Ethiopia's opposition brace for ruling party election landslide

Ethiopian opposition parties go into elections on June 1, facing threats, insurgencies, near-total state control of the media, and what they see as a pre-determined victory for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

When Abiy came to power in 2018, the first signs were encouraging. He released opposition members and journalists and resolved tensions with neighbouring Eritrea, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.

But that gave way to mounting repression and what has effectively become a one-party state.

His Prosperity Party (PP) took 96 percent of seats at the last election in 2021 and there is little sign of Abiy's vow that the next parliament will be "more diverse".

"This election will be the worst of all," said Mistresilasie Tamerat, secretary general of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP).

Their members faced "physical harassment and arbitrary arrests" and the "repression" of independent media, she said.

Reporters Without Borders ranks Ethiopia 148th out of 180 in its press freedom rankings.

"We are facing challenges in reaching our constituencies and are subjected to intense social media hate campaigns and disinformation by supporters of the ruling party," said Mistresilasie.

"Conducting elections under these conditions is essentially a ritual intended to show the international community that the government is elected every five years by the people," said Merera Gudina, president of the 11-strong Committee of Opposition Parties.

Ethiopia is Africa's second most populous country with some 130 million citizens. It has never held a fully free and fair election.

Since the overthrow of the brutal Stalinist dictatorship of the Derg in 1991, all elections have resulted in landslide results and accusations of fraud.

This time, Abiy's PP is running completely uncontested in 64 of Ethiopia's 547 constituencies.

No voting will take place in the northern Tigray region, where tensions are still high with the federal government over a civil war in 2020-2022 from which some one million people remain displaced.

Even the biggest opposition party, Ezema, will field candidates in just 293 seats, hoping to add to its current total of four MPs.

There is some question whether it is really an opposition party at all, however, given that one of its members has a ministerial post in the current government.

"We cannot say the election process is entirely fair and free, given the challenges we continue to encounter," Ezema member Eyoel Solomon told AFP.

But the opposition was getting more airtime in the media and this election would be "significantly better than previous ones", he added.

Neither PP members nor the electoral commission responded to requests for comment from AFP.

Regional parties must also contend with violent insurgencies, including a nationalist group called the Fano that has threatened to disrupt the vote in the Amhara region.

"We cannot freely conduct election campaigns in many areas," said Yesuf Ebrahim, a candidate for the Amhara National Movement. The Fano "intimidate, harass, and threaten our candidates and supporters with death", he said.

For Joseph Siegle, a researcher at the Washington-based Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, even in fairer conditions the PP would probably win by a landslide since it has "far more name recognition, organisational structures, and resources than other parties.

"Accordingly, the process appears to be open and credible," he added.

But multiple parties told AFP it was impossible to organise rallies, either due to insecurity or restrictions imposed by the authorities.