Sunday, June 21, 2015

A peacful Election ? what is peaceful gotta do with it ?

by @abenezer_a

 There is no free and fair election without the

 - presence of independent medias that  can report uncensored and biased information for the public
- an Independent Electoral observer
-  A Working Electoral Board

 In this 5th round election, the European commission didn't make it, due to some disagreements as medias reported. Eprdf claimed that it was due to financial problems, Ana gomez said they didnt want to attend because we know in advance that the ruling party would ridge the votes. other than the European commission, the African union has observed the election and was able point out  lots of ballot boxes were properly locked and wasn't made to be emptied before the voting started. African union, for any African is nothing but a gang group that try to justify dictatorship across the continent, this intentional errors that they observed came to me as a surprise.

Eprdf claiming cementing 100 percent of the votes, Ethiopia is now officially a full a one party state with the preliminary results showing Eprdf occupying  442 out 547 seats, the rest of the seats are yet to be announced. However, from the trend of the results been announced in different locations, its enough to say no oppostion would inter the house of peoples representatives. For transparency the a availability of news outlets with no party affilation is important, however,  the presence of independent medias has been dwindling since 2005,  many publications got closed.  Following that, the Ethiopian government adopted an ambiguous anti- Terriosim law (ATP) in 2009 that made it easy for Eprdf which its most key positions are filled with people from Tigiray ethnic group. As of 2009 several private publications were closed, up to 60 journalists left the country and the unlucky ones got imprisoned. Only in 2014 about 30 have left the country.
Intensifying its crack on dissent, it sent 6 bloggers and 3 journalists into prison in late april, 2014. Presenting a pretext of inciting violence through social media in a country where there is a very low internet penetration. The only thing they did was creating awareness among the youth, that spend much of its time chewing khat and getting drunk to forget the socioeconomic hardship.

as you usual , the process 2015 election was shady from the start, many opposition candidates where thrown to jail, got harassed and beaten.They were given  a very limited on the pre- election discussion that has been airing on the national tv(ebc) before the election.  "In my area, the EPRDF supporters went from house to house. They knew if you had voted or not," said a voter who refused to give his name.

 Here is what happens during the whole so called election process

 Pre-election 1. They coerce candidates, imprison key political party members. 2. Eliminate others through the NEBE lottery draw
3. They took over Andinet Party by planting their cadres with in the party EC and NEBE fake regulations.
4. They use the state resource to campaign and intimidate the people to vote for EPRDF.
This is a screen shot taken from the account of the official federal communication office, as far as i can understand in multiparty system, the regime cant use a federal office resource for its campaign

During election
1. The ballot paper is made to confuse voters.
2. The mark voters have to put is X not check mark. And X could be easily interpreted as disapproval.
4. Observers are imprisoned and intimidated.
Post-election 1.Numbers will be rigged. 2.Observers will continue to be intimidated.


The election wasn’t free and fair from the start. Again, the incumbent has applied the same Tactics that it used in all the 4 round of Elections.  A splinter group of andinent party was formed by the involvement of the ruling party trying to weaken the strength of andent party.  About 200  members of the blue party were disqualified from running for the election, 50  members of  the party were thrown to  jail under the pretext of terrorism. This is not how an election is carried out in a democratic system, oppositions must be able to campain freely and introduce thier programs for the public.  If they are disqualified with a politically motivated charge how can we think of having a peaceful election




Where in the world would a contestant would get zero votes, doesn't that person  have relatives?  hasn’t that person voted for himself? This is what happened in some places, lots of contestants have got zero votes. I really cringed when the European commission give it a sugar coated title to refrain from call it  not free and fair but it opt to call it peaceful. How is an election peaceful when people are threatened and beaten from going to voting station to vote for the party that they want?  I am also disappointed by the united states state department for choosing the same stance as the European commission.


 Look at this one too, its obvious that they wrote this down randomly, one with a common sense can understand these.

 The ruling philosophy of the regime has its origin of no tolerance of dissent of Stalinist view, you can clearly see how the prime minister tries to scare a bbc journalist here. skip to 4:31
lets move over this interview, come to the most recent interview the prime minister had with Al Jazeera  that showed his inability to make points. Ignoring some of them, lets focus on the part he said that "The moment you join a terrorist group you become a blogger ". I had to play this several times, incase if my ear was acting up, so by this analogy in Ethiopia if you open a blog that has news articles or opinions of yours and others that criticize the regime you are branded as a terrorist. In contrast if you use your cyber space to share successes of the regime, you would be branded as a developmental citizen


 it would be insane to expect a free and fair election from a country being lead by such leader, one of the best campains ever been done on social media activism history of Ethiopia is the online polling , The result of the polling revealed that the regime would get few support, apparently the regime is busying bragging about taking all the seats according to the preliminary results.

self acclaimed independent journalists who in reality are a staunch supports of the regime were giving opinion on polls after the national Electoral board said they would be held liable.   Ethiopia has turned into a country where only few  wont be questioned for violating the law and others get thrown to jail or killed for exercising their constitutional rights.
Independent electoral observers and media are  necessary for  a free and fair election,  we can only see the fairness and peacefulness of an election when there are medias that report everything going on without censoring it.  In Ethiopia, there are no independent medias, all non- partisan medias are run abroad and many websites are blocked from being accessed by locals. The regime spends millions of dollars to block and spy on activists.
yet after winning 100 percent of the  442 seats the regime  isn't satisfied. It continued Killing and jailing oppostion party members. So far  people are dead, over 600 are imprisoned. The figure could be hire than this considering the limited flow of information.
A bus traveling to one of the thier killed members house yesterday was  stopped on abay bridge and several members of the pary were detained  for 8 hours including leader of the party Engineer Yilikal Getnet, after the police did some check up they were released and sent back to Addis Ababa  where they started thier journey. reason why because the government claims to have got information that they are going to there to organize a big protest in the capital city of amhara region (bahir dar) and Debere Markos. what kinda of democracy is this  unless its a thugmocracy ?  how can one be optimistic in a country where you are stripped off that right ?. At this moment i dont know how peaceful struggle could bring the change we want to see while its the only way, arm struggle which i dont endorse, is much more worse than it but peaceful struggle is costing us a lot unless we organize our self regardless of our political ideology.
Tomorrow, the  so called  National Electoral Board will announce the final result  and many people aren't eagerly waiting for it since they already know the incumbent gone cemenet a fake 100 percent win.
Maybe comparatively, this Election could be taken us where less people are killed but can we call it a peacful eleciton just because fewer number of people were killed than the 2005 elelciton ? no. A single human life has a value, had this killings and imprisonments happened in western countries, the media would have buzz about it. Sadly though, we are thier stragetic allie of the western nations,  western nations always fail to condemn the actions that Eprdf  takes to tighten its power.  A peaceful Election I know where oppostions are freely allowed to campain, that doesnt involve the killing of  oppostion party members.







































































































































































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