State Stability: Delayed Ethiopian poll likely to be disrupted by ongoing conflict
Countrywide ethnic tensions and severe ongoing violence will underpin Ethiopia’s upcoming election. Jordan Anderson and Nizar Manek consider the historical backdrop and the likely outcomes.
Janes Intelligence Review, May 28 2021
Ethiopia’s general election, originally scheduled for August 2020 but delayed amid the Covid-19 pandemic, is set for 5 June. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is looking to secure a mandate for his Prosperity Party (PP), formed in November 2019 out of the parties in Ethiopia’s former ruling coalition, the Ethio- pian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), with the exception of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), with which he went to war in November 2020.
The conditions for holding the polls are worse than in 2020. Despite limited testing, by 20 April the Ministry of Health had recorded a cumulative total of almost 250,000 Covid-19 cases in a country with a population of more than 100 million. Separately, on 23 March Abiy told parliament that the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) was “in a major fight on eight fronts” against armed groups in north and west Ethiopia. These fronts include the conflict in the Tigray region, where forces working with the ENDF – Amhara special forces and militia, and Eritrean troops – are fighting forces aligned with the TPLF, the region’s former ruling party that Abiy replaced at the end of November 2020 with PP affiliates as the transitional administration. The ENDF is also combating an insurgency by the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) in western and southern Oromia.
A former official with ties to the Prime Minister’s Office told Janes in April that several of Abiy’s aides had privately expressed regret about not having held an election and secured a mandate in 2020, saying that Abiy wanted to hold an election at all costs. Major international donors from the Development Assistance Group (DAG), comprising 30 bilateral and multilat- eral development agencies, reported to Janes in April that Abiy had indicated to the DAG a willingness to negotiate, including on hold- ing a national dialogue and releasing political prisoners, but that he had made this conditional on first holding an election. According to those same sources, Abiy wanted to buy time and secure a five-year mandate.
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