Hassan Sheikh Mohamud Is Staging a Coup Against Somalia's Courts

Somalia's president sacked the country's chief justice on 4 November. He did it without the two-thirds backing of the Supreme Judicial Council, without the approval of parliament, and without any constitutional procedure worth the name. Then he installed the former chief justice in the job. Think about what that means for a nation that has spent over three decades rebuilding its institutions from the ruins of civil war.

We have seen this script before. A leader who clings to power past his term does not announce it. He calls it a reform. He cites "complaints" and "administrative problems," and he dresses a power grab in the language of public service. Somalia's courts saw through it within 24 hours. The Supreme Court declared the dismissal void, ruling that the president could not remove a sitting chief justice on his own authority.

The court did not stop there. In its ruling of 5 November, it said Mohamud's mandate had expired on 15 May. Parliament and the federal cabinet, it said, had lost their legal standing on 14 April. Read that again. The judiciary has told the country that the highest executive office is occupied without a valid legal mandate. And the executive's response has been to remove the judge who said so.

Ask yourself the question every Somali should be asking. If a president can fire the judges who rule against him, what is left of the rule of law? What is left of the constitution, the parliament, the voter? Nothing. You are living under a man, not a system.

The stakes are not abstract. Somalia has endured decades of clan warfare, state collapse, and the terror of al-Shabaab. Every ordinary Somali understands what it costs when the state breaks down. Mothers have buried children after bombings in Mogadishu markets. Farmers have fled droughts with nothing but the clothes they wore. Students have studied under the shadow of gunfire. These people did not ask for a government that treats constitutional limits as optional. They asked for a government that protects them, and they deserve one that answers to them.

The Somali Future Council, an opposition coalition, has backed the Supreme Court's order for elections within 90 days. Mohamud has called political talks in Mogadishu, scheduled roughly a week after the court's ruling. We should be honest about what those talks can and cannot do. Talks are useful only if they are anchored to a binding, time-limited electoral timetable, independent electoral management, and the restoration of the courts' authority. Talks that become a bargaining table where the president trades time for loyalty are not negotiations. They are a delay tactic dressed up as diplomacy.

Foreign partners have a role here too, and it is time they played it honestly. Egypt's foreign minister recently reaffirmed his country's support for Somalia's "sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity" during Horn of Africa talks in Tripoli. Sovereignty is a fine word. But sovereignty belongs to the Somali people, not to whoever currently occupies the presidential palace. A foreign government that defends a leader's territorial claims while ignoring his assault on the courts is not defending Somalia. It is defending a patron relationship. The same is true of any capital, whether in Washington, Brussels, Ankara, Abu Dhabi, Doha, or Beijing, that embraces African governments without asking whether those governments respect their own constitutions. We are told that the West lectures Africa on democracy. Let us insist that every partner, Western or otherwise, applies the same standard. Democracy cannot be a line in the press release and an afterthought in the diplomatic cable.

So what must happen? First, the Supreme Court's authority must be restored in full. The two-thirds threshold and parliamentary approval requirements exist precisely to stop one man from remaking the judiciary to suit himself. Those guardrails are not obstacles to governance. They are the protection that ordinary citizens have against tyranny. Second, an electoral timetable must be set, with an independent electoral commission, transparent voter registration, and international observers who report honestly. Third, parliament and the cabinet must confront their own legitimacy questions openly, not hide behind the executive's convenience.

Africa has shown us that a better path exists. Botswana has built one of the continent's most durable democracies on the back of independent courts, a professional civil service, and a disciplined commitment to property rights and fiscal responsibility. Ghana handed power peacefully in 2024 after a bitterly contested election, with the defeated incumbent conceding the result. Senegal, in early 2024, saw President Macky Sall attempt to postpone a presidential election. The Constitutional Council blocked him, the vote went ahead, and the Senegalese people chose a new president. Those were not miracles. They were the product of institutions that refused to bend, citizens who refused to be silent, and courts that refused to fold.

Somalia can follow that path. It has the constitutional text, a court that has shown spine, and an opposition that has put its support behind the rule of law. What it needs now is for every Somali citizen to understand that the fight over the chief justice is not a fight among elites in Mogadishu. It is a fight over whether this country will be governed by rules that bind the powerful or by the whims of the person holding the keys.

So here is what we demand. We demand that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud reinstate Chief Justice Bashe Yusuf Ahmed and respect the Supreme Court's ruling. We demand a binding election date within the 90-day window, not another open-ended promise. We demand that the African Union and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the regional body the Horn of Africa has built for exactly this kind of crisis, speak plainly and publicly in defense of constitutional order. We demand that Somali civil society, lawyers, journalists, business leaders, and religious leaders stand together and insist that the courts are not a bargaining chip. And we demand that every Somali who believes in a republic, not a dynasty, make their voice heard at home, in the press, and at the ballot box when it comes.

The court has spoken. The question now is whether Somalia will listen.

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL