Election of the Day: Ethiopia
By 
It’s election day in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s House of People’s Representatives is made up of 547 single member constituencies, elected via first past the post. The democratic quality of Ethiopia’s elections and government is not great for a variety of reasons, one of which is that the degree of the current ruling Prosperity Party’s dominance is such that it raises questions about real democratic competition: they won 89% of the votes and 457/472 seats filled in the 2021 election. Careful readers might wonder what’s going on with the 75 unfilled seats; this is an artifact of the multiple ongoing violent conflicts in multiple regions of Ethiopia being sufficiently violent that elections cannot be held. This is continuing today; all seats in the Tigray region and a number of seats in the Amhara region (some sources say 8/137 seats in Amhara will not be holding elections today; others say 30 seats) will not hold elections today, ostensibly for security reasons. This is the second consecutive election Tigray has been excluded.
Ethiopia is currently led by Prosperity Party leader and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and that is likely to continue moving forward. Ahmed joined the fight against the Derg–Ethiopia’s Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in power in the 80’s–as a young teenager. From there he joined the regular army of the regime, rose through the ranks to a leadership position in the Badme war with Eritrea in the late 90’s, and subsequently, in 2006 co-founded INSA (National Information Security Agency), a new national security organization modeled after the US’s NSA. Around this time he converted (from Islam) to Pentecostal Christianity. He entered politics as an elected representative of the Oromo Democratic Party in 2010, which at the time was one of four parties that comprised the ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. He began to gain some national attention in 2015 when he became a vocal critic of a number of “land grabs” (large scale acquisitions of land for developmental or extractive purposes, typically in conjunction with foreign governments and/or multinational corporations, that are often displace or are otherwise detrimental to local populations) in Oromia. He also began facilitating alliances between leading Oromo and Amhara political leaders, and became the deputy president of the Oromia federal region (while remaining in the national legislature), where he is credited with a number of policies that facilitated development and reduced youth unemployment. All this positioned him well when EPRDF PM Hailemariam Desalegn resigned in early 2018. Of the three serious contenders for EPRDF leader and thus PM, he the most internal opposition, but also by far the most and broadest political support, not just among the Oromo people but across Ethiopia’s ethnic groups. His subsequent intra-party election could plausibly be understood as a democratizing event; an electorally dominant party largely insulated from popular pressure found themselves successfully pressured to do the popular thing despite internal reluctance.
A bunch of good stuff happened at the beginning of Ahmed’s tenure as PM: there were real gestures toward liberalization (some journalists and dissidents in exile were explicitly invited to return) and importantly and consequentially the border conflict with Eritrea, essentially a frozen conflict since 2000, was resolved, opening the door toward a longstanding piece, normalization of relations, and opening a largely closed border, which had separated families for decades. He also negotiated a port access agreement with Djibouti (being rendered landlocked by Eritrean succession in the 1990’s, this was a major issue for the country). His peace agreement with Eritrea earned him 2019’s nobel peace prize. In 2019, he rebranded/replaced the EPRDF as the “Prosperity Party”, which at least seemed a move in more personalist direction (for all its democratic shortcomings, the EPRDF really was the products of cooperation and ongoing negotiations between ethnic factions).
2018-19 was a long time ago, and Ahmed’s peace prize now looks appears next to Henry Kissinger’s in the “maybe we should have waited a bit to see how this played out” category. The peace agreement with Eritrea is largely stalled and unimplemented, and Ahmed’s rule has been marked by renewed domestic conflict, with the worst consequences in Tigray, where the civil war from 2020-2022 lead to over a hundred thousand deaths, displaced millions, and created nearly a million refugees. When he came to power Ahmed had quickly removed a number of Tigrayans from positions of power and influence, in favor of those representing larger Ethnic groups that were more explicitly part of his coalition. (Tigrayans are only 6-7% of the total population, while Oromos comprise a third of the country and Amharans over a quarter.) Tigrayans also felt betrayed by the peace Agreement with Eritrea; given their location on the border they’d suffered disproportionately from the war and from Eritrean brutality, and felt they were being let off too easy. This rekindled longstanding desires for greater regional autonomy. While the conflict continues, the worst violence ended with the Pretoria Agreement in November of 2022, mediated by the African Union and Olusegun Obasanjo.
The Fano, an Amharan militia, fought alongside Ethiopian forces in Tigray, but were largely excluded from the Peace process, which they ultimately felt left the violent, destabilizing (in their view) Tigray People’s Liberation Front, off the hook. Relations soured rapidly and Fano and the Ethiopian regime have been fighting across the Amhara region since. Ahmed’s regime has accused Eritrea of arming Fano insurgents, which, whether true or not, has complicated implementation of the 2018 peace agreement more fraught. This conflict has seen around 15,000 casualties, with internal displacement in the six figures.
Rounding out the trifecta or major recent civil conflicts, the Oromo Liberation Front, active on-and-off since 1973, say a schism in 2018, splitting between OLF and the OLA, or Oromo Liberation Army, in 2018. There’s much more to it, but long story short, the OLF wanted to give some grace and trust to Ahmed’s proposed reform process and work with the national government and their new popular Oromo leader, and the OLA did not. The OLF signed a peace treaty with Ahmed to that effect in 2018, to the dismay and frustration of many of the rank-and-file as well as commanders in the Southern and Western Oromo regions. They were also concerned by the OLF and Ahmed’s peace agreement with the Ogaden National Liberation Front, a violent Somali nationalist group in/near Oromia. This conflict took many thousands of lives in 2023 and 2024, when a tentative, fragile peace was negotiated in Ethiopia.
There are more conflicts! We didn’t even get to the Benishangul-Gumuz conflict (2019-2022) in the West. Ahmed’s rule has, to put it mildly, not been particularly successful when it comes to maintaining order and peace. He has, however, a decent claim to having been quite good for economic growth, particularly in and around Addis Abada, where he has invested significant money in major urban projects and expansions, and induced a great deal of foreign investment as well. This is, by all accounts, at the heart of his campaign. On other domestic issues, the brief moment of apparent liberalization in 2018 was short-lived, as disfavored journalists were again being arrested by 2019. Ethiopia has long ranked quite low on press freedoms, a situation which has further deteriorated under Ahmed’s rule. There are also real questions about the security claims regarding Tigray, where a peace agreement is now 3.5 years old. Some reasonably suspect the claim to be unable to hold elections there is overblown, and Tigrayans are being unjustly and unnecessarily denied representation.
There are lots of opposition parties, and a number of them have come together as the Coalition for Ethiopian Unity. No one really seems to think Prosperity not winning a majority is live possibility, but it’ll be interesting to see how successful opposition candidates are, as well as where they manage to be successful. It’s nearly midnight in Addis, so polls have been closed for a few hours now. No idea when results will be made public.
Thanks for reading these posts, and supporting LGM, which (according to my annual report, at least) has best global election coverage among top 100 legacy political blogs! June will take us to Kosovo and Armenia, as Peru and Colombia and finally off to New Caledonia. Keep those donating coming and maybe you’ll get a post about the Bangkok regional election, which should be fun.