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])
In the near future, I do not see any changes of policy either from the EPRDF’s side, or from the international side versus Ethiopia: it will be business as usual.
The donor group will embrace the result and the process, as it gives continued legitimacy for their cooperation with EPRDF, and the many difficult questions regarding democratic substance and respect for human rights can be brushed aside, as long as they can use the superficial technicalities of the process as window-dressing for ‘continued democratisation of Ethiopia’ – and thus justifying the billions of dollars spent on the regime.
For the Ethiopian public, the result will not signal any immediate changes either. The EPRDF will probably continue developing its totalitarian structure, with compulsory party membership for anybody who will be interested to pursue public employment and advancement within the country.
The result will probably have most effect on opposition politics. Some of the old-timers in opposition have earlier expressed that this time will be their last shot in elections. If EPRDF do not accept a level playing field, they will give in. This attitude might have changed, but I still think a cut-back to 10 percent of seats or so to the opposition will be a hard blow to carry for many of them. This will surely shake the foundations of Medrek, which might split up into two or more opposition platforms; as part of a blame-game of the election failure.
The result might also be used as a argument for the opposition groups which argue for a tougher more confrontational — or even military — opposition tactics towards the regime; as they can claim that the democratic space is too restricted for them to come to power via the ballot box.
A former top U.S. official on Africa says Ethiopian opposition parties failed to get equal access to the media in the run-up to Sunday’s parliamentary elections.
Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen (1989-93) said, “This time opposition media and opposition groups were not given fair time on the media and opposition media tends to be suppressed and in that sense I don’t think it was a fair election.”
He added, “In contrast to the 2005 election, this seems to be rather peaceful and administratively ok, so I think it is an improvement,” said Cohen, a specialist in African and European affairs.
He expressed doubt opposition complaints and their call for a new vote would amount to anything, but added “If the opposition rejects [the election] then it makes it difficult to consider the election legitimate.”
Cohen said despite the flaws it was important for the opposition to have taken part. “I always tell the opposition that if they do not participate then there is no reason for the government to commit fraud, so they should always participate and if there is fraud everyone will know.”
He said unlike the 2005 election, it is unlikely there will be violence.
“In 2005, they (government) reacted to violence with lethal force and I think the opposition groups have a vivid memory of the results,” he said.
Also, the current top U.S. diplomat for Africa, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, said Tuesday the Ethiopian government took “clear and decisive steps” that ensured it would win the election.
Ethiopia’s ruling party claimed a landslide victory this week in the first vote since a brutal crackdown in 2005, but some observers and human rights groups say the election was heavily tilted in favour of the government. After the election results were announced on Tuesday, thousands of government supporters rallied in the streets of Addis Ababa, celebrating the victory.
Ethiopia’s opposition leaders are sceptical of the official results. One of the top opposition leaders, Hailu Shawel, said the election was “ridiculous” because it was completely controlled by the ruling party. He told reporters Wednesday intimidation and fraud influenced Sunday’s elections.
After Ethiopia’s previous dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam murdered the man he had deposed, Emperor Haile Selassie, he capped his triumph by having the body buried under his office floor.
Ethiopia’s current leader dictator, Meles Zenawi, who led the rebellion that deposed Mengistu in 1991, has not been quite so utilitarian in how he disposes of his opponents.
But critics say Meles has been just as effective in creating what amounts to a repressive one-party state in what was once a country carrying reasonable hopes of leading a democratic upsurge in Africa.
There is a fine example of Meles’ skills as an elected despot in the results of last Sunday’s vote which will give his Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) all but one or two seats in the 547-seat parliament.
Election observers from the European Union say all the power and influence of the government was marshaled behind Meles’ EPRDF.
The chorus of criticism was taken up on Tuesday by Washington where the assistant secretary of state for Africa, Johnnie Carson, said: “While the elections were calm and peaceful and largely without any kind of violence, we note with some degree of remorse that the elections were not up to international standards.”
No doubt the remorse in the United States is genuine because Meles is Washington’s and Europe’s man in the Horn of Africa.
Washington has on occasion expressed concerns about Meles’s repressive instincts, especially after the last elections in 2005 when the opposition took to the streets claiming massive fraud. Two hundred people were killed in the crackdown and many more are still in prison.
But criticism has been muted because Meles has been the go-to guy for American administrations attempting to control the upsurge in Muslim fundamentalism in Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan.
Meles is also the recipient of close to $1 billion a year in foreign aid, more than two-thirds of it from the U.S. and much of the rest from Europe.
And as many African potentates before Meles have discovered, accepting western aid seldom increases the outside pressure for reform. All too often donor countries become captives of their aid budgets and unwilling to use leverage on recipient countries for fear of upsetting domestic political priorities.
That certainly seems to be the case with Ethiopia, where there has been growth in the gross domestic product of more than 10 per cent for several years. So government aid agencies in Europe and the U.S. chalk Ethiopia up as a success and do not look at what is happening in other areas of the country’s civic life.
But other arms of government do look. Last year in its report on global human rights, the U.S. State Department accused the Ethiopian government of “unlawful killings, torture, beating, abuse and mistreatment of detainees and opposition supporters by security forces, often acting with evident impunity.”
New York-based Human Rights Watch published a scathing report in March.
“Expressing dissent is very dangerous in Ethiopia,” said the report.
“The ruling party and the state are becoming one, and the government is using the full weight of its power to eliminate opposition and intimidate people into silence.”
The way Human Rights Watch describes it, it was not necessary for the EPRDF to stuff ballot boxes last Sunday.
Right down to the village level, governing party cells and local administrations are interwoven. They ensure government services, such as the allocation of seeds and fertilizers, and microcredit loans, do not go to government critics.
So it can be a choice between supporting the opposition or feeding your family.
But there is an opposition and it may yet take to the streets in revulsion at this election as it did in 2005.
One of the leaders is a 35-year-old lawyer and former judge, Birtukan Mideksa, who is sometimes called Ethiopia’s Aung San Suu Kyi. She is a leader of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy and was arrested for taking part in the 2005 demonstrations. She was pardoned in 2007, but rearrested the following year and is now serving a life sentence.
Meles has not buried her under his office floor, but he might as well have done. Last year he said she will never be released and she is “a dead issue.”
Ethiopia’s electoral board said on Tuesday that the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and allied parties had won a Sunday election by a landslide.
European Union chief election observer Thijs Berman praised the polling for being peaceful and orderly, but noted that there was an “uneven playing field,” according to news reports.
[Meles Zenawi, head of Ethiopia’s ruling tribal junta, surrounded by heavy security at a victory rally in Addis Ababa, May 25, 2010 – Photo: Reuters]
The run-up to the vote, and the voting process itself, were characterised by the absence of a free, independent media.
Observers reported the harassment and intimidation both of voters and of journalists in the run-up to the election. The Ethiopian police, and an opposition party, said two opposition members had been shot dead by the police after the election, news reports said.
Against this backdrop, the International Press Institute (IPI) today called on any future government to relax its control of the media.
“No free and fair elections can be held in the absence of a vibrant and free media, whether it is in Ethiopia or elsewhere,” said Mesfin Negash, managing editor of Addis Neger, in an email to IPI. “Ethiopia failed miserably to have both: free and vibrant media, and therefore a free and fair election.”
He added: “Local independent media outlets and international correspondents in Ethiopia reported the election under serious pressure.” Referring to a “Code of Conduct for the Mass Media and Journalists” issued by the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) earlier this year, Negash said: “It prohibits interviewing voters within a 500-meter radius of a polling station. It was even prohibited to take a photo in polling stations … Just outrageous … Practically, however, we have seen that government journalists were transmitting live from within polling stations.”
Addis Neger, a popular independent weekly newspaper, decided to stop publishing in November 2009 after its editors and managers received a credible warning that they were to be targeted under anti-terrorism legislation.
In the months preceding the May elections, IPI called on the Ethiopian authorities to relax their stranglehold on the independent media, and condemned attempts by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government to limit the flow of information to people in the country.
“IPI firmly believes that no election can be deemed free or fair if there is no robust and independent local media to report on alleged government abuses, cover opposition candidates, or report on corruption,” said IPI Director David Dadge. “The Ethiopian government must relinquish its somewhat obsessive desire to control the flow of information in the country.”
Following Ethiopia’s last round of parliamentary elections in 2005, dozens of journalists and opposition activists were jailed on fabricated charges, and several publications and civil society organizations were shut down.
Since then, the Ethiopian authorities have made every effort to manage the information presented in the press. Broadcast media are entirely state run and self-censorship is the norm amongst journalists for Ethiopian Television and Radio, according to IPI research.
Many of the print publications shut in 2005 remain closed. Local reporters continue to be arrested, harassed and intimidated, and since 2005, several foreign journalists have been detained or expelled from the country for covering sensitive issues. Recently, the government began jamming Voice of America shortwave broadcasts, which it compared to Radio Mille Collines, one of the stations involved in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
In March 2010, the Ethiopian Supreme Court ruled that four publishers had to pay exorbitant fines originally rendered void under a 2007 pardon. The publishing companies were shut during the media crackdown of 2005, and the editors and publishers were jailed on treason charges. Despite the fact that all were either pardoned or acquitted, the government continued to push for the fines.
Finally, a slew of repressive laws passed in the last two years ensure that journalists work in a climate of fear.
“Everything done by [government print and broadcast media] is highly controlled by party people assigned at every level of the production of news and commentaries,” said Negash, referring to the ruling EPRDF. “The private and independent media is also crippled… Internally, most of the independent newspapers lack the capacity to provide quality and influential information. Their circulation is very small and limited to the big cities.”
He noted: “The few with the potential to provide such quality information are tied up with their fear and economic interests. As a result, they are too shy and apologetic in dealing with major issues of democracy and freedom of speech.”
The European Union’s chief election observer Mr.Tijis Berman’s comments have confirmed other reports coming from Ethiopia that the national elections held on Sunday, May 23rd were neither fair nor free. During a press conference in Addis Ababa, Mr. Tijis Berman stated that last weekend’s poll was conducted on an “uneven playing field” that favored the party of the Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. Mr. Johnnie Carson, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the State Department told the House Foreign committee, “we note with some degree of remorse that the elections were not up to international standards…the government has taken clear and decisive steps that would ensure that it would garner an electoral victory.”
Dr. Merara Gudina, leader of Mederek, the largest opposition coalition, stated in an interview that the Ethiopian 2010 election “doesn’t look like an election even by African standards.” Dr. Negasso Gidada, another Mederek leader added, “…some of his party’s observers had been blocked and arrested in northern Ethiopia, and others had been intimidated.” Similar stories of massive intimidation and harassment of opposition candidates, activists and observers have been heard from most of the leaders of the opposition parties who took part in the elections, including Ato Hailu Shawel, the leader of AEUP, signatory and party to a code of conduct agreement with the ruling party few months ago.
A resident of Addis Ababa told Human Rights Watch “Intimidation to register and to vote for the ruling party is everywhere, if the local administration is against you; they’ll be after you forever. They can come and round you up at will.” Human Rights Watch also reported, “that during April and May, officials and militia (known as tataqi in Amharic) from the local administration went house to house telling citizens to register to vote and to vote for the ruling party or face reprisals from local party officials such as bureaucratic harassment or even losing their homes or jobs…” Human Rights Watch ended its report on the 2010 election by stating, “Ethiopia is an authoritarian state in which the government’s commitment to democracy exists only on paper, the question is not who won these elections, but how can donors justify business as usual with this increasingly repressive government?”
Advocacy for Ethiopia (AFE) and Ethiopian American Civic Advocacy (EACA) reject the results of the 2010 elections in Ethiopia. The ruling regime EPRDF, by claiming to have a so -called “landslide” election victory with a margin of over 96%, has put itself in line with other dictators including Mengistu Haile Miriam and Idi Amin of Uganda who all boasted landslide wins of more than 90% votes. Several advocacy and human rights groups have previously expressed their profound concern about the lack of conditions necessary to conduct free and fair elections in Ethiopia. The ruling TPLF/EPRDF has once again failed Ethiopia, Africa and the international community.
With overwhelming evidences of election irregularities as indicated by European elections observers, AFE and EACA therefore, reject a process and outcome that fails far short of being free and fair by all accepted international standards, principles, and norms of holding free and democratic elections. Moreover, Birtukan Mideksa, the leader of UDJ and thousands of other political prisoners still languish in EPRDF’s jails.
AFE and EACE call on the international community to reject the results of the 2010 elections and boycott the charade to crown a brutal dictator for another five years. AFE and EACA call on all who believe in human rights, the rule of law and democracy to be reenergized and intensify the struggle for freedom by charting in unison a national platforum that is inclusive of all those striving for democracy, human rights and the rule of law to prevail in Ethiopia.
Advocacy for Ethiopia
PO Box 892, El Segundo, CA 90245-0892 USA
AdvocacyForEthiopia.org
Tel: 202-386-3037
Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen (1989-93) said, “This time opposition media and opposition groups were not given fair time on the media and opposition media tends to be suppressed and in that sense I don’t think it was a fair election.”