There have been no elections in Somalia since 1967 and there won't be any this year either. But the country has a new parliament (appointed on the advice of clan elders) that has elected a new president, and the new government actually now controls a significant part of the country. The world's only fully "failed state" may finally be starting to return to normality.
A failed state is a horrendous thing: no government, no army, no police, no courts, no law, just bands of armed men taking what they want. Somalia has been like that for more than 20 years, but now there is hope. So much hope that last month the United Nations Security Council partially lifted its embargo on arms sales to Somalia in order to let the new Somali government buy arms, and last week the U.S. government followed suit.
The new government replaces the "Transitional Federal Government," another unelected body that had enjoyed the support of the U.N. and the African Union for eight pointless years. Then last year a World Bank report demonstrated the sheer scale of its corruption: seven out of every 10 dollars of foreign aid vanished into the pockets of TFG officials before reaching the state's coffers.