By TAMRAT G. GIORGIS AND MIKIAS SEBSIBE, Addis Fortune
An unassuming voter in Polling Station of One, of Ambo Town, Western Shewo Zone of the Oromia Regional State, marked his vote alongside the candidate by the name of Metiku Tesso (PhD), fielded by the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). A president of Ambo University very much liked by residents of the town, Metiku ran against five other candidates fielded by parties such as Medrek, the All Ethiopian Unity Party (AEUP), Oromo National Congress (ONC), and Oromo Liberation Unity Front (OLUF).
The unassuming voter, one of the 807 residents who voted that day out of the 883 registered at that polling station, made a statement in the box alongside Woldeyes Mengesha, an MP for this constituency, who ran under the Medrek platform. Written in Amharic, this voter exercised his freedom of expression with the phrase “F . . . you!”
However, he did not do much good for the candidate he or she wanted to support. This particular vote was disqualified, joining 84 other votes deemed invalid for various reasons.
There was of course another similar exercise in the freedom of expression where a voter felt compelled to send a message, writing, “No one knows; God bless Ethiopia!” This too was cast in favour of the candidate from the incumbent.
Nonetheless, it did not stop Metiku from winning the race in this particular polling station, with a huge margin. The 395 votes cast in his favour surpassed his immediate challenger, from Medrek, by 82 votes. Other candidates from the AEUP and OLUF received nine and five votes, respectively, while the votes cast in favour of the ONC were all made invalid because the candidate pulled out on the morning of the polling date.
Polling Station One in Ambo Town, a traditional stronghold of parties against the EPRDF, was one of the 93 polling stations with a total of 57,884 registered voters, with an 84% in voter turnout recorded. This was where the incumbent, Woldeyes, drew a spectacular win in 2005, claiming a total of 30,837 votes.
“Things have changed now,” observed Abebe Seyoum, a teacher in Ambo for 28 years and coordinator of the electoral board’s team at the polling station.
The morning following the polling date, after pasting the results on the gate of the bus station that had been turned into a polling station, many residents, several of them youths, immediately gathered around the gate to see the results, he said. For some, it was too good to be true. They shook their heads in disbelief and murmured words of disapproval.
The scene in Ambo, both the spectacular results in favour of the ruling party as well as public reactions the following day, appeared to be similar a few kilometres away. Here the high-flying Medrek candidate, Merera Gudina (PhD), fell short (by 152 votes) of his rival, Yohannes Metiku of the OPDO/EPRDF, in Kebele 1/A of Guder Town. This was part of a constituency where Merera had commanded a staggering 27,828 votes in 2005. In the same pattern as in Ambo, the other candidates suffered humiliation. The Ethiopian Democratic Party’s (EDP’s) candidate got six votes, while the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (CUDP) got two, and each of the candidates from the ONC and OLUF received one.
This appeared later on to be a facsimile of almost all the constituencies across the country. There are a couple of constituencies in Tigray Regional State, where candidates had no one to vote for them. Such was the case in the Kunama and Enticho constituencies where candidates under Medrek’s platform received no votes at all, while candidates for the AEUP suffered a similar fate in Adwa (out of the town), Debre Genet and Wikro Maray.
Crunching the numbers, indeed, reveal interesting patterns, but buried under the rubble of politicking on how the ruling party pulled the electoral rug under its challengers. For instance, in Tigray Regional State, a region that has 38 seats in Federal Parliament, a total of 1.9 million votes were made in favour of the TPLF/EPRDF, the largest being 87,332 recorded in Maychew Town, southern Tigray. The second largest number of votes (22,174) were cast for Medrek, where its iconic candidate in the region, Seyee Abraha, received 3,314, larger by nine votes than all of the votes bagged by Hailu Shawel’s AUEP in the entire region.
“I am in fact surprised by the number of votes Medrek has received there,” Meles Zenawi, chairman of the incumbent who beat his second rival in Adwa Town, Aregash Adane, candidate for Arena/Medrek, by a margin of 40,987 votes, said during a press conference that he held a day after the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) released provisional results. Aregash, once a very close ally of Meles during and after the armed struggle, received a total of 229 votes.
Meles had a total of 35,384 votes in 2005.
“I am not surprised with the result,” Aregash told the Amharic weekly, Sendek, in her reaction to the results.
Her claims that the electoral field was not fair or level resonated among the majority of the opposition leaders of all colours and were shared by monitoring institutions such as the European Union Election Observation Mission and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.
The largest number of votes cast, in favour of an opposition candidate, in Tigray were recorded in Mekelle town. The once mighty politician of the region, Gebru Asrat, former president of the state and current chairman of the opposition Arena, drew 6,843 votes, in his bid against the incumbent, Addisalem Balema (PhD). This was all the more surprising for pundits of the region’s politics who had predicted a close call in the electoral contest, if not a loss for Addisalem, who had a won in the same constituency in 2005, drawing a total of 53,714 votes.
The biggest surprise was Addis Abeba, a city where its residents have 23 representatives in Federal Parliament. Voters, who had overwhelmingly turned to the opposition CUDP in 2005, with 100pc of the seats going to it, have awarded all but one seat to the EPRDF. The largest win in 2005, of 58,267 votes, granted to Befekadu Degiffe (PhD), who now resides in the United States, has now gone to Rawda Redi of the EPRDF, who ran in Wereda 24. She received a total of 61,551 votes. Indeed, this was again the largest number of votes given to any of the 23 constituencies in Addis Abeba, from a total of 564,764 votes cast in favour of the EPRDF.
The second largest contender in Addis Abeba was Medrek, which received a total of 384,245 votes, while Lidetu Ayalew’s EDP received 35,405 and the AEUP received 19,234. Its chairman, Hailu Shawel, received 2,025 votes, against his EPRDF rival, Aster Mamo, the lone female executive member of the ruling party, who enjoyed a total of 25,876 votes. This ought to be shocking to Hailu, for he had a total of 37,870 votes in 2005.
Unlike the other opposition leaders, Hailu conceded defeat in Addis Abeba, where he said the irregularities he noted would have no bearing on the final tally. All votes cast to opposition parties combined could not come close to the votes earned by the ruling party, he told the Amharic weekly, Addis Press. Indeed, votes to all opposition and independent candidates, 11 in each of the 23 constituencies, were short of the 90,571 votes awarded to the EPRDF in Addis Abeba.
Hailu Araya (PhD), Gizachew Shiferaw (Eng), Negasso Gidada (PhD), and Temesgen Zewdie, all from Medrek, suffered blows from their respective electoral underperformances of 19,363, 24,744, 9,094, and 11,524 votes. They were beaten by Aster Mamo, Zerihun Kebede (39,433), Alemayehu Tegenu (13,639), and Brenesh Abay (18,154), all from the EPRDF. Even the passionate and angry candidate of Medrek, Andualem Arage, could not muster a win in his constituency of Wereda 1/9. His votes of 15,089 were short by 7,821 votes cast to his rival from the EPRDF, Feleke Yimer.
“Claiming to be a governing party through votes earned under duress does not show electoral victory,” Andualem told the Amharic weekly, Awaramba Times.
Medrek, ironically, came out of the elections as the only opposition party that will have an MP in Parliament, according to provisional results released by our press time on Saturday, June 5, 2010. Girma Seifu, running under Medrek’s platform, pulled the rug out from under the EPRDF’s Kemil Ahmed with 72 more votes. He received 12,188 votes in Wereda 6, Merkato, the epicentre of electoral resistance in 2005.
His party, despite the loss it suffered, however, has shown unexpected performance during the last elections, surpassing all votes given to the other opposition parties combined.
“Medrek has disproved those other opposition parties who claimed to have a better alternative for the Ethiopian people,” he told the Awaramba Times.
How did each of the actors in this electoral play arrive at where they are today? The answer varies depending on who responds. Leaders of the various opposition groups attribute the results to a lack of political space, intimidation of opposition operatives, and the imbalance between the incumbent and its opponents.
“All of these are speculation,” Temesgen told Fortune. “We would have won the election had there not been intimidation and harassment.”
The problem with the opposition parties is that they try to externalise problems instead of looking at themselves, according to Demeke Achiso, a Political Science instructor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Addis Abeba University.
It is time for self assessment, argue other opposition leaders offering slightly different views. This includes Lidetu Ayalew, a candidate for the EDP with impressive performance during the televised debate who lost his bid for Parliament from his native Buguna constituency, in Amhara Regional State.
“[The EPRDF’s] performance over the past five years and the fragmentation and weaknesses among the other political parties might have contributed to its victory,” Lidetu told Fortune. “We have been saying, all along, that the opposition parties should look into themselves.”
Lidetu attributed his party’s devastating electoral loss to its policy of frankness.
Expectedly, the incumbent believes that the most important factor for its landslide victory is its performance over the past five years. But not in a way that the opposition says it did.
“Our performance in bringing about economic development and good governance contributed the most to this victory,” Hailemariam Desalegn, one of the visible EPRDF leaders during the electoral campaign, told Fortune. “We had to conduct the campaign process in a managed way, taking nothing for granted, and this also helped us reap the fruits of our labour.”
But the contribution of the “bickering among the opposition parties and their empty promises,” was too hard for the public to swallow, Hailemariam also claimed.
Three main reasons may have contributed to the unprecedented electoral gains by the incumbent, Demeke argued.
Top on the list is the performance and achievements of the incumbent over the last five years, Demeke said. However, the “squabble” amongst opposition parties themselves also played a vital role in tipping the balance in favour of the incumbent, according to him.
“Voters, I believe, have been watching the track record of the opposition parties since the 2005 elections,” Demeke told Fortune.
The third factor that may have contributed to the outcome of the elections, according to the political analyst, is the change in tactical strategy by the ruling party.
“In the 2005 elections, there was more or less an even playing field for all parties,” Demeke said. “But, this time, much of the playing field was dominated by the ruling party.”
Other aspects such as the lack of clarity of policy differences between parties are also considered as contributing factors by many.
“Middle ground voters, who are usually politically conscious, find it difficult to choose from so many parties whose policies are not clearly defined,” said Demeke.
In order for the opposition to ensure a better result for the next elections, a lesser number of opposition parties but with a solid and stable ground will be more advantageous for the multiparty system, according to the analyst.
Forming some kind of a coalition among opposition parties is also seen as the way forward for oppositions to avoid such kinds of election outcomes, according to Ayele Chamisso, chairman of the CUDP. However, those on the Medrek side will have to wait for the verdict of the NEBE on their complaint. They left the option of going to court open if they are not satisfied with the board’s verdict.
“Since we are a forum of eight parties, each party will conduct independent and collective meetings between its members,” Temesegn told Fortune. “We will decide on the way forward.”
The incumbent, on the other hand, which has enjoyed a 99.9pc victory in parliamentary seats in these general elections, foresees bigger challenges in the coming five years.
“The responsibility is much bigger this time,” Hailemariam said. “Since we are in a good renaissance mood, our five-year experience will help us more in building upon our successes.”
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