ETHIOPIA: As 2004 ends, all eyes on next year’s poll
By Anthony Mitchell
ADDIS ABABA, Dec 17, 2004 (IPS) — In Ethiopia’s plethora of street cafés, above the whistling of steam escaping from ancient cappuccino machines, the talk is of next year’s parliamentary elections.
It is no surprise. In a country with a 2,000-year history, this will be only the fifth time that Ethiopians have gone to the polls. And, elections in 1992, 1995 and 2000 were marred by chaos and serious irregularities.
This time, the government and opposition parties have pledged to have a vote that is “free and fair”. International observers have been invited to monitor the election, and government says it will crack down on any abuses by party supporters.
When voting gets underway on May 15, 38 million people are expected to cast ballots at 35,000 polling stations in 547 constituencies, a process that will cost the country 5.2 million dollars.
Some 67 opposition groups are expected to challenge the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) which dominates parliament. The party has been in power since 1991 when it ousted dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam after a 17-year guerrilla war. During the last national elections in 2000, the EPRDF won 479 seats in the 547-seat assembly.
The commitment to fair elections was first made public in early November when the government and opposition groups met to discuss electoral reform. In a country that analysts often describe as polarised, hampered by a “for us or against us” attitude on all sides, the meeting was heralded as a significant break through.
Some 29 changes to electoral law were agreed, including opposition access to state-controlled media. These developments have been welcomed by opposition groups.
“We are confident we can win once the playing field is level,” said Merera Gudina, head of the Oromo National Congress. His party, which is part of the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF), a coalition of 14 opposition groups, had threatened to boycott the elections if reforms were not made.
However, points of dispute and concern remain.
The opposition would like to see political parties represented on the national election board. And, there are calls for the voting system to be changed from the current first-past-the-post system to one of proportional representation.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) also complains that opposition supporters are regularly tortured.
“These abuses are being committed by taking membership in opposition political parties as an excuse,” EHRCO said in a recent report. “These illegal acts include extra-judicial killings, torture, eviction from farmland, intimidation, denial of relief food, prohibition of public services and discrimination against participation in social forums and institutions.”
The government says it is taking steps to prevent abuse of opposition political supporters and that it has spread the message about the need for fair elections to all regions of the country. Opposition groups are cautiously optimistic in the face of this news.
“We will have to see what happens in the run up to the election,” says Beyene Petros, vice chair of the UEDF. “The government does not have a good record in their relations with the opposition groups but perhaps with these meetings and the changes to the electoral law this is changing.”
Wealthy nations, which currently bankroll Ethiopia to the tune of 1.9 billion dollars a year in aid, see the elections as a litmus test of the government’s commitment to democratic reform.
The European Union (EU) alone will supply Addis Ababa with almost 466 million dollars in budgetary support during the next three years. These are funds that go directly into government coffers, affording donors – as EU development and humanitarian aid commissioner Louis Michel says – “leverage” over the authorities.
“We are in a much stronger position to make progress on human rights issues with direct budget support because the stakes are so much higher,” he notes.
German ambassador Helga Graefin Strachwit agrees: “The question of good governance, including democratization, is definitely one of the criteria for direct budget support.”
“You wouldn’t give budget support to a country where you were not convinced that good governance would at least be a high topic if it were not already in place,” she adds. “To give budget aid you must be convinced that the right direction at least is being taken.”
Ethiopia has seen its aid flows from the international community increase in recent years, apart from a sharp drop to a little over 600 million dollars during its bloody two-and-a-half year war with Eritrea. Even so, it is widely agreed that more funds are needed to help the country meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Eight MDGs were decided on by global leaders during the United Nations’ millennium assembly in 2000. Amongst other things, the goals are aimed at achieving universal primary education and halving global poverty – all of this by 2015.
Ethiopia’s government, the UN and the World Bank estimate that 122 billion dollars will be needed over the next decade to help the country achieve these targets. With a population of 70 million, the majority eking out a living as subsistence farmers and living below the international poverty line of a dollar a day, government is critically in need of aid to implement its development agenda.
A clean election will be a key factor in getting this aid.
“I would not really say the last two elections have been that free and that fair but I think there is more hope the next one could be,” says Graefin Strachwit.
“We do hear of harassment of opposition members of course,” she adds, but notes further: “We are in a close dialogue with the government and insist that those unfortunate things are being looked into and are being stopped – and that the culprits are brought to court.”