Ethiopia's TPLF ruling party celebrates 40th anniversary, February, 2015. Demotix/ Gwendolyn Meyer. All rights reserved.The so called “dominante party” steamroller has flattened everything in its way. The opposition held one seat in the outgoing parliament. It will not hold a single one in the parliament elected on May 24, 2015. And of the 1,987 seats in the regional parliaments, only three will have escaped the ruling party. In the light of these figures, the multi-party state that the regime claims to have established remains a distant mirage.
The first factor in this sweeping triumph is the first-past-the-post electoral system. Under a proportional system, with 9% of the votes, the opposition could have counted on some fifty MPs.
Vigorous economic growth also played a hefty role. Even if the official figures are exaggerated, annual growth has probably been running at around 6% to 7% for the last decade. The infrastructure boom is astonishing, as is the proliferation of schools and health centres, the widening of access to drinking water and, more generally, a net reduction in the percentage of people in poverty, although the number of those below the national poverty line remains stable, currently at around one quarter of the population.
