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TThis week the Ethiopian government entered the controversial sixth year of its five-year term. But the Abiy Ahmed administration is going nowhere … not even after a particularly violent summer. Covid-19 has produced a lot of political drama in recent months, but Ethiopia has experienced more than most. Here’s why.
Because it is important:
Ethiopian politics operates in a system of “ethnic federalism”: while there is a central government for this federation, its constituent parts are sculpted along ethnic lines and manipulated by parties that promise the best treatment for the ethnic groups within them ( of which there are dozens in a country of 112 million). Yet for all its diversity, political power in Ethiopia has long been concentrated in the hands of a few: first a series of emperors, and finally a Marxist military junta that tried to centralize power and homogenize the country. When the junta was overthrown in the early 1990s, the ethnic federation prevented the disintegration of Africa’s oldest nation-state. Enter current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who came to power in 2018 in a wave of activism spearheaded by his own Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, making up about a third of the population, who is ultimately seeking one of their own. I took over as prime minister after years of feeling marginalized.
But while ethnic federalism may have helped propel Abiy to the post of prime minister, it was also holding the country back … at least from Abiy’s perspective. Abiy is a reformer, but to enact those political, economic and social reforms he had in mind for one of the most repressive nations in Africa, he needed the central government to have more power. To that end, Abiy began pushing a national political vision, dissolving several ethnic parties into his pan-Ethiopian Prosperity Party last year. What may seem intuitive – the less ethnic politics in the federal government, the better – divides Ethiopians, many of them from ethnic groups who want more recognition and a bigger seat at the table. The pan-Ethiopian orientation of Abiy was particularly frustrating for the Oromo, who had high expectations for the Abiy government and the windfall it would bring.
There would be more frustrations to come. With the outbreak of Covid-19, the electoral board postponed the elections indefinitely, beyond the expiration of the Abiy government mandate in October 2020. To regularize the decision, the government proceeded to use the upper house of parliament, dominated by the ruling party, to extend Abiy’s term. In what the opposition considered a seizure of power, it was now up to the administration to decide when the elections would be held and for how long they would govern. The backlash was felt strongest from those parties representing the Oromo and Tigrayans (whose political leaders had long played an outsized role in the country), who hoped Abiy would reach a power-sharing agreement to help close the gap between term expiration and upcoming elections. The government had other plans.
Discomfort was the predictable outcome. But the fallout reached a fever pitch with the murder in June of the well-known Oromo singer and political activist Hachalu Hundessa. For its part, the government has spoiled messages about Hachalu’s death and has accused a variety of figures and groups of being behind the plot. As the protests escalated, the Abiy government began arresting opposition figures whom it accused of fomenting unrest and subsequent community violence. His Oromo rivals were joined behind bars by other party leaders, prompting people to accuse Abiy of using the unrest as a pretext to solidify his grip on power.
Elections have been tentatively postponed until next year, but certain ethnic groups such as the northern Tigrayans refused to recognize Abiy’s extended rule; Tigray defiantly went ahead and held regional elections last month, which produced a regional government that Addis Ababa does not recognize and that in turn does not recognize the government of Abiy. Which is practically the current situation.
Election officials open a ballot box at a polling station on Tigray regional election day, September 9, 2020 in Mekele.
Eduardo Soteras-AFP / Getty Images
What happens next:
For now, the government will try to control future outbreaks until the country can hold national elections, probably in the second half of 2021. Opposition groups are already calling for the Abiy government to initiate a “national dialogue” to find a common path. through compromise, proposals that have already been rejected by Addis Ababa. Meanwhile, the federal government will withhold budget transfers earmarked for the Tigray to squeeze what it considers a “rogue state,” but for now it will avoid seeking a direct confrontation.
The pandemic, and the postponement of the elections it prompted, has proven to be a mixed blessing for the Abiy administration. He managed to use the unusual circumstances to marginalize opposition leaders and at the same time crack down on critics, producing an electoral environment that he can feel comfortable with. But the longer the current political climate persists, and the longer opposition leaders remain locked in, the more likely it is that the Ethiopian people will dismiss the elections as illegitimate. Not make mistakes; Abiy’s reforms require serious political capital for his government (and by extension, himself), but lasting reforms will also need the acceptance of the Ethiopian public. A landslide electoral victory is half the story; finding acceptance for him is the other. Hence the mixed blessing.
The main mistake about it:
You might be surprised to see these developments in a country whose leader just won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 (for pushing for a peace deal with neighboring Eritrea) and is considered a true reformer. But although Abiy is a true reformer, he misses much of what he is trying to reform. He has done a much better job of setting out his goals with economic reforms and has made progress toward that end, but his political reforms have always been much more confusing. The reversal of some of his early victories in reforming one of Africa’s most repressive countries, such as re-arresting journalists and undermining opposition groups he had just received from exile, was a disappointment to many who sought ” reforms “as they are commonly conceived in the West.
Abiy’s ultimate goal is to move Ethiopia away from ethnic politics and into the kind of secular federalism that exists elsewhere. The problem? It is not clear that that is what Ethiopians want, and it is not clear that he can push that forward in a democracy.
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