Ethiopia’s National Election Board (NEBE), whose members are appointed through a process overwhelmingly influenced by the ruling regime, announced on Monday that Abiy’s Prosperity Party won 90% of federal parliament seats — an even larger landslide than its 2021 sweep.
Only 37% of Ethiopia’s population of 135 million was registered to vote, and an even smaller share of the population voted. The polls excluded the northern Tigray region’s 38 constituencies, home to six million people, where lingering political tensions between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front are threatening a return to war. More than 750,000 people remain displaced following the bloody 2020-22 Tigray conflict. In Amhara and Oromia, 143 polling stations failed to open due to armed insurgencies by the Fano militia and the Oromo Liberation Army, both of which have rejected the election and its results.
At least 47 opposition members and activists were arrested amid regime security raids and legal harassment in the three months before polling day. On June 11, the Oromo Federalist Congress — one of the country’s oldest democratic opposition blocs which partially boycotted the polls — called the elections a sham and warned of a deepening crisis of legitimacy for the regime in power.
They denounced irregularities including electoral officials’ partisan conduct in favor of the ruling party, voter intimidation, harassment of opposition representatives, removal of opposition party agents from polling stations, and restrictions on international observation efforts.
