Amid Fraud Fears, Somalia Votes For New President

Members of parliament in Somalia voted for a new president on Monday in the first poll of its kind in decades despite suspicions the election will be rigged and do little to alter the political landscape.

Billed by the United Nations as a milestone in the war-ravaged country's quest to end two decades of violence, graft and infighting, newly selected lawmakers convened at the police academy to vote for the next head of state by secret ballot.

"It's D-day for Somalia," lawmaker Abdirahim Abdi said of the election in which more than two dozen candidates are running, including the current president and prime minister as well as prominent Somalis who have returned from overseas.

"It's a turning point for Somalia and everyone's been waiting for it," he told reporters.

There has been no effective central government control over most of the country since the outbreak of civil war in 1991.

Monday's vote is seen as a culmination of a regionally brokered and U.N.-backed roadmap to end that conflict, during which tens of thousands were killed and many more fled.

The capital, which until last year witnessed street battles between al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militants and African soldiers, is now a vibrant city, where reconstructed houses are slowly replacing bullet-riddled structures.

But despite being on the backfoot, the militants still control swathes of southern and central Somalia, while pirates, regional administrations and local militia group also vie for control chunks of the largely lawless Horn of Africa country.

Somalia's president heads the executive while the speaker of parliament is considered the country's most powerful politician and steps in if the president is unable to fulfil his duties.

"Any elected president must cope with security first, then the reconstruction of social infrastructure, resettling the numerous (refugees) around the country and the liberation of the rest of the country from al Shabaab," said student Bashir Ali Abdikadir.

Members of parliament marked their ballot papers behind a curtain before casting them in a clear box in front of foreign envoys and hundreds of Somali men and women as well as being broadcast live on television.

If no one candidate secures a two-thirds majority in the first round and a simple majority in the second, the election would go to a third round.