Ruling party landslide victory, ethnic tensions and a volatile region are portentously tantamount to a political powder keg in Ethiopia. The only credible candidate is incarcerated, postulates Gamal Nkrumah Political ideas need proper testing and Ethiopia has plenty of social and economic misery to go around to put all the ideologies to the test. A country of 85 million people with an average per capita income of $710, some 65 million Ethiopians live below the poverty line. More than 85 per cent of Ethiopians live in rural areas subjected to periodic drought and famine. Agricultural products account for 60 per cent of Ethiopia's exports -- coffee and tea being the chief exports. The peasants and urban poor of Ethiopia are no longer willing to remain stoical in face of destitution and hunger, and undemanding in terms of political and human rights. With the wealthy world driven to distraction by the international financial crisis Ethiopia, Africa's second largest most populous nation after Nigeria, is determined to graduate from aid dependency to global capital markets. Surely donors understand that how aid is used counts for as much as its amount. Reducing hunger is a top priority. Too many Ethiopians -- an estimated nine million -- are utterly dependent on food aid. Yet the country could easily become the Arab world's breadbasket. Ethiopia, like many other African countries, is vulnerable to donor complicity with illicit financial flows that facilitate corruption. The Ethiopian opposition has warned that economic and democratic successes in the country are in danger of being thwarted by vested interests opposed to reform. Nerves are on edge among Ethiopia's opposition parties over the landslide victory of the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in last week's election, capturing more than three quarters of Ethiopia's 547 parliamentary seats. The EPRDF's disputed triumph is likely to add to the alienation of its opponents. None of the prominent opposition figures retained their parliamentary seats. Ethiopian Prime Minister is one of the West's closest political allies in the Horn of Africa. It was in Washington's interest that Ethiopia's ruling party win a crushing victory in last week's elections securing another five-year term for Zenawi. That sense of prioritising the party over all else comes across strongly in statements he issued in the run-up to the election. Yet he persistently declined to give too personal a perspective. "The vast majority of the residents of our cities and the farmers of our country who actually consider themselves and the EPRDF as two sides of a coin have yet again shown the world that nothing can ever shake their unwavering support for our organisation," he said. He was seeking a convincing endorsement as standard bearer of a strong Ethiopia in the parliamentary poll that concluded on 22 May. The results strengthened his hand, with his government claiming solid support to press ahead with political and economic reforms. But standing back, for a minute, it seems as if has done a reasonable job in the eyes of his Western paymasters for two long and decisive decades given the difficult balancing act he had to perform both at home and in the Horn. The biggest tests of his leadership came with the disastrous border war with Eritrea which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, the invasion and subsequent forced withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia in 2008, and a series of highly dubious elections culminating in this week's demand for a re-run by opposition leaders claiming that the elections were once again rigged in favour of the ruling party and that the electoral process was fundamentally flawed. But he is a survivor and ready for the next test. Opposition groups claim that donor nations, even though critical of the regime, have placed few monitoring groups and accountability mechanisms to ensure that aid provided is delivered to the poorest of the poor. The neglect that left Ethiopian agriculture purposelessly unproductive, they warn, must end. The country has tremendous agricultural potential. Neither can grants metamorphose into gold overnight. Donors must stop dithering over what to do about aid to Ethiopia. His legacy, however, is clearly weighing on his mind. The EPRDF is showing the rest of the continent's ruling parties how to stay ahead of the angry brigade of opposition parties. "The people's vote will not be overturned by foreign forces," warned Zenawi. Such statements prompt the question of whether he will step down in 2015. Will it be his last term at the helm? Ethiopia is a key ally of the West and in particular the United States in the strategic Horn of Africa region bordering the Arabian Peninsula. Israel, too, has vested interests in Ethiopia. The largest Israeli intelligence (Mossad) operation in Africa is based in Ethiopia. Indeed, as far back as 1966, then Israeli prime minister, now President Shimon Peres, stated that Israel's aim was to "build a second Egypt in Africa to help convert Ethiopia's economic and military strength into a counterbalance to Egypt, thereby giving Africa another focus." Such thinking prevails in Western and Israeli circles even though Ethiopia's successive governments have played this particular card down. The 1984 Israeli Operation Moses and the 1985 US-sponsored Operation Joshua designed to transfer hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian Jews (Beta Yisrael or Falasha) to Israel only heightened Arab concerns about Ethiopia's real political motives. The CIA's intelligence sharing network with Ethiopia is vital for securing US interests in the Horn and Nile Basin. And, it is in this context that Ethiopia's May 2010 elections were watched closely in Egypt and other Arab nations. While Egypt has refrained from garnering support among Ethiopian opposition parties or fomenting trouble, it is keen to see how the democratisation and political reform process in Ethiopia will impact relations with Egypt and especially as it concerns Nile waters. It is hoped that the election results will elicit greater cooperation from donors. Both the West and US allies in the Arab world also see Ethiopia as a pivotal ally in the war against terrorism. Ethiopia has a standing army of about 500,000 men, but the technical capability of its army is open to question. The menacing backdrop to Ethiopia's democratisation and political reform process is neighbouring Somalia's militant Islamists. As ever, the difficulty is in knowing precisely what a militant Taliban-style Islamist regime in Mogadishu will do. If Somalia's Islamists play true to type, a frustrated Ethiopia could then take military action once again, with catastrophic consequences not only to Somalia, but to Ethiopia as well. What is worrying right now is that it is increasingly unclear who is in charge in Somalia. The difficulty for Ethiopia is that any military victory over Somalia's militant Islamists would be pyrrhic. Ethiopia's army would suffer immense casualties, with ripple effects in Ethiopia and other Horn of Africa countries. The war in Somalia has had tragic consequences in terms of fatalities and economic devastation. The havoc may spread to neighbouring countries including Ethiopia, with a politically subdued and restive Muslim majority geographically concentrated in eastern and southern regions. Onetime EPRDF stalwarts have defected to the opposition. Former Ethiopian President Negasso Gidada has emerged as an outspoken leader of the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party (UDJ) also known together with its coalition partners as the Forum for Democracy and Dialogue -- the Forum for short, or Merdrek, in Amharic, Ethiopia's official language. Negasso Gidada derided the notion that the existence of 92 opposition parties constituting a multi-party democracy as "laughable". The Forum issued a 65-page manifesto to unseat . Dissenting voices criticising the system abhor the collaboration between the security apparatus, the government and the ruling party. "There is little distinction to be made between the ruling party and the local police institutions. The security institutions are in effect appendages of the party," notes Seeye Abraha, former Ethiopian defence minister and currently vice- chairman of UDJ. "Their principal purpose is to neutralise any opposition to the dominance of the ruling party. Lawful political opponents are viewed as a security issue and treated in the same way as criminals," he added. The UDJ vice-chairman was equally critical of Western double standards and hypocrisy. "As to the West's commitment to democracy in Ethiopia, the big talk needs to be balanced up with at least a little action. There is a viable alternative in the Forum, and the West should do what it can to help level the playing field," he surmised. Ethnicity is a key force in Ethiopian politics. Most political parties are based on ethnic affiliation rather than ideological orientation. The Ethiopian government accuses Eritrea of interfering in its domestic affairs and says that Eritrea backs the ethnic Somali Ogaden National Liberation Front and the Oromo Liberation Front. Ogaden National Liberation Front forces captured several strategic provincial towns in eastern Ethiopia in December 2009. The ethnic Somali population in the eastern part of the country has periodically expressed a desire to join their kith and kin in Somalia and secede from Ethiopia. The Oromo people are the largest ethnic group in the country dominating the western, central and eastern parts of Ethiopia. However, they have historically been denied political clout and are now demanding a bigger say in the decision- making process. "For the last 150 years, political change has only come through the barrel of the gun. We want to break that tradition and change power through the ballot box," Forum leader Getachew Shiferaw explained. Zenawi, however, is unperturbed by this rising chorus of critics and detractors. "Some people have too many billions of dollars to spend and they feel that dictating how developing countries manage their affairs is their God-given right," he thundered upon hearing that the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) and Human Rights Watch decried the results of the elections. "We have only contempt for the ICG," he fumed. "The intent of these organisations," Zenawi contended, "is to discredit the election process, and not to participate in it." The ICG in turn condemned the EPRDF's "obsession with controlling the political processes from the federal to the local level." The ICG was equally damning as far as donors were concerned. "Some donors appear to consider food security more important than democracy in Ethiopia, but they neglect the increased ethnic awareness and tensions created by the regionalisation policy and their potentially explosive consequences," a recently-released ICG report stressed. The "ethnic federalism" espoused by the ruling EPRDF has accentuated instead of placated regional and ethnic differences, according to the policy's critics. Some fear that Ethiopia is now in danger of disintegrating into rival ethnic-based states warring incessantly and bringing the high growth rate of recent years -- 7.5 per cent in 2009, to a grinding halt. The West clearly prefers to deal with the EPRDF rather than with Merdrek or the All Ethiopian Unity Party, the country's two largest opposition groups. However, the West has grave reservations about political reform and democratisation in Ethiopia. "An environment conducive to free and fair elections was not in place even before Election Day," conceded US National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer. "We are concerned that these actions have restrained freedom of expression and association and are inconsistent with the Ethiopian government's human rights obligations," Hammer added. "We urge the Ethiopian government to ensure that its citizens are able to enjoy their fundamental rights. We will work diligently with Ethiopia to ensure that strengthened democratic institutions and open political dialogue become a reality for the Ethiopian people," Hammer concluded. The European Union was equally disapproving of the election process. "Everyone was equal, but some were more equal than others," said Thijs Berman, the chief EU observer at the Ethiopian elections. He noted that, "the playing field for the 2010 election was not sufficiently balanced, leaning in favour of the ruling party in many areas." Opposition groups are now determined to free the living symbol of opposition to the government, the jailed UDJ leader Birtukan Mideksa, the first woman political party leader in Ethiopia's history -- Africa's Aung San Suu Kyi. Personal attacks against her by a powerful cabal of politicians, military and security chiefs forced her incarceration on political grounds. There are those in the West and in Ethiopia who argue that a strongman such as Zenawi -- the Capo di Tutti Capi (Boss of all bosses) as the Italians refer to their former colony's leader -- is the only hope for Ethiopia as the country undergoes radical transformation in social and economic spheres. Perhaps overall, the EPRDF's victory should be given a cautious welcome, they suggest, and its performance in the years ahead carefully monitored. It does the EPRDF no favours by presenting such speculation as gospel.
