The Election of the Wheat SheafAn Election Already Decided Before the Ballots Are Cast?
As Ethiopia approaches the 2026 election, questions increasingly shift from who will win to whether meaningful electoral conditions exist at all. With large territories remaining outside normal voting conditions, state machinery openly intertwined with campaigning, and outcomes widely presumed in advance, the election raises deeper questions about democratic legitimacy and political ritual. In what some critics describe as the modern election of the wheat sheaf, the central issue is no longer competition among alternatives, but whether the process serves genuine choice, predetermined confirmation, or merely the optics of electoral continuity.
