May 6, 2026
Erestu Legese Beyene,
Brazil
Introduction: The Mirage of Choice
Ethiopia is once again heading toward another election, but it would be naive to confuse the coming vote with the democratic renewal. The country is approaching its seventh national election in June 2026 under the comforting language of reform, stability, and national progress, however, the reality on the ground points in a very different direction. Ethiopia’s elections have too often served not as instruments of accountability but as political rituals carefully managed to preserve incumbent power while denying citizens a real chance to change it.
This is not a new issue; the 2005 election briefly shattered the illusion that electoral politics in Ethiopia were merely ceremonial. It briefly disrupted the logic of control and opened a rare space for genuine competition, mass participation and political contestation. For a moment, electoral politics seemed capable of translating popular demands into institutional change. However, that opening closed quickly in violence and repression, exposing the fragility of Ethiopia’s democratic experiment and deepening the rupture between the state and society. What followed was not democratic consolidation but a renewed and more sophisticated recalibration of control.
By the sixth election in 2021, this pattern had become unmistakable. Held in the shadow of civil war, insecurity, boycotts, and uneven participation, it delivered a landslide victory for the ruling party. Analysts such as Abbink and Lyons argue that this was the political result of a heavily constrained environment in which opposition parties were weakened, citizens were afraid, and large parts of the country could not participate normally.
The 2026 election is unlikely to deviate from this trajectory. Rather, they are organized within a political system that has learned how to stage elections without surrendering power. This essay argues that the upcoming election is not designed to generate accountability but to operate as a procedural shield that legitimizes incumbency while postponing reckoning for the political, economic, and human costs accumulated over the past five years.
The Promise of 2018
The current political climate in Ethiopia cannot be understood without revisiting the 2018 transition. When Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, the political atmosphere changed rapidly. Political prisoners were released, exiled figures returned, the media space widened, and reforms were announced for institutions such as the electoral board and courts. At the time, many Ethiopians and observers read this as the beginning of a democratic reset after years of authoritarian rule. But the transition lacked a durable pact among elites, a credible national dialogue, and a shared constitutional settlement capable of managing deep ethnic and regional cleavages.
That gap mattered. The early reform moment opened expectations faster than it built the institutions. 2026 World report of Human Rights Watch the result was not democratic consolidation but a state moving from centralized authoritarian order toward fragmented insecurity, contested authority, and recurrent coercion.
From Reform to Rule
The central mistake of the post-2018 order was confusing political opening with institutional transformation. Opening space without securing rules produced elite fragmentation, armed contestation, and a personalization of power that gradually hollowed out the promise of reform. According to the Global State of Democracy Initiative the government’s rhetoric of democratization remained loud, but the governing style became more securitized and less accountable.
This pattern is visible in the way politics have been handled since the Tigray War and the spread of violence in Amhara and Oromia. Human Rights Watch reported continued armed conflict, mass arrests, civilian deaths, and restrictions on speech and press freedom in 2024 and 2025. The broader implication is stark, a state that cannot reliably secure citizens across much of its territory cannot stage a fully credible national election.
An Unlevel Playing Field
The 2026 election is being prepared under conditions that are structurally tilted in favor of the incumbent. Recent assessments of 2026 Africa Practice argues that the vote is shaped by three structural failures: a worsening security crisis, an incapacitated electoral board, and a fragile economy, and warns that conflict across Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and parts of the Somali region could prevent meaningful nationwide voting. The same assessment notes that the 2021 election left about one-fifth of parliamentary seats vacant because large parts of the country could not vote normally, which is a strong sign that the next election risks reproducing exclusion on an even broader scale. In other words, the state is preparing for an election before it has restored the basic conditions that make elections competitive, inclusive, and credible.
The May 2025 updated report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) adds to this concern by showing that Ethiopia’s upcoming elections risk deepening political mistrust rather than building legitimacy. It highlights how the electoral environment is still influenced by acute regional insecurity: in Tigray, the occasional return to conflict and the presence of federal and Amhara aligned forces in disputed border regions (including Western Tigray) continues to strain the thinly veiled peace and fosters fears of relapse into larger scale war.
According to the Carnegie Endowment for international peace report in the Amhara region, there has been a flash point zone of large-scale confrontation between federal forces and Fano militia since 2023, resulting in widespread displacement, civilian casualties and long-term insecurity. In Oromia, similarly, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) continue to dominate large rural and peri urban areas, which has been limiting the capacity of the state to project authority and provide basic services across much of the region.
This tendency of regional insecurity is significant since elections is a test of whether political opponents can compete under fair conditions and whether defeated actors will accept the result as legitimate. Security evaluations and early warning studies already reveal that in a situation where whole regions are operating or are subject to repeated conflict under partial armed control, many of these districts cannot be reliably counted as secure enough to be inclusive and non-coerced. Additional public opinion surveys and expert assessment like the BTI index and local election watch reports shows that the people increasingly distrust both the fairness of Ethiopian elections and the independence of the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia.
Security as Politics
The politics of Ethiopia have now been highly securitized. The mobilization of opposition, regional demand, and demonstrations of wages or services are usually presented as a threat to security, instead of a democratic movement. This has resulted in the political climate in which force is used as a replacement for negotiation and dissent is regularly handled by force.
Expenses are visible everywhere. The U.S. In summary of an Africa news report on the human rights report issued in 2024 by the State Department, widespread killings, displacement, ethnic cleansing, rape, looting, and arbitrary detention was described across conflict-affected areas. Similar reports have been reported by Human Rights Watch on severe abuses, as well as mass arrests. Once a government comes up with insecurity as one of the reasons that it narrows its political space instead of expanding it, then elections become not about the choice of its leaders, but about the management of legitimacy.
The Economy as Shield
Economic suffering has become the main theme of political discourse. The government will probably attempt to show macroeconomic stability as a show of competence and indications of declining inflation. According to the official statistics of Ethiopia, headline inflation was 9.7 percent in December 2025, which is lower in comparison to 16.9 percent a year ago. The World Bank and UNDP also noted a near-term growth prospect that is much more stable than the immediate postwar growth.
Yet, macro relief has failed to bring in general social trust. Everyday life is still being defined by inflation, high costs of living, job insecurity, and strained public salaries, as humanitarian needs are also acute. According to the Relief Web and the reports provided by the UN, many Ethiopians continue to need food aid, and displacement is widespread. An election in such an environment can simply be used as a political shield against economic hardship instead of being an accountability tool.
What Real Accountability Requires
A credible election requires more than a date on the calendar. It would require security normalization, the reopening of political space, protection for opposition activity, restoration of media freedom, and a settlement process that addresses unresolved wars and regional grievances to achieve this. The NEBE’s legal framework states that elections must be all-inclusive, fair, and peaceful. The problem is not the absence of democratic language; it is the absence of democratic conditions.
A creditable election would require priority to securitize politics. This means ending arbitrary arrests, allowing opposition parties to operate freely, and creating conditions in which campaigns can occur across the country. It would also demand institutional rebuilding: an election board, courts, and security services that are visibly neutral and not extensions of the ruling party. Above all the national political compact. Without serious dialogue on federalism, violence, accountability, and the postwar order, the ballot will simply reproduce the crisis.
The Coming Test
Ethiopia’s 2026 elections are unlikely to settle the country’s socio-economic and political crisis. They will most probably give us how far the political system has gone beyond competition into continuity by management. Thus, the essence of the question is not whether the ruling party can get reelected. Whether the election process can have any meaning other than insulating the incumbent against accountability.
When elections are conducted in an atmosphere of fear, exclusion and institutional weakness, then the elections will not be a milestone in the advancement of democracy. They will simply institutionalize a status quo that is based on coercion, fragmentation and denial. A legitimate state must accept to be scrutinized before it can be called a legitimate state. In its absence, we are making the vote an act, rather than a decision.
When power is protected from loss, elections stop being a choice and become a confirmation.
Erestu Legese Beyene is a master’s student in International Relations at the University of Federal Uberlandia in Brazil with prior experience as a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Injibara University, Ethiopia.
Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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