By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s party won parliamentary elections by a landslide victory, giving him another five years to increase his regional sway, the National Election Board of Ethiopia on Sunday showed.
Abiy’s Prosperity Party faced off against a fragmented opposition and won 438 of the 486 seats in the House of Peoples’ Representatives.
The election needs to be re-held or the count still has to be confirmed in 15 constituencies, while voting was postponed in 46 others in the northern Tigray and Amhara regions due to security concerns. The legislature elects the premier.
Abiy, who was appointed in 2018 following mass protests against the long-ruling EPRDF coalition, created the Prosperity Party the following year.
The party won more than 90% of the available seats in the last parliamentary elections in 2021.
The Fano militias in Amhara and the proscribed Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) in Oromia, which both want greater autonomy, rejected the election and its results.
The situation is also troubling in Tigray, which is still recovering from a two-year civil war that only ended in 2022. The region and its six million inhabitants, comprising 36 constituencies, were completely excluded from the poll amid rising fears that fighting could break out once more.
Tigray borders Eritrea and during the war, its troops were allied with Ethiopian government forces. They were accused of widespread atrocities against Tigrayan civilians, which were denied. But since the conflict ended, relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara have sharply deteriorated.
Eritrea, with its 1,350km (840-mile) coastline, accuses landlocked Ethiopia of having imperial ambitions. Over the last three years Abiy has repeatedly spoken of his country’s need to regain access to Red Sea port, which it lost when Eritrea became independent in 1993.