Ethiopia’s “Most Open Election” and the Architecture of Managed Democracy
The Economist’s judgment will ultimately be tested not in editorial columns but in the lived experience of Ethiopians. If the coming election allows citizens to speak, organise, and choose without fear—if opposition parties can campaign freely, if media can report critically, if the outcome is genuinely uncertain—then it will be a milestone in democratisation. If it does not, it will be another chapter in the long story of power consolidated in the language of reform.