Ndiho Media,LLC.

Long queues formed outside polling stations in Addis Ababa at 6:00 AM this morning as Ethiopia commenced its 7th General Election. Under the watchful eye of an increased military and police presence, more than 50 million registered voters are eligible to cast ballots for the House of People’s Representatives and local regional councils. Yet beneath the capital’s orderly surface lies a deeply fractured nation. While Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s ruling Prosperity Party (PP) is widely projected to expand its current 500-seat parliamentary supermajority, independent analysts are calling the exercise one of the least competitive in Ethiopia’s post-1991 history—a perfunctory poll that functions more as an elite power consolidation than a democratic choice.