front-runners, they