2015 Ethiopian general election

The 547 members of the House of Peoples' Representatives (the lower chamber of parliament) were elected in single-member constituencies using the first-past-the-post system.[3] The results of the election were announced one month after the election took place.[4] About 93.2 percent of Ethiopia’s 36.8 million registered voters participated in the parliamentary elections,[5] and nearly 1.4 million (3.3%) of the total votes cast for the election were deemed "invalid." This number exceeded even the number of votes which went to any individual opposition party, highlighting the dire circumstances for opposition in the election. Invalid ballots could be discarded as such for a variety of reasons according to Ethiopia's electoral laws. As outlined by Ethiopian paper The Reporter after the election: "a ballot paper is deemed invalid where the identity of the elector is disclosed, the ballot paper is not marked or difficult to determine the intention of the voter, [voted] for more candidates than the allowed. But as was witnessed during vote counting in some polling stations, discarding ballots as invalid was not always a clear cut conclusion."[6]

The elections were delayed in the Gimbo Gawata constituency due to clashes between the EPRDF and an independent candidate, Ashebr Woldegiorgis, who filed formal complaints against the EPRDF after coming in second at 17.7% of the region's votes.[6] Polling took place on 14 June.[7]

A total of 1,828 candidates contested the 547 seats, of which nine were independents and the remainder represented 44 parties. Of the 1,828 candidates, 1,527 were men and 801 women.[8]

To help voters make informed decisions for the May Federal and National Elections, the Joint Council of Political Parties selected nine subjects as the agendas for televised debates between the political parties in the planned televised debating sessions. The subjects identified for debate in the televised election programs cover a variety of subjects: the Multi-Party System and Building Democracy; Federalism; Agricultural and Rural Policy; Urban Development and Industrial Policy; Good Governance and the Rule of Law; National Security; Foreign Policy; Infrastructure; Education and Health.[9] Despite these structures being in place, there were obstacles particularly from the ruling government that did not allow for an easy campaign period. For example, "on April 1, 2015, Yilkal Getnet (Eng.), president of the Blue Party (known in Amharic as Semayawi Party) had planned to travel to the United States for campaigning with the Ethiopian Diaspora there, according to Yonatan Tesfaye, public relations head of the party. However, his plan was aborted, because his passport was snatched by the authorities."[10]

The censorship in Ethiopia makes it difficult for members of opposition parties to effectively campaign to the general Ethiopian populous, thus limiting knowledge of political candidates.[11] Leaders of opposition parties have been arrested, including during the month after this election.

The 2015 election in Ethiopia was not free and fair; the government-controlled nationwide election board declared the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, the authoritarian ruling party in Ethiopia for more than two decades, and its allies to have won every single seat. In 2016, the Electoral Integrity Project, a panel of scholars and experts on election integrity, noted that the election occurred amid "harassment of opposition parties, censorship of the media and repression of human rights"; it was ranked as the worst election on the Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI) expert dataset.[12] Human rights groups condemned the election as a sham; Human Rights Watch stated that the election was nondemocratic because, although there "may not have been widespread violence or blatant ballot box stuffing on Election Day," the government's "systematic repression of basic rights" made it "extremely unlikely that Ethiopians would feel safe" expressing opposition views.[13] Jason Mosley, an associate fellow of the Africa program at Chatham House in London, writing ahead of the elections, described the election as an attempt by the ruling EPRDF to foster "controlled" or "non-competitive" political participation by the Ethiopian people; he added that the competitiveness of the opposition parties was undermined by both "internal divisions and bureaucratic obstacles."[14]

Merga Bekana, the electoral board chairman at the time, declared the election to have been "free, fair, peaceful, credible and democratic" while the Ethiopian opposition, including Medrek coalition and the Semayawi (Blue) party, rejected the official declaration of results, citing the harassment and abuses that occurred.[15] The Blue Party called the election an "undemocratic disgrace"—citing the government's refusal to register scores of its party members as candidates, as well as arrests of its candidates—and a signal that Ethiopia was a one-party state.[16] Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn dismissed reports of abuses.[17]

The United States Department of State said that the United States remained "deeply concerned by continued restrictions on civil society, media, opposition parties, and independent voices and views" in Ethiopia,[17] and in July 2015, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice stated that the election results were not credible.[13] However, in July 2015, President Barack Obama visited Ethiopia and, at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Desalegn, referred to the government as "democratically elected"; while human rights groups had called for Obama to more forcefully press for democratic reforms, Obama instead made a more mild call for the Ethiopian government to become more open to opposition.[13] Obama's approach was criticized by the Ethiopian opposition.[13]

There were no international election observers from Western countries; the European Union (EU) declined to participate in the proceedings on the grounds that Ethiopia had ignored the recommendations it provided after the previous round of elections that were also won by a questionable landslide.[18] The EU said that Ethiopia had not yet developed democratically and expressed concern over "arrests of journalists and opposition politicians, closure of a number of media outlets and obstacles faced by the opposition in conducting its campaign."[16] The African Union (AU), which monitored the election, declared the election "calm, peaceful, and credible" (but not "free and fair");[19][20] the African Union Election Observation Mission did, however, note several irregularities.[20]