Ethiopia’s Election Farce: Abiy Ahmed’s Journey from Reform to Repression

On Monday, millions of Ethiopians went through the motions of casting ballots in an election whose victor was never in doubt. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party is poised to secure a commanding parliamentary majority, completing a stunning reversal for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Viewed from Addis Ababa, the vote is a carefully managed spectacle: critical opposition figures have been jailed or forced into hiding, independent media are muzzled, and conflict-ridden regions such as Tigray—home to roughly six million people—were largely excluded from the poll. What began three years ago as Africa’s most celebrated democratic opening has congealed into a textbook case of competitive authoritarianism, Western diplomats observe.

The contours of Abiy’s fall from grace are by now well rehearsed. Swept into power in 2018 on a wave of protests against decades of iron-fisted rule, the young prime minister moved swiftly to dismantle his predecessor’s repressive apparatus. He released political prisoners, invited exiled opposition groups to return, lifted censorship and, within just 90 days, defused a 20-year frozen conflict with neighbouring Eritrea—an achievement that won him global adulation and the Nobel committee’s imprimatur. Yet the reforms that defined his early premiership, recounted by analysts in Dhaka and elsewhere, have been methodically unwound. A brutal civil war in Tigray, marked by credible allegations of widespread atrocities, deepened ethnic violence across the land, and spawned a vast humanitarian crisis. The same tools of state security that Abiy once decried are now turned against domestic critics, from Oromo nationalists to Amhara activists.

On the ground, the climate of fear is palpable. In a hotel bar in the capital, 23-year-old Mistresilasie Tamerat, Ethiopia's most prominent opposition politician, agreed to speak only after elaborate precautions. “Anyone who criticizes the government ends up in prison—or lives in fear, just like me,” she told a German reporter, crouching behind a high-backed chair to avoid detection. Tamerat, who abandoned journalism because of relentless harassment, is far from alone. Rights groups document a surge in arbitrary detentions, and many candidates from the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress and the National Movement of Amhara boycotted the process, denouncing it as a sham. For millions trapped in conflict zones or displaced by ethnic cleansing, the ballot box is an absurd abstraction.

Geopolitically, Abiy’s turn poses an acute dilemma for Western capitals. Ethiopian troops remain a linchpin of counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa, and Western donors have long viewed the country as a bulwark of stability. Yet as the election approached, Washington and European allies issued rare public rebukes, freezing some aid and warning that the process would lack legitimacy. African Union observers, however, have been more circumspect, reflecting a continental reluctance to censure a leader who still commands diplomatic weight inside the bloc. This distance between Atlantic and African perspectives, note diplomats in Brussels, widens each time Abiy’s security forces mount a mass crackdown.

Ethiopia’s post-election landscape will likely be defined by deepening polarisation rather than reconciliation. The international community’s leverage is limited, and Abiy shows no sign of reverting to the conciliator of 2018. With the credibility of the electoral process shattered, the country’s centrifugal pressures—ethnic rivalries, economic distress, unresolved grievances in Tigray and beyond—could accelerate. Long-heralded as Africa’s great democratic hope, Ethiopia now confronts a future in which its Nobel-winning leader presides over an increasingly brittle and fragmented state.