To what extent this move represented a definite change of direction in Russian policy in the Somali dispute remained to be seen. Its local effects, however, were more immediately discernible. In the November municipal elections the government party won 665 of the available 904 seats (74 per cent), while its principal rival the Somali National Congress gained 105 seats. In the elections for the national assembly which followed on 30 March, 1964 – by which time the long train of border incidents with Ethiopia had erupted into open war and the Ogaden was in resurgence – the S.Y.L. position was again strongly maintained, though with a slightly reduced majority (S.Y.L., 69 seats; S.N.C., 22; S.D.U., 15; H.D.M.S., 9; others, 8). These results speak for themselves and show how effectively the League had recovered much of its wide popular support in circumstances which were bound to strengthen the government’s position. At the same time, the manner in which the elections were conducted, and the extent to which opposition parties participated in them, reaffirmed the Republic’s continuing commitment to the principles of parliamentary democracy. Thus in the conduct of its internal political life as much as in its external nationalist interests, the Somali Republic remained isolated from many of its neighbours.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 499