{"id":35694,"date":"2026-05-28T12:33:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=35694"},"modified":"2026-05-28T12:33:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:33:19","slug":"ethiopian-leader-abiys-party-set-to-dominate-elections-despite-insecurity","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/ethiopian-leader-abiys-party-set-to-dominate-elections-despite-insecurity\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopian leader Abiy&#8217;s party set to dominate elections despite insecurity"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Ethiopians will vote in parliamentary and regional elections on Monday that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed\u2019s party is expected to dominate despite significant unrest across much of \u200bAfrica\u2019s second most populous country.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Abiy, 49, has consolidated his grip on Ethiopia\u2019s politics since being appointed in 2018 on the \u200cheels of mass protests against the long-ruling Ethiopian People&#8217;s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>His newly formed Prosperity Party won a landslide victory in the last elections in 2021, taking 410 seats out of 484 in parliament.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But he has faced years of violent unrest in several of the country\u2019s ethnically organised regions, including his native Oromiya, Ethiopia\u2019s largest, and the second-biggest region, Amhara, where a \u200bmilitia known as Fano has seized swathes of the countryside since 2023.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>A civil war in the northern Tigray region from 2020 and 2022, which \u200bstemmed from a breakdown in relations between Abiy and the Tigrayan leaders who dominated national politics before his rise, \u2060resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, researchers say.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Though a 2022 peace deal ended the conflict, a move this month by Tigray\u2019s main political \u200bparty to reassert control over the region\u2019s political administration in violation of the agreement has led Ethiopian officials and analysts to warn of the risk of \u200bfresh unrest.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Monday&#8217;s elections will not be held in Tigray, one of Ethiopia&#8217;s 12 regions, because of what the electoral board called &#8220;unfavourable conditions&#8221; there.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Voting will also not take place in at least eight of Amhara&#8217;s 138 constituencies because of insecurity.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":22449,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-35694","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"Abiy Ahmed\u2019s party is expected to dominate elections despite significant unrest","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35695,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35694\/revisions\/35695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=35694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}