After winning the vote in the early hours of 31 January 2009, President Sharif was sworn in later in the day at the Kempinski hotel in Djibouti. Sharif vowed to form a broad-based government and invited all armed groups in the war-ravaged Horn of Africa nation to join the UN-sponsored reconciliation effort. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN's special envoy for Somalia, praised the "transparent" presidential vote. "We are finally seeing progress from the hard work by all sides to create an inclusive parliament," Ould-Abdallah said in a statement.