In a stunning display of democratic vigour that has left international observers cross-eyed and clutching their complimentary biros, Ethiopia has gone to the polls and returned a landslide victory for the incumbent party. The result, while entirely predictable to anyone who has ever glanced at a map of the Horn of Africa, has nevertheless prompted the United Kingdom to issue a sternly worded call for restraint, presumably printed on very expensive letterhead and dispatched via a man on a bicycle with a dodgy knee.
Now, let us be clear: this is not a news story about a vote. This is a news story about the performance of a vote, a theatrical production in which the audience knows the final scene but is required to gasp on cue when the curtain falls. The Ethiopian National Electoral Board, a body that has the unenviable task of counting ballots while the entire world stares at it through a magnifying glass, declared that the ruling Prosperity Party had secured enough seats to form a government. This is the political equivalent of discovering that water is wet or that the sun rises in the east. It is a fact so obvious that it practically begs to be met with a shrug and a sigh.
But oh, the sighs! They are not sighs of resignation but of trepidation, the kind of sigh that escapes a man who has just realised he left his wallet on the bus. For Ethiopia is a country of fractures, a geological and human patchwork that has, in the past, erupted into violence with the casual brutality of a dropped teacup. The Tigray region, still nursing the wounds of a two-year conflict that was about as civil as a badger with a toothache, watched the election results with the kind of weary suspicion one reserves for a neighbour who keeps borrowing tools and returning them broken. And the international community, ever the anxious parent, has deployed its preferred weapon: a statement.
The UK Foreign Office, in a move of breathtaking predictability, has called for all parties to exercise restraint and to settle disputes through dialogue. This is the diplomatic equivalent of telling a room full of angry cats to please just get along. It is well-meaning, entirely correct, and utterly useless unless accompanied by a large bag of catnip. The statement, which was probably drafted over a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit, urges Ethiopia to avoid a return to the “dark days” of conflict. One can almost hear the gentle clink of china as the words are typed.
But let us not mock the diplomats too harshly. They are trapped in a system that demands they say something even when there is nothing to say. The real story here is the gap between the vote and the reality. A landslide in a country where the opposition has been hamstrung, where the media is as free as a canary in a coal mine, and where the military has a habit of interpreting “election observation” as “target selection” is not a mandate. It is a weather report. It tells us what is happening, but not why, and certainly not what will happen next.
And what will happen next? Well, if history is any guide, there will be more statements. More calls for restraint. More cups of tea. And, somewhere in the highlands, a young man with a rifle and a grievance will look at his phone, see the election results, and make a decision that no amount of diplomatic language can unmake. But for now, the show goes on. The curtain falls. The audience claps. And the world holds its breath, waiting for the encore.
So raise a glass of gin, dear reader. Not to the victory, not to the loss, but to the sheer, glorious, terrifying theatre of it all. And to the hope that, this time, the actors remember their lines.