The Ethiopian 2010 federal and regional elections: Re-establishing the one-party state

Abstract

Ethiopia conducted its fourth federal and regional election on 23 May 2010. Considering the widespread pre-election interest and excitement the 2005 election attracted, and the vigorous role played by the opposition both during the campaign and in the post-election turmoil, the 2010 process was a huge let-down. The general impression among Ethiopians was that the outcome was a foregone conclusion, so the electorate was rather passively, or perhaps reluctantly, following the campaign and election discourse. The only excitement was related to how overwhelmingly the incumbent Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) would win; the general guesstimate was that the huge opposition gains in the 2005 elections, giving them one-third of the seats in the House of Representatives, would be pushed back in order for EPRDF to secure a solid victory of between 75–85 percent of the seats. It thus raised some eyebrows both domestically and internationally when the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) declared that EPRDF had secured 99.6 percent of the seats in Parliament – all but two, one going to the opposition and one to an EPRDF-friendly independent candidate.