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ABSTRACT
Ethiopia is generally considered to have ‘a dominant party authoritarian’ system in which the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), along with its affiliates, enjoy electoral dominance. This contribution argues that EPRDF’s electoral dominance in the 2015 regional elections, indeed in all the elections held in the past two decades, is partly the result of the party’s use of what Schedler refers to ‘menu of institutional manipulations’ including electoral rules, government agencies, local authorities and even civil society organizations, to maintain its dominance. The semi-consociational system that guides the relationships of the constituent parties of EPRDF also provides the latter an electoral edge over the opposition parties which are often fragmented. The paper further argues that EPRDF’s vanguardist self-view, which is an offshoot of its ‘revolutionary democracy’ ideology, underpins its drive to be a dominant party and to use all of the institutional manipulations under its disposal.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 The nine subnational units of the Ethiopian federation are Afar, Amhara, Oromia, Tigray, Somali, Hareri, Gambella, Benishangul-Gumuz, and the SNNP. Each of the first five regions has a dominant ethnic community and bears the name of the ethnic community. Hareri, a small city-state, has also taken the name of the ethnic community to which it is established, despite the community being numerically in the minority in the region. The rest of the regions, in particular the SNNP, are multi-ethnic with no ethnic community in the majority.
2 These are also referred to as ‘“semi-democracy,” “virtual democracy,” “electoral democracy,” “pseudo-democracy,” “illiberal democracy “semi-authoritarianism,” “soft authoritarianism”’ (Levitsky and Way, Citation2002).
3 The lower house is the House of Peoples Representatives (HoPR) while the upper house if the House of Federation (HoF). The HoF does not, however, play any legislative role. Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) Constitution 1995, Arts 53–63.
4 A national party is a party over 60 percent of whose founders are from at least four regions while regional party is a party about 60 percent of whose founding members are from a single region. The Revised Political Parties Registration Proclamation 573(2008) Arts 5 & 6.
5 After the fall of the Derg and during the transitional period EPRDF fighters ‘marched’ to the present-day SNNP. In the area, they mobilized the various ethnic groups into small ethnic-based political parties. The teachers in the area were particular targets of recruitment. Each of these parties now bears the name of the ethnic group they claim to represent followed by ‘people democratic organization’ (PDO). Hence these parties are commonly called as PDOs (Vaughan, Citation2006).
6 Members of this coalition are Ethiopian Social Democracy-Southern Coalition Unity Party (ESD-SCUP), Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), Union of Tigrayans for Democracy & Sovereignty (UTDS), and Sidama Liberation Movement (SLM). The EJDFF is composed of Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU), Unity of Southern Ethiopian Democratic Forces (USEDF) and Oromia Liberation National Party (OLNP). The USEDF, in turn, is a regional coalition made up Wolayta People’s Democratic Front, Gamo Democratic Union, and Gomogofa Peoples Democratic Union, which are local ethnic-based political parties operating in the SNNP.
7 Almost every ethnic-based party, which is a member of, or an affiliate to, EPRDF, seems to have a corresponding party in the opposition camp. For example, Medrek is composed of four ethnic political parties claiming to be the voices of the Oromo, Tigray, and several ethnic communities of the SNNP, more or less mirroring EPRDF. The Ethiopian Social Democracy-Southern Coalition Unity Party (ESD-SCUP), which is one of the members of the Medrek, is a coalition of a number of ethnic-based parties, which claim to represent certain ethnic communities in SNNP. The ESD-SCUP can thus be considered as the counterpart of the SEPDM in the opposition camp Wondwosen, Citation2009)
8 The election to the Addis Ababa City Council was previously held with the general elections. This has changed since the 2005 general election and now the elections to the two federal cities are held as a part of local elections. The last elections for the city councils of the two cities were held as part of the 2013 local election. Ashenafi Endale ‘Local elections get underway’ (Addis Fortune, 14 April Citation2013).
9 The Electoral Proclamation authorises the NEBE, with the approval of the HoPR, to conduct national and regional elections at different times, if the former deems necessary. This has not happened thus far. Art 28(2)
10 For instance, in 2005, the general election in the Somali region was held on 21 August 2015, three months after it was held in the rest of the country.
11 ኢትዮጵያ ብሔራዊ ምርጫ ቦርድ 2007 ዓ/ም ጠቅላላ ምርጫ አጠቃላይ ውጤት (National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) Official Results of the 2015 general elections).
12 Hareri is viewed and established as the regional homeland of the Hareri ethnic community. Yet the community constitutes only 13 percent of the total population in the region. The regional constitution provides for the establishment of two regional houses; the People's Representative Assembly (PRA) which has 22 seats and the Harari National Assembly (HNA) which has 14 seats. The two together form the 36 seats of the Hareri state council. The PRA is composed based on a consociational arrangement in which party/parties representing the Hareri community control a portion of the seats in the council while another representing the Oromo community controls the rest. The HNA is entirely controlled by a party representing the Hareri community. This arrangement excludes members of ethnic communities residing in the region other than the Oromo and Hareri from any representation (Van der Baken, Citation2014).
13 Opposition parties and/or independent candidates had some, in fact growing, representation, in the state councils. EPRDF and its affiliates were in control of 96 percent of the regional councils of the transitional period after the June 1992 local and regional elections (Keller, Citation1995). Many of the opposition parties boycotted the 1995 general election including, therefore, the regional election. Yet some individual who runs as independent candidates won a number of seats in some of the state councils. In the 2000 general election opposition parties, such as All Amhara People Organization (AAPO) and EDP, managed to win 53 seats in the Addis Ababa city the Amhara, Somali, and Benishangul-Gumuz state councils. In the 2005 general election, the opposition parties had an unparalleled success. CUD and UEDF in particular performed rather well in all the regions except in Tigray where TPLF (supposedly the core of EPRDF) is assumed to have unwavering support. CUD won 137 of the 138 seats of the Addis Ababa City Council along with 196 seats in Amhara, Oromia, SNNP, and Benishangul-Gumuz regions. UEDF in turn, won 143 seats in Oromia, Hareri, and SNNP regions. African Elections Database 14 May & 31 August 2000 regional state council elections in Ethiopia http://africanelections.tripod.com/et_2000state.html (Last accessed on 25 January 2017); African Elections Database 15 May & 21 August 2005 regional state council elections in Ethiopia http://africanelections.tripod.com/et_2005state.html (Last accessed on 25 January 2017).
14 The public protests began in Oromia as demonstrations against the master plan of the Addis Ababa city which sought to integrate the city with neighbouring towns that are found in Oromia. These were followed by other protests in Amhara region where protesters demanded that Wolqait, a district in Tigray, should be part of the Amhara region. The protest grew in size and increasingly became violent culminating in the death of dozens of people in the town of Bishoftu, at the Irecca festival, an Oromo traditional thanks giving day festival.
15 The Reporter ‘A veteran politician speaks out’ (February 2015) http://archiveenglish.thereporterethiopia.com/content/veteran-politician-speaks-out (Last accessed on 1 February 2017).
16 The Reporter ‘A veteran politician’.
17 The Proclamation creates a government agency called ‘Charities and Societies Agency’ which under the proclamation has the power to or not give licence to a CSO and a wide supervisory power over CSOs which allow it to interfere in the internal affairs CSOs.
18 A CSO is deemed Ethiopian if it is established by Ethiopian nationals, under Ethiopian law. A CSO that raises over 90 percent of its funds from within the country is also considered as Ethiopian CSO. A CSO formed by residents of Ethiopia and that receives over 10 percent of its revenue from foreign sources are considered ‘Ethiopian residents’ CSO. A foreign CSO is one established by foreigners, under a foreign law. Societies proclamation, art 2(2–4).
19 Strategic Thinking on East Africa ‘The Role of Civil Society in Ethiopia's Current Crisis: Who will make the first move?’ <http://www.strathink.net/ethiopia/the-role-of-civil-society-in-ethiopias-current-crisis-who-will-make-the-first-move/> accessed on 26 May 2017.
20 The Reporter ‘A veteran politician speaks outs’.
21 For more on how critical local authoriteries are for EPRDF's incumbency see Zemelak, Citation2011.
22 Consociationalism is an institutional arrangement that aims at ensuring that political powers are shared among major ethnic, religious, racial, or other social groups of a country, depending on the social divide in it, with a view to preventing conflicts. A consociational political system works on the basis of negotiation and compromise among the elites of the relevant identity groups. A government that comes about as a result of a consociational arrangement is thus often referred to as ‘government by elite cartel’. Consociationalsim has three institutional features ‘segmented’ or ‘group’ autonomy, PR and ‘mutual veto’. Consociational arrangement may work at a party level in a sense a party may be formed based on consocational principles (Bogaards, Citation2006; Andeweg, Citation2000; Lijphart, Citation2006).
23 See National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) Official Results of the 2015 general elections.
24 Yilikal Getinet (the former chairperson of Blue Party) and Lidetu Ayalew (the former chairman of EDP) have made this clear in various interviews. Recently EDP seems to have adopted a moderate view on the country's ethnic federalism. For an Amahric interview Yilikal gave to an Amharic magazine called Life visit http://hornaffairs.com/am/2013/05/22/ethiopia-semayawi-party-amhara-oromo/ (Last accessed 1 February 2017).
25 Neamin (Citation2017).
26 National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (Citation2017).
27 EPRDF Program: Introduction available at <https://www.slideshare.net/Bereh11/eprdf-program> (accessed on 18 April 2017). Emphasis added.
28 At a conference titled ‘የኢትዮጵያ የዴሞክራሲና የፌዴራል ስርዓት ግንባታ ከየት ወደ የት?’ (Ethiopia's democracy and federal system: Where are they and where are they heading?’) that Fana Broadcasting Corporate (FBC) hosted in October 2016, Lidetu Ayalew, a prominent opposition party leader, reacting to Bereket Simon's reference to the role of the opposition parties as EPRDF's ‘mirror’, stated that such references show that EPRDF does not take opposition parties seriously. The full video of the conference is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkHjaWImbpc&t=47s.