ETHIOPIA: Electoral Law Amendment Draft & more – 23rd Jan 2025

Salaam salaam from BA! This is the Rorshok Ethiopia Update from the 23rd of January twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Ethiopia

Let’s begin this week’s episode with news from the National Election Board. It revealed on Friday the 17th that it has drafted an amendment to the Election proclamation which, if approved, will make election fraud punishable by up to five years in prison. The draft bill will also add a fifth type of election for members of the House of Federation. Currently, the law recognizes general, local, re- and by-elections.

The amendment will also cut black-out silence periods from four days to two days, meaning that candidates can campaign until there are only two days left until an election. The Board also has plans to extend the deadline for candidates’ registration. As it stands, candidates have to be registered ninety days prior to the election. It said there will be further consultations with civil society organizations and government bodies to determine other matters and finalize the draft.

The economy isn’t doing as bad as some expected when the government rolled out the second round of the home-grown economic reform, which saw the country’s currency float in relation to other currencies. This move largely came due to pressures from the International Monetary Fund (or IMF) and the World Bank, which promised loans and grants for the country. Well, on Friday the 17th, the IMF approved a loan of almost two hundred and fifty million US dollars.

Announcing the approval, the IMF said that the government has not helped low-income households in coping with the inflation and price hikes that the policy change caused. The Fund urged the government to expand safety net programs in both urban and rural areas to help out low-income households. The IMF was also not satisfied with the National Bank’s audit report being revealed in March, when it was supposed to come out in January.

More on this as reports from different entities, such as the Ministry of Finance, the World Bank, and media outlets, said that the country’s GDP was reduced by half because the country opted for a market exchange rate. This has also resulted in the increase of the public debt’s share in the GDP from thirty-three percent to fifty percent, with external debt accounting for thirty-one percent, which is higher than what the IMF and the World Bank say is the median external debt of low-income countries.

However, on a different side of the same coin, the country’s domestic debt has decreased by almost twenty billion US dollars. The drop is largely due to the floating currency. Prior to the policy change in July, twenty twenty-four, one US dollar was selling at about fifty-seven birr from banks, now one US dollar is worth around a hundred and twenty-five birr.

People are not happy with the depreciation of the birr because it increased prices but is not as bad as some experts had expected.

In northern Ethiopia, the Tigray region’s interim administration told the standing committee of the House of Peoples’ Representatives for Plan, Budget and Finance Affairs that because the federal government didn’t send funds promised to rehabilitate the region after the war, the regional government’s workers haven’t been paid their wages in seventeen months.

The committee went to Tigray on Tuesday the 21st to check how the federal government’s subsidies were being used, and said they were used fairly well. However, they also said that it wasn't their mandate to allocate funds among regions but the House of Federation's.

The region’s officials told members of the committee that the region received thirteen billion birr, which is a hundred million US dollars, but stressed that this was not enough.

Still in the Tigray region, over a hundred Muslim female students in five Axum schools have been told they cannot enter the schools if they’re wearing hijab veils, causing a major uproar across the country. Students affected have also said that they missed the registration deadline for the national university entrance exam, which was conducted in school premises, because they were not allowed in.

The controversy has gone on for over a month and it seems it has reached its fever pitch on Tuesday the 21st, with demonstrators in Mekelle, the region’s capital, protesting against the ban. They held signs that read ‘She’ll wear her hijab and she’ll pursue her education.’

The newspaper The Ethiopian Reporter said it couldn’t reach the region’s education bureau for comments. The outlet also contacted a representative from the Ministry of Education, who said the matter doesn’t concern the Ministry.

According to the results of a research survey by the Addis Ababa Transport Bureau prepared in collaboration with two private research firms released on Thursday the 16th, residents say that parking spaces are scarce and expensive. Respondents pointed out that the corridor development project has eased traffic but they said that because the municipality prohibited parking along the sides of main roads, parking slots have decreased, and the ones available are pricey.

Residents who participated in the survey said prices have gone up, but the city’s transport bureau dismissed these concerns, saying that parking is very affordable in the city. The head of the bureau argued further that someone financially able to purchase a car should easily afford paying for parking, adding that prices will be increased going forward.

In some business news from Addis, the city’s Chamber of Commerce board election saga came to an end. In our previous episode, we mentioned that one of the Chamber’s members sued the Chamber and its Chairwoman, saying that he was removed from the candidates’ list in the Chamber’s election. Recall that a court ordered an injunction.

This past week, the Chairwoman and the member who sued her made amends, prompting the court to lift its order to suspend the election. It was held on Thursday the 16th during the Chamber’s general assembly, and Zahara Mohammed, the head of the city’s business association, was voted as the new Chairwoman of the Chamber.

Members who attended the assembly told media outlets that there were irregularities in the voting process and that there was heavy government intervention, alleging that the government planted members and candidates that it favored.

Speaking of new leaders announced this week, another woman has been named the head of an important position. Simegn Wube was sworn in as the new head of the Ombudsman Institution, after the House of Peoples’ Representatives approved her nomination on Thursday the 23rd.

The Speaker of the House explained that her nomination comes after a committee charged with vetting nominees presented her as the top choice. She has experience in public administration as she served as deputy commissioner of civil service. Her appointment comes after the former ombudsman completed his term in office.

It was a busy week for the Federal High Court as it ruled that eleven individuals embroiled in a corruption case are guilty. The prosecution originally pressed charges against fifty-one suspects over a year ago but the trial dragged on and is just coming to a close for some of the suspects. The convicts were government workers who had conspired to benefit third parties using compensation for expropriated individuals as a front.

They committed fraud by making it appear as if the third parties were expropriated and were entitled to replacements. They orchestrated an auction in which a land of over four thousand square meters was sold for more than a hundred and thirty million birr, which is over a million US dollars. The eleven convicts will head to court once again on the 2nd of February to hear their sentences. The court altered the charges of the rest of the defendants, and they will continue arguing their cases.

And to wrap up this edition, Voice for Prisoners, an international organization that focuses on persons detained on drug trafficking suspicions, urged Ethiopia to install machines that can thoroughly check for drugs in the Bole airport in Addis. The organization said that due to less strict monitoring, traffickers departing from South America prefer to transit through the Bole airport to smuggle drugs. The organization pointed out that especially Nigerian smugglers prefer this route. A report from the United Nations Office on Drug and Crimes also mentioned that the Bole airport is a prominent gateway for drug trafficking.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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Ciao!