BY DIRRIBA TESHOME
Ethiopia has done a great deed in its history by holding a fair, reliable and democratic election for the first time. Electorates casted their votes without any intimidations or intermediations from the government security forces unlike the prior mock five elections.
In the past elections, the government security forces used to threaten voters insisting them to vote only for the then ruling party. They were told that government continues whether or not they vote either for the government or the then opposition political parties.
If the electorates voted for the opposition parties, they were identified by the local security networks and were prohibited from the public services. For example, those who voted against the government were not allowed to renew their identification cards easily. And some responsibilities were given to them in order to get such public services and to reconcile with the ruling party.
In the same way, in the last several weeks of the election campaigns, in almost every local districts, there used to be meetings for the different social groupings such as youth, women, residents, besides the government structured youth federation, youth associations, youth forum, youth league, women federation, women associations, women forum, women league and residents forum on which every participant was paid some amount of money.
These meetings were prepared separately for each organization but in most cases the participants were a like for the similar categories. The ruling party provided the budget which the beverages and butchery were bought naming it refreshment for election campaign.
The coordinators were paid high for organizing the events in addition to the budgets they robbed from the community in the fake bids they did for the refreshment. On the meetings, the manifesto of the then ruling party-Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democracy Party-EPRDF- and its election logo printed in capes, t-shirts and scarves were distributed to the participants.
Business owners and public employees were forced to contribute money for the front to help the election campaign refreshments. Refusing the offer was a very critical political problem. One who spoke against the plan had a very destructive attitude for EPRDF.
The intermediates also offer the election executives different favors in order to assist the party win. Even, I remember that the front had insisted election executives in the woreda where I was to let its members to copy the registration files and promised them to offer whatever they may request on the 2010 National General Election.
Those who refused to do so were forced to leave the responsibility and were threatened politically in their future life. They were even considered as those who were careless for the nation building.
By the same token, the party members who refused to insist the election executives were threatened and obliged to lobby them. If failed in the lobbying assignment, he or she could lose the position or had no hope for a allocation after the election.
And during the election processes, the front’s representatives used to threaten voters. For instance, Artist Debebe Eshetu said on a media that he was hovered by both the government security forces and the EPRDF representative during the third election in 2005 when the international organizations much-admired the election as democratic.
And he was devoid of the right to vote in the other elections. This was true for all active politicians and members of the political parties in the last five elections. As a reason, there was intimidation in those preceding five elections.
In contrary to the five elections, the Sixth National General Elections of Ethiopia is completely different. All the electorates elected freely and honestly; they have demonstrated their trusts by lining up from early in the morning to 3pm in the evening.
Likewise, there was no intermediation unlike the prior elections in this sixth election. I have not come across the government lobbying the people based on the social groupings like in the EPRDF era ahead of the election.
Yes, of course it has grouped its members and supporters to campaign for the election but has not insisted the public at large to either campaign of vote for its party in Addis Ababa where I am an eyewitness. And my informants, most of them friends of mine, from different parts of the country have proved the same.
Therefore, the Sixth National General Election of Ethiopia held this week was very effective and very promising in the enhancement of the democratic system and prosperity in the nation.
Editor’s Note: The views entertained in this article do not necessarily reflect the stance of The Ethiopian Herald
The Ethiopian Herald June 26/2021
