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A contest of visions: Ethiopia's 2010 election

At the time of writing this piece in early 2010, Ethiopia’s next general election, scheduled for May 2010, is only a few months away. As a result, this article is a pre-electoral assessment, written in the knowledge that the piece will appear shortly after the elections. However, even at this time it is clear that tensions are extremely high in the run-up to the election. Numerous opposition politicians have recently been arrested, with one facing life in prison, accused of plotting against the state. Both government and opposition leaders are expressing concern about the potential for election-related violence. As one of the vaunted ‘third wave democracies’, Ethiopia’s democratic tradition is not only historically shallow, but also largely procedural. Like so many post1991 democracies, Ethiopia occupies a political middle ground, caught between old authoritarianism on the one hand, and a robust democracy, with its checks and balances, on the other. Ethiopia’s 2010 election will either allow for the consolidation of this democratic transition, or, as is much more likely, will prove to be an empty exercise serving only to reverse the democratic gains of the last 19 years. Ethiopia’s last general election in 2005 was a sobering experience for the ruling party. At times it looked as though the government would be the latest regime to fall victim to one of the ‘colour-coded revolutions’ so fashionable at the time, such as Georgia’s red, Ukraine’s orange or Kyrgyzstan’s pink revolutions. The aftermath of the disputed election was also an eye-opener for Ethiopia’s opposition coalition. The weeks following the election saw nearly 200 protesters killed in the streets by security forces, and more than 40 opposition leaders arrested, convicted of taking part in ‘acts against the constitutional order’ and sentenced to life in prison, including the mayor of Addis Ababa, Berhanu Nega. Most were pardoned months later. The two main opposition coalitions quickly collapsed due to differences between the leaders and, more importantly, due to differences in their visions of how to move forward politically. Even without the backdrop of the 2005 election protest and subsequent deaths the 2010 election would have been problematic; however the events five years ago make the likelihood of a truly free and fair election minimal.