NAIROBI, June 1 (Reuters) - Voting began in Ethiopia on Monday in parliamentary and regional elections expected to hand Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's ruling Prosperity Party an easy victory, despite significant unrest in much of the country.
More than 50 million people are registered to vote, but there will be no election in the northern Tigray region, where organisers have cited "unfavourable conditions" in the aftermath of a two-year civil war and amid continuing political turmoil.
Abiy, whose party
has campaigned on the government's economic record, said there would be more progress to come as he cast his ballot in his hometown of Beshasha in Oromiya region.
"The Ethiopian people have demonstrated that they do not need anyone to advise or lecture them in order to build their state and establish a democratic system," he said. "These next five years will be a period where we see many historic turning points for Ethiopia."
The head of the African Union Election Observation Mission, former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, said voting was progressing smoothly.
"Ethiopia being the capital of this great continent, a success here resounds across the continent, so we are wishing the people of Ethiopia well, and we hope and trust that the process shall be in order," Kenyatta said.
Abiy was appointed in 2018 following mass protests against the long-ruling EPRDF coalition. His Prosperity Party won 410 out of 484 seats in parliament in elections in 2021.
Prosperity Party candidates have touted improved food security and strong economic growth in Africa's second-most populous country that officials project will top 10% in 2026, one of the fastest rates on the continent.
Nearly half of Ethiopia's 135 million population is under 18.
INSURGENCIES IN TWO BIGGEST REGIONS
But Abiy faces insurgencies in the country's two biggest regions, linked to grievances by different ethnic groups about alleged marginalisation within Ethiopia's federal system.
In his native Oromiya, a region in the south, fighting between government forces and the Oromo Liberation Army separatist group has killed hundreds of people in the past few years.
In neighbouring Amhara, a militia known as Fano has seized swathes of the countryside since 2023. As a result, voting will not take place in at least eight of Amhara's 138 constituencies.
Though a 2022 peace deal ended the civil war in Tigray, which researchers say caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, a move last month by the main political party there to reassert control over the region’s political administration has led Ethiopian officials and analysts to warn of the risk of fresh unrest.
ABIY'S PARTY FACES WEAK OPPOSITION
The Prosperity Party is nevertheless expected to dominate the elections against a fragmented opposition weakened by internal rivalries. Results are expected by June 11.
Opposition parties accuse the federal government of undermining them by arresting their leaders and imposing legal obstacles to their political activities, charges denied by the government.
Reuters has not been able to report from inside Ethiopia since mid-February, when the Ethiopian Media Authority declined to renew the accreditation for its three Addis Ababa-based journalists.
Upon taking office in 2018, Abiy moved to liberalise Ethiopia's tightly controlled economy and freed journalists, activists and other political prisoners. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for ending hostilities with neighbouring Eritrea.
His opponents and human rights activists accuse his government of reversing those gains in recent years by detaining journalists, shutting down civil society groups and overseeing military campaigns marked by atrocities.
The government has denied systematic human rights abuses and said its actions are necessary to protect national security.
The rapprochement with Eritrea has given way to fresh animosity in the past few years, in part over repeated declarations by Abiy that landlocked Ethiopia has a right to sea access.
Eritrea, which won its independence from Ethiopia in 1993, has viewed the comments as an implicit threat of military aggression. Abiy has said that although sea access is an “existential” matter for Ethiopia, he intends to pursue it through dialogue.
(Reporting by Nairobi Newsroom; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Andrew Heavens)
