Prime Minister's Party Wins Ethiopian Election

TT

Published 18.09

 

Supporters of Ethiopia's ruling party with a portrait of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa in late May. Photo: Amanuel Sileshi /AP/TT

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's party has won a landslide victory in Ethiopia's election.

The Prime Minister's party, the Prosperity Party (PP), won nearly 90 percent of the seats, the country's electoral commission said on Sunday.

The election, which was held on June 1, was held in 501 of the country's 547 constituencies. No election is being held in the Tigray region, where a brutal war between local rulers and Ahmed's central government has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives since 2020.

Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018 and received the Nobel Prize the following year for the peace agreement with neighboring Eritrea, but since then he has been criticized for his increasingly authoritarian and violent rule.

Critics believe that elections in Ethiopia have never been free and fair in practice, with the incumbent always winning by a large margin.