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Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi Will Likely Muscle His Way to Re-Election

2 years ago

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As the ballot counting continues in Ethiopia, tensions remain high.

Sunday's election is likely to give the incumbent Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's U.S.-allied party, Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, a majority in parliament and another five-year term.

It was the first nationwide vote since the troubled 2005 election when ensuing protests left nearly 200 dead.

A Human Rights Watch report deemed the elections a foregone conclusion – a veneer of democratic pretension, part of a "complex and multilayered strategy aimed at preventing political opposition and dissent."

Opposition leaders once again charge the vote has been compromised and that the EPRDF has routinely intimidated and jailed critics since 2005. Human Rights Watch said Monday that because of pre-election intimidation, international observers should condemn the parliamentary vote.

But the Ethiopian government insists the election was fair and transparent. European Union observers are slated to release a report Tuesday with details of the irregularities that were reported to them.

"They've marginalized a good bit of the opposition since 2005 simply by using their apparatus throughout the country to stop people from opening office," said Leslie Lefkow, senior researcher and Horn of Africa team leader for Human Rights Watch. "They're steadily closing democratic space."

The country has a deep history of protracted repression and rebellion. Prime Minister Zenawi has been in charge of the country since 1991, after leading a coalition of opposition forces to oust a 17-year communist government that killed hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians.

Though once heralded a part of a new generation of leaders who would bring democracy to Africa, Zenawi has increasingly come under fire by various human rights group for stifling dissent and silencing the media.

Ethiopia's most prominent independent paper was closed in December 2009 and in March, Zenawi accused the Voice of America of "engaging in destabilizing propaganda," likening it to a Rwanda radio station that called for genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

A 2009 State Department human rights report on Ethiopia, dismissed as a smear campaign by the EPRDF, cited illegal detentions, arrests, torture, killings, violations of press freedoms and restricting rights of opposition members.

Still, human rights groups condemn the U.S. and Ethiopia's other foreign donors for being timid, if not silent, and employing "quiet diplomacy" that has only exacerbated Ethiopia's slide toward political oppression.

Ethiopia plays a pivotal role in securing stability in an increasingly geopolitically strategic region. Zenawi is a significant western ally who has helped stem and combat Islamic rebels in the Greater Horn of Africa, namely in al Qaeda-linked Somalia to the east.

"If you look at the country as a snapshot, you see issues and problems, but you need to see it from the time it was established in 1991," said Donald Yamamoto, former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia and principal deputy assistant secretary for African affairs. "It's overcome so many problems, but of course they need to make more progress."

Over the weekend, members of Washington D.C.'s Ethiopian community, the largest in the country, gathered in restaurants on the U-Street "Little Ethiopia" corridor, reluctant to discuss their dissent openly, at least with the media.
"If we say anything against the government, we'll have trouble when we go back home," said Zack Gizaw, an Ethiopian film producer.

Obang Metho, executive director of the D.C.-based Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia, says his appeals for change have largely fallen on deaf ears.

"Zenawi is known as a partner in the war on terror, yet his regime is one of the most repressive in Africa," he said, noting the group's Web site is blocked by the government.

"Meles has been committing war crimes in the likes of Omar al-Bashir," the president of Sudan accused of human rights abuses and of being friendly to Osama bin Laden, argued Metho. "But he is getting away with no public scrutiny and the other has been issued a warrant by the International Criminal Court."

Asefa Heito, a cab driver in Washington, who left Ethiopia ten years ago to escape political oppression as an opposition leader, says hope is fleeting for Africa's third-most populous nation.

"We have a saying in Ethiopia," he muttered, driving around his cab listening to a radio broadcast in Amharic. "A loose teeth won't rest until it's pulled out."

But he says they'll have to wait another five years, if ever, to do that.

Click play below to watch an accompanying video report.

Filed Under: International, European Union

Tagged: Ethiopian elections, EthiopianElections, lineup3, Meles Zenawi, MelesZenawi, Obang Metho, ObangMetho, Solidarity Movement for New Ethiopia, SolidarityMovementForNewEthiopia, U Street, UStreet

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