Voting took place in Ethiopia on Monday in parliamentary and regional elections expected to hand Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s ruling \u200bProsperity Party an easy victory, despite significant unrest in much of the country.<\/p>\n
More than 50 million people were registered to vote, but there \u200cwas no election in the northern Tigray region, where organisers had cited “unfavourable conditions” in the aftermath of a two-year civil war and amid continuing political turmoil.<\/p>\n
Abiy, whose party has campaigned on the government’s economic record, said there would be more progress to come as he cast his ballot in his hometown of Beshasha in Oromiya region.<\/p>\n
“The Ethiopian people have demonstrated that they do not \u200bneed anyone to advise or lecture them in order to build their state and establish a democratic system,” he said. “These next five years will be \u200ba period where we see many historic turning points for Ethiopia.”<\/p>\n
The head of the African Union Election Observation Mission, former Kenyan \u2060President Uhuru Kenyatta, said voting was progressing smoothly.<\/p>\n
Melatwork Hailu, chairperson of the election board, said 143 polling stations did not open at all due to security reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn \u200bsome constituencies of Amhara and Oromiya, voting was interrupted due to security problems,\u201d she said, without giving more details.<\/p>\n
Abiy was appointed in 2018 following mass protests against the \u200blong-ruling EPRDF coalition. His Prosperity Party won 410 out of 484 seats in parliament in elections in 2021.<\/p>\n
Prosperity Party candidates have touted improved food security and strong\u00a0economic growth\u00a0in Africa’s second-most populous country that officials project will top 10% in 2026, one of the fastest rates on the continent.<\/p>\n
Nearly half of Ethiopia’s 135 million population is under 18.<\/p>\n
INSURGENCIES IN TWO BIGGEST REGIONS<\/strong><\/p>\n But Abiy faces \u200binsurgencies in the country’s two biggest regions, linked to grievances by different ethnic groups about alleged marginalisation within Ethiopia’s federal system.<\/p>\n In his native Oromiya, located in the \u200bsouth, fighting between government forces and the Oromo Liberation Army separatist group has killed hundreds of people in the past few years.<\/p>\n In neighbouring Amhara, a militia known as Fano has seized \u200cswathes of \u2060the countryside since 2023. As a result, voting did not take place in at least eight of Amhara’s 138 constituencies.<\/p>\n Though a 2022 peace deal ended the civil war in Tigray, which researchers say caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, a move last month by the main political party there to\u00a0reassert control\u00a0over the region\u2019s political administration has led Ethiopian officials and analysts to warn of the risk of fresh unrest.<\/p>\n ABIY’S PARTY FACES WEAK OPPOSITION<\/strong><\/p>\n The Prosperity Party is nevertheless expected to dominate the elections against a \u200bfragmented opposition weakened by internal rivalries. Results \u200bare expected by June 11.<\/p>\n Opposition parties \u2060accuse the federal government of undermining them by arresting their leaders and imposing legal obstacles to their political activities, charges denied by the government.<\/p>\n Reuters has not been able to report from inside Ethiopia since mid-February, when the Ethiopian Media Authority\u00a0declined to renew\u00a0\u200bthe accreditation for its three Addis Ababa-based journalists.<\/p>\n Upon taking office in 2018, Abiy moved to liberalise Ethiopia’s tightly controlled \u200beconomy and freed journalists, \u2060activists and other political prisoners. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for ending hostilities with neighbouring Eritrea.<\/p>\n His opponents and human rights activists accuse his government of reversing those gains in recent years by detaining journalists, shutting down civil society groups and overseeing military campaigns marked by atrocities.<\/p>\n The government has denied systematic human rights abuses and said its \u2060actions are necessary \u200bto protect national security.<\/p>\n The rapprochement with Eritrea has given way to\u00a0fresh animosity\u00a0in the past few \u200byears, in part over repeated declarations by Abiy that landlocked Ethiopia has a right to sea access.<\/p>\n Eritrea, which won its independence from Ethiopia in 1993, has\u00a0viewed the comments\u00a0as an implicit threat of military aggression. \u200bAbiy\u00a0has said\u00a0that although sea access is an \u201cexistential\u201d matter for Ethiopia, he intends to pursue it through dialogue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Voting took place in Ethiopia on Monday in parliamentary and regional elections expected to hand Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s ruling \u200bProsperity Party an easy victory, despite significant unrest in much of the country. More than 50 million people were registered to vote, but there \u200cwas no election in the northern Tigray region, where organisers had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21019,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,33],"tags":[124,114,4060],"class_list":["post-21018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-politics","tag-abiy-ahmed","tag-ethiopia","tag-prosperity-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21020,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21018\/revisions\/21020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}