Somalia elects Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as new president | News

The field of candidates has been whittled down from a long list that featured 36 names in the first round of voting.

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has been chosen as Somalia’s new president, five years after being voted out of the presidency, according to news reports.

Mohamud won the presidency for a second time following a long-overdue election on Sunday in the troubled Horn of Africa nation.

After a marathon poll involving 36 candidates that was broadcast live on state TV, parliamentary officials counted over 165 votes in favour of former president Mohamud, more than the number required to defeat the incumbent President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed.

The field of candidates has been whittled down from a long list that featured 36 names in the first round of voting.

Somalia has not held a one-person, one-vote election in 50 years. Instead, polls follow a complex indirect model, whereby state legislatures and clan delegates pick lawmakers for the national parliament, who in turn choose the president. The third round of voting was decided by 328 legislators, and a simple majority was enough to choose a winner.

Analysts had predicted that incumbent President Mohamed – who also is known as Farmaajo because of his appetite for Italian cheese -would face an uphill battle to be re-elected. No sitting president has ever won re-election in Somalia, where rival clans battle intensely for political power.

While Mohamed had made it to the third and final round, he was expected to face a strong challenge from the previous president, Mohamud.

Legislators chose the country’s next president in the capital, Mogadishu, which was under lockdown measures aimed at preventing deadly rebel attacks.