Somalilandsun- When Fadumo Dayib announced her bid to run for President of Somalia on national TV last year, people thought she was crazy.
Somalia’s violent history and the life-threatening conditions that the country’s politicians and activists face on a daily basis makes Dayib’s choice to run for office— especially as a woman in a patriarchal culture—a brave one. “People just can’t understand why I would do such a thing,” Dayib says.
Somalia’s 2016 elections will be the first democratic elections held since 1967, when President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke rose to power. He was assassinated two years later and the Somali Army quickly took control, declaring a military coup d’état. A civil war followed in the early 1990s, as well as severe famine and political upheaval. A federal, democratic president was finally elected by the Parliament in 2012 to replace a series of transitional governments. And ifall goes according to Vision 2016, Somalia’s citizens will officially elect its first democratic President next year.
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