HirShabelle State announces start of Lower House Elections

Voting for the 37 seats in the House of the People allocated to HirShabelle state will begin on Wednesday.

The State-level Indirect Electoral Implementation Team (SIEIT) announced that 13 of the seats will be decided during the first phase of voting for the House of the People.

“We are in our third day of preparations for the electoral process,” said SIEIT Spokesperson Osman Baarey. “We are prepping the (electoral college) delegates and working on their accreditation now. We now have 13 seats ready, and we hope to finish electing them on 16 November.”

Mr. Baarey added that the registration of candidates for the initial batch of 13 seats had closed.

HirShabelle became the fifth regional administration to be formed last month nationwide.

The state held elections for eight Upper House seats last week, and two of the seats were set aside for exclusively women candidates.

“We as the National Women Organization are happy that the quota for women is being achieved here,” said Jowhar resident Billan Bille Mohamud.

Mohamed Ahmed Hussein, an elder, said he was impressed by how quickly the HirShabelle SIEIT had managed to organize the voting for House of the People seats in the state.

“HirShabelle was the last region to be formed and many people thought this was not possible in such short time,” said Mr. Hussein. “This is a win for us.”