NAIROBI, May 28 (Reuters) – Ethiopians will vote in parliamentary and regional elections on Monday that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s party is expected to dominate despite significant unrest across much of Africa’s second most populous country.
Abiy, 49, has consolidated his grip on Ethiopia’s politics since being appointed in 2018 on the heels of mass protests against the long-ruling EPRDF coalition.
His newly formed Prosperity Party won a landslide victory in the last elections in 2021, taking 410 seats out of 484 in parliament.
But he has faced years of violent unrest in several of the country’s ethnically organized regions, including his native Oromiya, Ethiopia’s largest, and the second-biggest region, Amhara, where a militia known as Fano has seized swathes of the countryside since 2023.
A civil war in the northern Tigray region from 2020-2022, which stemmed from a breakdown in relations between Abiy and the Tigrayan leaders who dominated national politics before his rise, resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, researchers say.
Though a 2022 peace deal ended the conflict, a move this month by Tigray’s main political party to reassert control over the region’s political administration in violation of the agreement has led Ethiopian officials and analysts to warn of the risk of fresh unrest.
Monday’s elections will not be held in Tigray, one of Ethiopia’s 12 regions, because of what the electoral board called “unfavourable conditions” there. Voting will also not take place in at least eight of Amhara’s 138 constituencies because of insecurity.
ABIY’S PARTY FACES WEAK OPPOSITION
The Prosperity Party will compete against a fragmented opposition weakened by internal rivalries. Opposition parties accuse the federal government of undermining them by arresting their leaders and imposing legal obstacles to restrict their political activities.
The federal government has rejected those charges and said any action against opposition parties is taken in accordance with the law.
Reuters has not been able to report from inside Ethiopia since mid-February, when the Ethiopian Media Authority declined to renew the accreditation for its three Addis Ababa-based journalists.
Over 50 million of Ethiopia’s 120 million people are registered to vote in the elections. Results are expected by June 11.
Prosperity Party candidates have campaigned on the government’s economic record, and cite improved food security in a country that has experienced several famines in the past.
The government projects economic growth of over 10% in 2026, one of the fastest rates in Africa. Economists have credited Abiy’s moves to liberalise its tightly controlled economy with boosting investment and export earnings.
NEW ANIMOSITY WITH ERITREA
Abiy received widespread praise at home and globally after taking power for freeing journalists, activists and other political prisoners and revoking bans on many political parties. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for ending hostilities with neighbouring Eritrea.
But his opponents and human rights activists accuse his government of reversing those gains in recent years by detaining journalists and shutting down civil society groups.
U.N. investigators, foreign governments and human rights groups have alleged atrocities during military campaigns to put down civil unrest.
The government has denied systematic human rights abuses and said its actions are necessary to protect national security.
The rapprochement with Eritrea for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize has given way to fresh animosity in the past few years, in part over repeated declarations by Abiy that landlocked Ethiopia has a right to sea access.
Eritrea, which won its independence from Ethiopia in 1993, has viewed the comments as an implicit threat of military aggression. Abiy has said that although sea access is an “existential” matter for Ethiopia, he intends to pursue it through dialogue.
(Reporting by Nairobi Newsroom; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
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