The poll will bring neither peace in Ethiopia nor legitimacy for the Abiy regime. It is high time to return to the drawing board and salvage the stalled transition through comprehensive national dialogue.
By BAHAR OUMER
Ethiopia is set to hold general elections on June 5, 2021. It would be the sixth election since the establishment of the current constitutional framework in 1995. None of the previous five polls met the constitutional standard of ‘free and fair,’ let alone international best practices. The upcoming vote won’t be different.
Far from ushering in a new era of peace, democracy, and stability, the poll will heighten rising tensions, contribute to the hardening of positions and deepen societal polarization. There is clear voter apathy, as evidenced by the dismal registration turnout, which last week forced authorities to extend the deadline. Voters have far more pressing concerns, including the spikes in COVID-19 infection and deaths, the rising cost of living, and the general sense of insecurity across the country. It is high time to postpone the vote and return to the drawing board with the view to salvaging the stalled transition through an all-inclusive national dialogue.
Despite its claim to a long history of statehood, Ethiopia never had a democratic election. For nearly three decades, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) pursued periodic elections that were neither free, fair, or competitive. The May 2005 election was relatively better in terms of pre-election campaigning and the outcome. The opposition operated in a relatively less challenging environment and won significant seats. But that meager progress was reversed in short order due to characteristically zero-sum Ethiopian politics. A combination of EPRDF paranoia and the opposition’s maximalist zeal brought about a violent post-election atmosphere. In the last two symbolic elections in 2010 and 2015, the ruling party did away with all pretensions and claimed 99 percent and 100 percent, respectively.
A defining transition
Fast forward, in 2018, barely three years after its “100 percent victory,” the EPRDF regime was removed from power by sustained popular protests led by Oromo youth and later joined by Amhara and pro-democracy activists in the South. Abiy Ahmed, a little-known intelligence officer, was selected to lead the country through a tumultuous yet defining transition period.
One of the obvious tasks of a transition leader is to facilitate and prepare the ground for holding a free, fair, and democratic election and usher in democratic consolidation. Abiy initially appeared to be on cue, pledging to ensure a democratic election and step aside if his party loses at the ballot box.
His lofty rhetoric and liberal promises generated hope that the sixth general elections, initially scheduled for August 2020, would be far better than all previous electoral exercises. But in March 2020, the Abiy administration indefinitely postponed the polls on constitutionally dubious grounds citing challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Few people were convinced or confused by the official excuses or the theatre put on by the Council of Constitutional Inquiry. It was clear that politics, not the pandemic, was the real reason for the postponement.
The election deadline loomed as Abiy’s Prosperity Party (PP) was still being constituted. Abiy set up PP by hastily dissolving the much-despised EPRDF to boost his electoral prospects. The rushed merger of three of the four members of the EPRDF set off stiff resistance, primarily from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the dominant party in the hitherto ruling coalition.
Abiy needed a ‘breathing space’ to consolidate power, strengthen his new party, and concomitantly cut to size formidable opposition parties, especially in Oromia, before gambling on an uncertain electoral contest. Evidently, there were more legitimate and credible oppositions in Oromia that could knock out PP if free and fair elections were held by then. The list includes the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), the first pan-Oromo political organization established in 1976 to fight to realize the Oromo people’s right to national self-determination. The party commands near saint-like reverence and popularity among the Oromo mass.
“Despite its organizational flaws and divisions, many ordinary Oromos retain an almost messianic belief in the OLF as the major nationalist organization,” the International Crisis Group rightly noted in a 2009 report. “The first modern party to articulate national self-awareness and self-determination, it shaped Oromo political consciousness and, in collaboration with diaspora intellectuals, created a nationalist narrative that influences the discourse of all Oromo opposition parties.”
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Sam Ebalalehu
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Re: Ethiopia should reschedule the June election. Here is why.
Sometimes you could write a ten thousand words essay. But you could sabotage your own argument by a single sentence. BAHAR OUMER did that. He wrote “ [ the OLF ] commands near saint- like reverence and popularity among the Oromo mass.” That is a lie. It is not a simple lie ; it is a fundamental one. The OLF of today is by far less popular than the OLF of , say , four years ago among the Oromos.