The 2026 Ethiopian election was presented as a democratic exercise through which citizens would renew the mandate of their government. Yet when vast portions of the country remained outside normal electoral conditions and the outcome appeared predetermined long before voting day, the more fundamental question became unavoidable: can an election still be called an election when millions of citizens are effectively absent from the process?
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.
Even if elections are predetermined, they still require minimum conditions and structures to stage the illusion of democracy. In today’s Ethiopia, those conditions no longer exist. Large parts of Ethiopia are outside regime control, opposition parties participate only to avoid deregistration, insecurity is widespread, and political intimidation is routine. Some regions appear politically detached, actively contemplating a post-Ethiopia political order, and therefore cannot be considered fully participatory in the electoral process. This is no longer an election that can be rigged; it is an election that cannot even be convincingly staged.
The forthcoming Oromia and Ethiopia elections are being presented as competitive democratic contests, complete with debates, campaigns, and political messaging. Yet beneath the spectacle lies a political reality many already understand: elections that confirm power rather than contest it. But the real story may not lie in the predictable outcome. It lies on the sidelines—in the debates, the personalities, the rhetoric, and the revealing moments that quietly expose the true nature of politics in Oromia and Ethiopia today.
It has become increasingly clear that many party members lack even a basic understanding of the norms, limits, and responsibilities of political life. A dangerous assumption has taken root: that once a party forms a government, it automatically owns the state. This false belief is where criminality begins, now an everyday occurrence under the Prosperity Party. Written as Politics Lessons for reflection rather than insult, this article helps members identify where political participation ends and personal liability begins, concluding with Safuu as a moral anchor in public life.
