By Rene Lefort

It means that the EPRDF had decided — and successfully taken the appropriate authoritarian measures — not only to be the unquestionable winner of the 2010 elections, but also to get its revenge on the opposition by humiliating it in 2010 as much as it felt humiliated by the opposition’s push in 2005.

This landslide victory blackens the future of Ethiopia. It first proves once again that the EPRDF went as far as to obtain that the opposition could not even get a decent representation, and to reduce it to a purely formal role, without any real leverage. Second, by weakening the legal opposition, this landslide victory will prove once more to the opponents that all legal ways of contesting the ruling power are in fact closed and that thus the only way for an alternate government is to wage an armed struggle.

This centuries old dichotomy: submit or rebel, which has been disastrous for Ethiopia will only lead to another disaster, except if the new generation of leaders who could take the commands in the coming years would decide they must lastly escape from it.

(René Lefort has been writing about sub-saharan Africa since the 1970s and has reported on the region for Le Monde, Le Monde diplomatique, Libération, Le Nouvel Observateur.  He is the author of “Ethiopia. An heretical revolution?” (1982, Zed books). He can be reached at [email protected])