Opinion: Ethiopia’s new Parliament: the inauguration of electoral authoritarianism

Eyob Aselefech Balcha

Yesterday, 5 October 2015, the new Ethiopian parliament was officially opened. The best depiction that captured the essence of this new parliament is its paramount role to the consolidation of electoral authoritarianism in Ethiopia. The parliament got its mandate from a general election held on 24^th May 2015. The electiontook place in a context where the ruling party massively manipulated state resources and institutions and established structures of political control down to each household level, especially in the rural areas. There were also substantiated cases of harassment, intimidation, imprisonment and extra-judicial killings of opposition party members including candidates both in the pre and post-election period. As a result, the ruling party and its affiliates claimed to have won 100 per cent of the parliament seats. Hence the entire processes of the election were nothing but a practices of putting a democratic mask to an authoritarian face.