Election test for Abiy as Ethiopians vote in first “free” poll

The last time Berhanu Nega ran for office, in 2005, he performed so well that he ended up in prison. The then-ruling Democratic Revolutionary Front of the Ethiopian People erupted in strong opposition, declared a state of emergency, fabricated the results, and imprisoned Berhanu, who had been elected mayor of Addis Ababa.

Now 62, Berhanu is the main opposition candidate in Monday’s parliamentary elections, considered Ethiopia’s first truly “free and fair” poll.

The vote will be the first election test for Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed since he came to power in the wake of the 2018 protests promising reform.

While some opposition politicians say the process is deeply flawed, Abiy hopes he can salvage a reputation badly damaged by the recent civil war, which produces famine and atrocities in the northern Tigray region.

“What is at stake is the very existence of this country,” said Berhanu, an economics professor once designated a terrorist and sentenced to death. in absentia for years in exile, referring to the ethnic violence that has erupted not only in Tigray but across the country since Abiy took office.

This violence, among several of Ethiopia’s 80 ethnic groups, has displaced 2 million people, not including Tigray, and threatens to break a former nation of 114 million people with ethnic gaps often compared to the former Yugoslavia.

Berhanu, who shares with Abiy the vision of Ethiopia as a more unified state, argues that the election could act as a re-establishment, easing the tensions he attributes in part to the election itself. “I care less about who wins and much more about the process,” he said. “If we can make credible elections, I think this could be a fresh start for this country.”

This view is not shared by other opposition parties, who believe the poll is deeply compromised and that Abiy’s newly formed prosperity party cannot lose.

Several highlights possible challenges they are in prison and many parties are boycotting an exercise that will not take place in some parts of the country, including Tigray, because it is considered too unstable. According to Chatham House, a think tank, the 547 parliamentary seats, at least 102, coming mainly from three regions – Tigray, Somalia and Harari – will not be challenged.

“It will be an election like the days of Joseph Stalin, when he told the people of Russia ‘to vote, we count,'” said Merera Gudina, president of the Oromo Federalist Congress, which is boycotting the poll. As a result, Abiy’s party is expected to sweep Oromia, the largest region with 35 million people, although many first believe that the prime minister, Oromo himself, has sold the interests of his region. to a more centralized state vision.

Opposition parties, including Ethiopian citizens for Berhanu’s social justice, say the posters have been ripped off and supporters have been attacked, although Berhanu said he did not expect any direct pairing, such as the filling. of the ballot boxes. Unlike the last elections in 2015, where the EPRDF “won” 100% of the parliamentary seats, he predicted that opposition parties would get significant representation.

Still, the elections are far-fetched, “full of illegal restrictions, intimidation, arrests, violence of all kinds,” according to Belete Molla, president of the Amhara National Movement party, a nationalist ethnic group. “The Prosperity party has massively spent government money to conduct party campaigns, coercing people who use government aid programs,” Belete said, referring to the alleged withdrawal of subsidized goods, such as fertilizers, to vote for non registered.

Approximately 37 million people have registered after a slow start that required a second minor postponement following a contentious decision not to run in the 2020 elections due to Covid-19.

Daniel Bekele, head of the state-appointed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, said that despite the difficulties, the elections were more open than those held with less than 27 years of EPRDF rule. “It’s a reasonably credible electoral process that is a step towards a better election in the future,” he said. “But the general political environment creates a challenge for a totally free and fair election.”

A few days before Monday’s poll, Abiy returned to his birthplace, in the town of Jimma, in Oromia, for a rally designed to demonstrate his enduring popularity. There, it was difficult to find anyone who did not support him or who did not support the war against a Tigray Popular Liberation Front guilty of decades of repression when he led the EPRDF coalition. Abyy’s supporters argued that he had no choice but to invade Tigray after troops loyal to the TPLF attacked the northern command of the federal army in November.

“The problem is the TPLF government, which was very bad,” said Nuritu Siraj, a 39-year-old housewife whose eyes looked up every time she mentioned “our Abiy”. Dressed in a hijab decorated with the Prosperity party light bulb emblem, she said of the violence in Tigray, in which massacres, rapes and looting have been common: “This is not a war, it is a maintenance operation of peace “.

When tens of thousands of followers gathered, some of them on horseback, Abiy connected his vision of unity, still unpopular in areas of the country where ethnic groups such as Somalis, Afars and his own Oromo people jealously guard the their autonomy. “Our unity does not destroy our diversity, our diversity does not disperse our unity,” he said.

Even the prime minister seems to keep expectations about the next poll. “This will be the nation’s first attempt at free and fair elections,” he said in a less-than-definitive endorsement.

As easy as this attempt may be, many of Ethiopia’s whirlwind problems – the most urgent of all the furious Tigray war – remain intractable. “This is a critical moment; we are at a critical crossroads, ”said Merera.