Marehan union party
The Marehan Union Party (MUP) is a political party in Somalia. It took part in the 1956 elections in Somalia, where it competed for parliamentary seats with other national parties including the Somali Youth League (SYL), Hizbia Digil Mirifle Somali (HDMS), and the Somali Democratic Party (SDP).
History
MUP candidates run elections in Bardera, Luuq and other parts of Gedo region constituencies. The election in 1956 resulted in one seat for the MUP. The MUP has evolved over the years, changing names a dozen times. It also introduced a few ideologies in which it sought support from its members across the country.
Evolution
The first democratic election in Somalia took place while the country was still under colonial rule. At the time, there was a UN-sponsored process in which the colonial power at the time, Italy, was to hand over administration of the country to local political entities.
In 1956, while Somalia was under a UN Trust, elections were held. Four main political parties participated, including the MUP and nine other junior parties. Since that time, the MUP assumed several other names, such as the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party (SRSP) which it was rechristens as in 1969. By that time, the country was under one party rule, but with all Somali clan system representations.
In 1991, Marehan leaders who were members of the SRSP created a new armed struggle movement which they named the Somali National Front (SNF). At first, the SNF operated only in the regions of the Jubba Valley: Gedo, Middle Jubba and Lower Jubba. The party's members, mostly consisting of high ranking military officers, then declared Jubaland an autonomous region. At the end the 1990s, the SNF joined a larger armed struggle named the Allied Somali Forces (ASF). The ASF shortly thereafter came to be almost exclusively run by the Marehan clan inhabiting the Jubba Valley. By the beginning of 2000, the MUP had morphed into the Jubba Valley Alliance (JVA).
A regional offshoot of the MUP was created in 2009 in the Gedo region, the result of democratic elections which took place in Gedo in 2008. A 32 member regional assembly was successfully elected. The assembly in turn elected a governor for the Gedo region. District-level governments were then established in all of the Gedo region's seven districts.
See also
- Somali Youth League
