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When The Economist framed Ethiopia’s coming vote with the declaration, “Ethiopia’s prime minister says the next election will be the most open and democratic in the country’s history. In reality it will be a sham,” it captured a tension many Ethiopians already feel in their bones: the widening chasm between the language of reform and the material reality of repression.

This is not a semantic quibble. The fundamental question is whether the political order being constructed in Addis Ababa is genuinely democratic, or whether elections are becoming carefully choreographed rituals designed to legitimise state power rather than contest it. The distinction determines whether Ethiopia is building a constitutional democracy or consolidating a more sophisticated authoritarianism—one dressed in the language of “openness,” “reform,” and “inclusion.”

The Promise: Reformist Language and the International Performance

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s ascent to power in 2018 was narrated as a rupture with Ethiopia’s authoritarian past. For a nation exhausted by the EPRDF’s three-decade monopoly on power, the initial moves carried genuine promise. Political prisoners walked free. Exiled opposition figures were invited home. Previously proscribed parties were unbanned. The telecommunications monopoly was privatised. Most spectacularly, Abiy brokered a peace agreement with Eritrea that earned him the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize—a gesture that cemented, in the Western imagination, his credentials as a reformer.

The narrative was seductive. Here was a leader willing to break with the machinery of oppression. The international community, particularly European donors and American strategists, invested heavily in this story. Budget support resumed. Diplomatic courtesies resumed. The premise became almost axiomatic: Abiy was different.

Within this framework, the promise of “the most open and democratic election in Ethiopia’s history” served multiple functions. Domestically, it signalled to war-weary Ethiopians that the era of one-party monopoly was genuinely over. Internationally, it reassured donors and strategic partners—the EU, the United States, the World Bank—that Ethiopia remained on a democratic trajectory and deserved renewed investment, budget support, and diplomatic engagement without uncomfortable conditionality.

On paper, this reads as transition. In the lived experience of Ethiopians who have seen this script performed before, it reads as repackaging.

The Reality: Repression Behind Electoral Optics

The gap between rhetoric and reality has become impossible to conceal. Human rights organisations, investigative journalists, and independent election observers describe an entirely different landscape from the one implied by “most open and democratic.”

Repression of Dissent

Independent media outlets have faced systematic harassment. Journalists have been arrested on spurious charges. Critical outlets have been pressured into self-censorship or closure. The pattern is familiar to anyone who lived through the EPRDF era: control information, fragment the public sphere, and ensure that challenges to official narratives cannot reach a mass audience. The government maintains the legal and constitutional facade of press freedom whilst the operational reality is suffocation.

Criminalisation of Protest

Peaceful assembly and free speech have been heavily curtailed. Youth have been detained for cultural and musical expressions perceived as critical of the government. Online dissent is monitored and prosecuted. The state treats democratic participation not as a constitutional right but as a security threat. A person can be arrested for a Facebook post, detained for attending an opposition rally, or harassed for organising civic education. The formal right to protest and speak exists; the enforcement machinery ensures that exercising it carries consequences.

Accountability Vacuum

Despite formal ceasefires in the north, there has been little meaningful accountability for atrocities committed during the Tigray conflict and subsequent violence in Amhara and Oromia. Transitional justice processes have stalled. The government has signalled, through both action and omission, that investigating war crimes is less important than political stability and elite power-sharing. This creates a permissive environment: security force commanders know that brutal suppression of dissent is unlikely to result in prosecution.

An election held in such an environment may be procedurally impressive—ballot boxes, transparent counting, televised debates—but substantively hollow. When opposition parties operate under threat, media cannot report freely, and citizens fear the consequences of speaking openly or organising politically, the “choice” on the ballot is already engineered. The voter may feel empowered by the act of voting, but the outcome is predetermined by structural constraints.

Structural Constraints: War, Fragmentation, and the Security Imperative

Understanding why elections risk becoming managed performances requires looking beyond the ballot to the broader security and political ecology. Three structural conditions fundamentally distort the electoral landscape.

The Persistence of War

The conflict in northern Ethiopia was officially declared resolved, but the operational reality is more complex. Displacement remains catastrophic. Territorial disputes linger. Militarised governance persists in Tigray, Amhara, and parts of Oromia. In such regions, normal political organising—public rallies, opposition party campaigning, grassroots mobilisation—remains functionally impossible. Opposition parties cannot reach voters. Independent observers cannot monitor balloting. The security apparatus, rather than state institutions, controls political space. An election held under occupation is not a democratic exercise; it is an administrative ritual conducted in a security framework.

Ethnic Federalism Fragmenting

Ethiopia’s federal structure, ostensibly designed to accommodate ethnic autonomy, has become a mechanism for regime control. Regional tensions, particularly in Amhara and Oromia, have produced cycles of rebellion and crackdown. In this context, the federal government increasingly treats regional opposition not as legitimate political competition but as separatism, insurgency, or ethnic nationalism. The result is a security response rather than a political one. Opposition parties are watched, monitored, and often prevented from operating freely in regions where their ethnic or political base challenges the federal government’s authority. Democracy requires, at minimum, that political competition is not criminalised as treason.

Power Centralisation and State Capture

Although the ruling Prosperity Party has been constitutionally separated from the state, the apparatus of coercion remains fundamentally aligned with the centre. Security services, local administrations, and patronage networks operate in the interest of incumbents. Opposition parties campaign in an environment where the police, intelligence services, and administrative machinery can be weaponised against them. An election is only democratic if the infrastructure of the state can be used equally by all competitors. In Ethiopia, that condition does not obtain.

International Complicity: When Geopolitics Trumps Principles

The Economist’s scepticism also implicitly indicts the international community. Western governments have increasingly prioritised stability, migration control, and geopolitical positioning in the Horn of Africa over consistent pressure on human rights and democratic standards.

The European Union’s decision to resume budget support to Ethiopia, despite ongoing documented abuses and the stalling of accountability processes, sends an unambiguous signal: strategic interests outweigh democratic benchmarks. The United States, while publicly advocating for human rights, has been cautious about imposing meaningful consequences. The multilateral development banks continue lending on the basis of economic projections whilst ignoring governance failures.

Geostrategic calculations explain this. Ethiopia’s size, population, and strategic position in the Horn of Africa make it indispensable to regional security architecture. Its potential as a economic market and a transit point for global trade gives it leverage. For Western powers, public criticism of democratic backsliding must be balanced against the risk of pushing the government toward rival powers—China, Russia, or the Gulf states. The result is a “quiet diplomacy” that softens public criticism in exchange for private access and influence.

A polished election—however structurally constrained—offers foreign partners a convenient narrative. Ethiopia is “on a democratic path.” Engagement can proceed without uncomfortable conditionality. The government can claim international validation. And international actors, by accepting the optics of an election, become co-authors of a managed democracy. They validate form over substance.

The Standard: What “Most Open and Democratic” Would Actually Require

If Prime Minister Abiy’s pledge is to be taken seriously—not as propaganda, but as a binding commitment—then a truly “most open and democratic” election would require at least five concrete structural shifts.

One: Unambiguous Protection of Media Freedom

End harassment, arbitrary detention, and intimidation of journalists. Allow independent outlets to operate without political interference, economic strangulation, or corporate pressure. Establish genuine editorial independence. This is not incremental reform; it requires dismantling the apparatus of media control.

Two: Reversal of the Crackdown on Dissent

Lift restrictions on peaceful assembly and association. Stop treating dissent as a security threat and instead recognise it as essential to democracy. Release political prisoners detained on fabricated charges. Ensure that online speech and offline protest are protected rather than prosecuted.

Three: Level Playing Field for Opposition Parties

Ensure opposition parties can register, campaign, and organise nationwide without fear of arrest, harassment, or violence. Reform electoral institutions to be genuinely independent, not extensions of the ruling party. Provide equitable access to media. Establish independent election management bodies with real authority to investigate complaints and enforce rules.

Four: Credible Transitional Justice

Address atrocities committed during recent conflicts through transparent, inclusive, victim-centered processes. Signal that state and non-state actors alike are subject to the law. Remove the presumption that proximity to power confers immunity. This is essential because it reestablishes the principle that no group, however politically dominant, is above accountability.

Five: Demilitarisation of Political Space

Reduce the role of security forces in managing political disputes. Prioritise genuine dialogue with armed and unarmed opposition actors over coercive responses. Establish clear boundaries between the security state and the political sphere. Without this, elections will continue to be conducted in an environment where the threat of state violence shapes behaviour.

None of these conditions currently obtains. Until they do, any election will be managed, not free. The question is not whether Ethiopians will vote, but whether they will do so with genuine agency.

The Deeper Cost: When Democracy Becomes Performance

The Economist’s diagnosis is correct, but incomplete. The cost of a managed election extends beyond the immediate political outcome. It is fundamentally corrosive to democratic culture.

When elections are rituals rather than contests, when the outcome is predetermined by structural constraints, when citizens vote knowing their voice is unlikely to change power, a new form of political cynicism takes root. Younger generations who have no memory of genuine competitive elections may internalise the lesson that voting is performative. Opposition parties, prevented from building genuine constituencies, may themselves become instruments of elite management. The habits of democratic participation—debate, negotiation, compromise, accountability—atrophy.

This is perhaps more dangerous than outright authoritarianism. A dictatorship is recognisably a dictatorship. A managed democracy, dressed in the language of choice and representation, can conceal the absence of genuine contestation. It allows power to be consolidated without the political costs of open repression. It offers international partners a narrative of reform whilst nothing of substance changes.

Ethiopia has been here before. The EPRDF maintained the forms of democracy—a parliament, a constitution, periodic elections—whilst hollowing out substance. The question now is whether the Prosperity Party government has learned from that failure, or merely refined the technique.

The Path Forward: Words or Action?

For many Ethiopians, the coming months will be a test of whether the government’s democratic language is genuine or performative. The test is straightforward: does the government act to remove structural constraints on democratic competition, or does it merely manage the optics of elections?

So far, the evidence points toward performance. Opposition parties report continued harassment. Independent media outlets report pressure. Civil society organisations report restrictions. The security apparatus continues to be deployed against perceived political threats. These are not the actions of a government confident in its democratic credentials.

The intensity of the government’s democratic rhetoric, paradoxically, reveals something important: legitimacy still matters. The language of “openness,” “reform,” and “democracy” is being invoked because it carries moral and political weight. This creates an opening. If opposition forces, civil society, international partners, and ordinary Ethiopians insist that these words mean something concrete—that they cannot be emptied of meaning through performance—then the space for managed democracy might narrow.

The task is to refuse the offered bargain. Refuse to accept managed elections as progress. Refuse to confuse optics with substance. Refuse to allow the government to have it both ways: the legitimacy that comes with democratic language, without the constraints that come with democratic practice.

Conclusion: The Measure

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.

For a nation exhausted by decades of authoritarianism, the question of whether elections are contests or choreography is not academic. It shapes whether Ethiopians can build a future of genuine self-determination, or whether they will continue to live under a more sophisticated version of the old order.

The clock is ticking. The moment to move from words to action is now.