

Somalia has elected their first new president since 1986. Meet Xasan Maxamuud. - cup
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/09/201291083927688186.html

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mahmud
This is FAR from the truth. We have had several presidents since, including
Cali Mahdi, Cabdulaahi Yusuf and Sheikh Sharif. All "ruled" out of armored
vehicles on foreign financial life-support. This new guy is no different: we
will see him get chased around by opposing factions, including Islamists, and
much of the North and North East of the country is semi-autonomous.

~~~
dkarl
Maybe it refers to direct election. As best as I can tell from Wikipedia, Cali
Mahdi was chosen by a conference in Djibouti, and Cabdulaahi Yusuf and Sheikh
Sharif were both elected by a national assembly, not by the people. I'm not
clear on whether even the national assembly representative were elected, so by
the standard of direct democratic election it might be correct to say Cali
Mahdi and Sheikh Sharif were not elected.

Now that I think about it, the problem is that the English wording doesn't
mean what it logically ought to. When it says Somalia has "elected their first
new president since 1986" it's easy for me to read that in context as "elected
a president for the first time since 1986" (which seems to be correct if
"election" means "direct election") even though a more logically
straightforward interpretation is that the person they elected is their first
president since 1986 (which you pointed out is false.) Just another bug report
to file against the English language :-/

~~~
dmoy
Being elected by parliament is not being directly elected. It is closer.

Also, I didn't really see any mention of how much of Somalia the government
actually controls. Last time I talked to my Somali friends from back in
Minnesota, it was like 10% - most of Mogadishu and some of the surrounding
area. (That info is years out of date though)

So I take this with a grain of salt.

~~~
aaronbrethorst

        Last time I talked to my Somali friends from back in Minnesota
    

In case this catches anyone by surprise, here's some background:
[http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2011/01/19/good-question-
why-d...](http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2011/01/19/good-question-why-did-
somalis-locate-here/)

The Twin Cities also have surprisingly large populations of Bosnians and
Hmong. After living in Minneapolis for 21 years and Seattle for 9, I can
easily say that Minneapolis is, by far, the more diverse of the two.

