Elections in the imperial periphery: Ethiopia hijacked

For once, the United States got it right when President Barack Obama, during his visit to India, denounced the November 2010 elections in Myanmar as ‘neither free nor fair’. Still, the military regime that has inflicted authoritarian rule on the country for some 48 years was not pretentious enough to claim to have won more than about 80% of the vote. On 23 May 2010, five years after the fraudulent elections of 2005, Ethiopians were called to the ballot box to choose their members of parliament. There were no more than muted voices from the United States questioning the official results that saw the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Democratic Revolutionary Front (EPDRF) proclaiming, with almost childish pride, that along with allied parties it had won 99.4% of seats, based on 93% voter turnout. The EPDRF and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi know they can count on Washington to turn a blind eye towards an ongoing process of enforcement of standardisation and eventual elimination of all opposition within the political, economic, and cultural institutions of a state. Popular protest against the fraudulent election results of 2005 were violently suppressed by the EPDRF regime, as tens of thousands of demonstrators were beaten, detained and incarcerated in makeshift concentration camps like Denkorochaka in North Wello province (Brigaldino 2006a). During the 2010 campaign, a divided, intimidated and poorly organised opposition was unable to mount a serious electoral challenge against the ruling regime. The EPDRF had been preparing for years for this round of elections and nothing was left to chance. Notably in the countryside, where few, if any independent observers could monitor the vote casting and counting process, the outcome was largely a foregone conclusion. The opposition was simply unable to mount any sort of logistical challenge to the ruling party, which unapologetically utilised the state machinery to facilitate its re-election. Therefore, while there never was any real doubt the EPDRF would retain power, the sweeping result did raise a few eyebrows abroad. The ruling party and its partner parties won 544 of the 547 seats to the House of Peoples’ Representatives (HPR), and all but four of the 1904 seats in the State Councils. An independent candidate and a candidate from one of the main opposition coalitions, the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Unity Forum (Medrek), won seats to the HPR. A candidate from a relatively smaller party, the Argoba People’s Democratic Organisation (APDO), won the third seat. Truly, Soviet-era kind of results. It took a few months before the European Union Election Observation Mission presented its final report. In a diplomatic tone it suggested that