Election talks stall as Deni and Ahmed Madobe seek formal guarantees

Efforts to bring the presidents of Puntland and Jubaland to Mogadishu for electoral talks have stalled, not over the principle of elections but over the guarantees Said Abdullahi Deni and Ahmed Madobe want written into any agreement.

Both leaders argue that previous understandings were reached with Villa Somalia and later set aside. Their demand is for commitments underwritten by international partners, with a mechanism that survives a change of mood in the capital.

The dispute is about enforcement

Somalia's electoral crises are rarely disagreements about whether a vote should happen. They are disagreements about who counts as a party to the agreement, what happens when one party defects, and who certifies that the terms were kept. An electoral timetable with no enforcement mechanism is a statement of intent by the incumbent.

That is why the guarantee question has become the negotiation itself. Written partner guarantees convert a political promise into an obligation with external witnesses; without them, the member states are being asked to accept the same structure that failed in previous cycles.

Why the calendar makes this urgent

The electoral dispute is running in the same months as the mission drawdown. Every district where the electoral model is contested is also a district where security responsibility is changing hands. Deadlock is therefore not a neutral holding position; it consumes the time in which both processes were supposed to be sequenced.

A settlement that addresses enforcement would also address the fiscal question sitting beneath it: which level of government collects revenue, pays police and administers districts during the vote. Those are the terms Puntland has demanded be settled constitutionally rather than politically.

Until they are, talks about talks remain the process, and the electoral calendar continues to shorten.