Ethiopian local elections, 2008

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Ethiopia held nationwide elections for local offices in the kebele and woreda assemblies on 13 and 20 April 2008. By-elections were also held for seats in the Addis Ababa City Council, and in the national and regional parliaments that were vacant due to the Coalition for Unity and Democracy’s (CUD) refusal to participate at the same time. By law, the local elections were supposed to be held as part of the 2005 general elections, but due to the resulting unrest they were postponed. [1]

Ethiopia country in East Africa

Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country in the northeastern part of Africa, popularly known as the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, and Somalia to the east, Sudan and South Sudan to the west, and Kenya to the south. With over 102 million inhabitants, Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country in the world and the second-most populous nation on the African continent that covers a total area of 1,100,000 square kilometres (420,000 sq mi). Its capital and largest city is Addis Ababa, which lies a few miles west of the East African Rift that splits the country into the Nubian Plate and the Somali Plate.

A kebele is the smallest administrative unit of Ethiopia, similar to a ward, a neighbourhood or a localized and delimited group of people. It is part of a woreda (district), itself usually part of a Zone, which in turn are grouped into one of the Regions based on ethno-linguistic communities that comprise the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Each kebele consists of at least five hundred families, or the equivalent of 3,500 to 4,000 persons. There is at least one in every town with more than 2,000 population. A keftanya, or representative, had jurisdiction over six to twelve kebeles.

Addis Ababa Capital in Ethiopia

Addis Ababa is the capital and largest city of Ethiopia. According to the 2007 census, the city has a population of 2,739,551 inhabitants.

Contents

Background

This election was important for the victors would control the local government structures, the kebeles and woredas, which are the key institutions for controlling local communities and are the main service providers. "For members of the local councils," writes Aalen and Tronvoll, "re-election is a matter of keeping their daily bread; and for new candidates, membership in one of the councils is viewed as a way of getting access to scarce state resources." [2]

While the international community was a significant player in the 2005 elections, in this election they were on the sidelines. In a letter sent to a group of nations providing foreign aid to Ethiopia, of 26 December 2007, three party leaders -- Beyene Petros (United Ethiopian Democratic Forces), Temesken Zewdie (CUD), and Bulcha Demeksa (Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement) -- desperately pleaded for their intervention: "We are drawing your attention to this critical matter of election observing because we are afraid that the manner in which the NEB is currently running the process leading up to the elections is predictably a way to a non-consensual election outcome." [3] Possible pressure by donor countries on the Ethiopian government was neutralized by the desire to fulfill the Millennium Development Goals, a fact which the government knows well. When a group of donor countries tried to play hard-ball with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and suspended money payments in the aftermath of the 2005 election, he calmly told them to pack up and go home if they weren’t interested in supporting the development of the country. "After a few weeks," notes Aalen and Tronvoll, "all donor countries caved in and resumed full development assistance to the country." [4]

Foreign aid to Ethiopia Overview of aid

After World War II, Ethiopia began to receive economic development aid from the more affluent Western countries. Originally the United Kingdom was the primary source of this aid, but they withdrew in 1952, to be replaced by the United States. Between 1950 and 1970, one source estimated that Ethiopia received almost US$600 million in aid, $211.9 million from the US, $100 million from the Soviet Union and $121 million from the World Bank. Sweden trained the Imperial Bodyguard and India at one point contributed the majority of foreign-born schoolteachers in the Ethiopian educational system.

Beyene Petros (Ph.D.) is a professor of Biology at Addis Ababa University and a former member of the Ethiopian House of People's Representatives, representing an electoral district in Badawacho of Hadiya Zone. He is currently the chairman of one of the largest opposition political parties in Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Forum Medrek.

United Ethiopian Democratic Forces political party

The United Ethiopian Democratic Forces is a coalition of several political parties in Ethiopia which combined to compete for seats in the Ethiopian General Elections held on May 15, 2005.

Results

The ruling party, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), regained control of the Addis Ababa city council, and won all but one of the 39 parliamentary by-elections. In local elections, the EPRDF won more than 3.5 million of the 3.6 million open seats. The National Elections Board of Ethiopia reported the turnout was 93% of eligible voters. [5]

Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front Ethiopian political coalition

The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front is a left-wing political coalition in Ethiopia. The EPRDF consists of four political parties, namely Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), Amhara Democratic Party (ADP), Oromo Democratic Party (ODP) and Southern Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement (SEPDM).

Although this was the first election in Ethiopia since the tumultuous 2005 general election, several opposition parties sat out the election. Bulcha Demeksa, said his party had only been able to put forward 2% of the 6,000 candidates it wanted to because they had been threatened by government supporters. Likewise, another opposition party, the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces said that of its 20,000 candidates who attempted to register, only 10,000 succeeded, and only 6,000 of those actually had their names placed on the lists at polling stations. [6]

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Politics of Ethiopia

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Elections in Ethiopia

At the federal level, Ethiopia elects a legislature. The Federal Parliamentary Assembly has two chambers: the Council of People's Representatives with not more than 550 members as per the constitution but actually nearly 547 members, elected for five-year terms in single-seat constituencies; and the Council of the Federation with 117 members, one each from the 22 minority nationalities, and one from each professional sector of its remaining nationalities, designated by the regional councils, which may elect them themselves or through popular elections.

2005 Ethiopian general election election

Ethiopia held general elections on May 15, 2005, for seats in both its national House of Peoples' Representatives and in four regional government councils. Under pressure from the international community, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi promised that this election would be proof that more democracy would come in this multi-ethnic nation; international elections observers from the European Union (EU) and the U.S.-based Carter Center were present to observe the results. This election succeeded in attracting about 90% of the registered voters to the polls. A government ban on protests was imposed throughout the election period.

The Coalition for Unity and Democracy, commonly referred to by its English abbreviation CUD, or occasionally CDU; its Amharic abbreviation, used in Ethiopia, is Qinijit, in English writing often referred to as Kinijit) is a coalition of four existing political parties of Ethiopia which combined to compete for seats in the Ethiopian General Elections held on May 15, 2005. Its leader was Dr. Hailu Shawul.

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The following lists events that happened during 2005 in Ethiopia.

References

  1. ↑ Lovise Aalen and Kjetil Tronvoll, "The 2008 Ethiopian local elections: The return of electoral authoritarianism", African Affairs, 108/430, p. 111 (accessed 17 March 2009)
  2. ↑ Aalen and Tronvoll, "2008 Ethiopian local elections", pp. 116f
  3. ↑ Aalen and Tronvoll, "2008 Ethiopian local elections", p. 117
  4. ↑ Aalen and Tronvoll, "2008 Ethiopian local elections", p. 119
  5. ↑ "Clean sweep for Ethiopian party", BBC website, first published 13 April 2008 (accessed 26 October 2009)
  6. ↑ "Ethiopia votes in local elections", BBC website, first published 19 May 2008 (accessed 26 October 2009)
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