Seven political parties were registered on Sunday in Somalia, under efforts to move away from clan politics, according to Somali news site, Goobjoog News.

Halima Ibrahim, Chairperson of the National Independent Electoral Commission said that political parties competing in the elections must be created in order to move away from the “system of 4.5 to one person one vote.”

“We succeeded in this process and today we temporarily registered seven political parties,” Ibrahim said.

The 4.5 formula is a power sharing agreement distributed among the four most powerful tribes in Somalia, which allocates one in four seats to each of the major clans in Somalia, and half of one seat to minority clans.

The parties are required to be based in the capital Mogadishu and consist of 10,000 members.

Somalia has not witness the forming of any political parties for the last 50 years.

The Somali population, estimated at 14 million people, is divided into four major clans and other numbers of minorities.

Somali clans use ingrained customary law to govern their community apart from the modern state.