Issue No. 322

Abiy's Probable Coronation

Six general elections in Ethiopia have been held since the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) implemented its ethnic-federal system in 1995. Each has delivered victory to the incumbent government of the day — including, most recently, the deeply discredited 2021 polls held in the shadow of the Tigray war. Once again, with Ethiopia's 7th elections — scheduled for 1 June 2026 — fast approaching, few anticipate anything other than a coronation in a country mired in raging insurgencies, state contraction, and the threat of broader inter-state conflict.

Once hailed as a democratic reformer, Abiy's veneer of liberalism and promise of change in Ethiopia has long since fallen away. And with just a few weeks to go before Ethiopians head back to the polls-- where it is permitted-- the possibility of political alternation or genuine democratic choice remains virtually nil. Instead, it will amount to a choreographed exercise by the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) — one designed to rubber-stamp Abiy Ahmed's authority over an increasingly contracted territorial and political space.

And so, despite bubbling insecurity, the machinery of the electoral system is grinding on, with the NEBE touting the registration of 47 political parties and nearly 11,000 candidates. The majority of these parties and candidates, however, remain affiliated with the government in one way or another, or, critically, pose no meaningful challenge to the ruling party. Those that do — notably the Oromo Liberation Front — continue to navigate deliberate bureaucratic obstruction, and, more gravely, state-sanctioned violence against their officials. Most of those approved by the NEBE, meanwhile, intend to vie for seats on regional councils, not the House of Representatives, which is overwhelmingly dominated by the Prosperity Party. Nor is the opposition unified in its response, with some movements clinging to participation, while others regard the process as irredeemably compromised-- as was the case in 2021, when substantial numbers boycotted the entire affair.

Ethiopia's national and regional elections in 2021 were widely dismissed as a farce by domestic and international observers, not least being held amid the destructive Tigray war. In turn, the Prosperity Party won 96.8% of seats in federal parliament-- not evidence of genuine popularity but rather the product of a rigged and faulty political system. Indeed, in much of the country, most of the 35 million voters who cast ballots had no choice but a Prosperity Party candidate. Part of the distortion also lies with the nature of the first-past-the-post voting model, which employs a 'winner takes all' method to the detriment of smaller parties' representation. While opposition parties may have collectively secured 32% of the vote in Addis in 2021, their proponents received no parliamentary representation. 

In June, the imbalances of Ethiopia's region-based political model are likely to be even starker than in 2021, when gerrymandering and repression were particularly acute in the Somali Regional State (SRS) and Oromia but less so in other regions. The country today is poorer, more violent, more polarised and more fragmented than in 2021, with smouldering ethnic-based conflicts ranging across the country. Another set of contested polls won by government allies —all handed carte blanche to repress their opposition —may well hasten the threat of a return to conflict posed by former insurgent groups such as the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). In other regions, such as Gambella and Benishangul-Gumuz, fraying social tensions and the securitisation of politics may bubble into open conflict as well.

The reputation of the NEBE has taken several more blows since 2021 as well, with a raft of opposition parties condemning the state institution as being wholly co-opted by the federal government. In January, 8 more opposition parties slighted the NEBE's process, criticising onerous registration requirements, such as the need for birth certificates and eyewitnesses. But perhaps no evidence better exemplified the disconnect between people and their nominal institutions than the arbitrary banning of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) from contesting elections in May 2025, contrasted with the immediate registration by NEBE of Getachew Reda's Simret party last year —a ploy wholly backed by the federal government. The NEBE, too, has been implicated in another recent government plot to disrupt the growing linkages between the Fano insurgency and Mekelle by reassigning a number of contested districts in Western Tigray to the Amhara region-- and thus inflame nationalist sentiments in either wing.

Insecurity, too, is certain to plague the smooth-running of Abiy's anointing, with voting inevitably confined to a handful of government-controlled urban areas. In Amhara, with voter registration now underway, the Amhara Fano National Movement (AFNM) issued a stark warning this week, stating that any engagement with the electoral process would be "considered enemies of the Amhara people equal to the government." After two-and-a-half years of grinding guerrilla warfare, the metastasising insurgency now controls much of the region's rural hinterland, continuing to target government convoys and officials at will. And so has fighting between the government and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) surged in parts of Oromia as well, with the Ethiopian military increasingly delegating security to a raft of ethnic militias.

For months, opposition parties have been sounding the alarm about the deteriorating electoral context. Last May, an opposition coalition, including the Enat Party, warned that rising armed conflict and government oppression risked the integrity of the upcoming polls. Other concerns have not been addressed either, such as the detention of political prisoners, the ability to campaign freely, and the deployment of international electoral observers. Dozens of journalists were arrested last year as well, often under the guise of state-of-emergency and counter-terror powers that have justified the imprisonment of other critical opposition figures, such as Amhara politician and MP Christian Tadele. Those parties that do remain-- such as the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF)-- continue to protest against the harassment they are subjected to, be it the bureaucratic burdens imposed by the NEBE or state-sanctioned violence. 

And, much like 2021, conflict —and the threat of further escalation —are looming over the upcoming polls. Tens of thousands of federal troops have been repositioned towards the edges of Tigray, with bellicose rhetoric on 'sea access' and threats towards Mekelle unabated from Addis. Though some federal troops have reportedly been pulled back to Amhara over the past 10 days, with Fano claiming a number of victories, Tigray remains on a knife-edge, let alone a region where legitimate and widespread polls could be held in just a few weeks. With Eritrean forces and armaments flowing into the region, the smallest spark could set the whole of northern Ethiopia ablaze-- and, once again, interact with the Sudan's internationalised civil war in a host of destructive ways.

War, though, has not yet erupted, and some have ascribed Addis's apparent hesitation to either a realisation of the dire straits of the Ethiopian army or to the UAE's declining to support another war, which is grappling with the ongoing fallout of the Middle Eastern conflagration. This week, the Ethiopian PM travelled to the Emirates in a show of solidarity with his principal foreign patron, offering support to the UAE amid Tehran's escalatory strategy against US allies in the Gulf. Meanwhile, several of Ethiopia's allies—and others—are making their preference for peace clear, with senior Saudi, Turkish, and American officials meeting with Addis in recent weeks. But as ever, it will be the quasi-messianic leader of Abiy that makes the final call, even if the Ethiopian military and state collapse in the process. 

Even in the most autocratic of nations-- barring, of course, Eritrea-- elections are a helpful coating to nominally legitimise even the most unpopular of policies. But this is not an election fought on ideology or constitutionalism; it is, in fact, the worst-kept secret in Ethiopia that the ruling Prosperity Party has little regard for the 1995 ethnic-federal model. Still, it may well be that the inevitable coronation of Abiy provides the 'justification' for him to formally amend Ethiopia's principal political document, likely towards a more centralised model in line with his vague ideology of 'medemer' (coming together). In particular, the National Dialogue Commission is expected to propose revisions to the principles of ethnic federalism — changes that could formalise a significant concentration of executive authority at the centre, at the expense of both parliament and the regions. In this, Ethiopia represents the wider continental trend, with elections increasingly serving to consolidate — not transfer —power under increasingly constrained political conditions.

In a region of ageing leaders, Abiy is a young man at just 41-- and clearly intends to rule for many years to come. And in his quasi-imperial vision, elections, Tigray, Eritrea, Fano, OLA, and his people are mere stepping stones in his unerring quest to usher in a new age of Ethiopian greatness. And if war, atrocities, or humanitarian catastrophes do not give the Prosperity Party pause for thought, neither will mounting accusations of gerrymandering or rigging. But, if anything, Ethiopia's 7th general election is more likely to reflect the limits of the state than its authority—if full-scale war does not erupt in the meantime.

The Ethiopian Cable Team