One year after the General Election, the country still remains in a political crisis. The combination of a health crisis (Coronavirus) and a political dispute could be extremely dangerous for the country.

The Malawi’s five High Court Judges sitting in Lilongwe as Constitutional Court on 3 February  2020 delivered a landmark ruling that annulled the country’s May 19, 2019 presidential elections. The presidential elections case was brought to the Court by the Opposition Malawi Congress Party’s (MCP) president, Lazarus Chakwera, and the United Transformation Movement (UTM) president, Saulos Chilima, who came in second and third in the polls respectively.
The ruling which was highly welcomed and praised by many analysts including millions of voters, means that President Peter Mutharika is not an elected leader but is in the position in an acting capacity until fresh elections are held.
This ruling, however, has not only changed the political landscape but has also plunged the country into a political and constitutional crisis with the incumbent president Mutharika and the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) refusing to accept the Constitutional Court orders.

Among other things the Court ordered Parliament to amend the Parliamentary and Presidential Elections Act and that fresh elections be held within 150 days from the day of the ruling, and that a fresh presidential election be held on 2 July). It also ordered Parliament to assess the MEC Commissioners whom the court found to be incompetent and accused of mishandling the elections. The Court discovered that it was wrong for the MEC to tamper with the presidential tally sheets with Tipp Ex, a correctional fluid, in many polling centers, especially where Mutharika was not popular.
In line with the Constitutional Court orders, Parliament passed four bills one of which is a bill that sets a date for the fresh elections and another one that allows for the 50+1, in which a winning party is supposed to get 50%+1 of the votes.
“This ruling will completely change the political landscape”, said Mustafa Hussein, Political Lecturer at the University of Malawi, Chancellor College. Hussein said the country will “now see political parties forming alliances so that they meet the Court order that any party in future must get 50%+ 1 of the votes”.

But Mutharika and his MEC Chairperson Jane Ansah are having none of this. Ansah is refusing to resign despite the fact that the Court found that her and the MEC failed to manage the elections properly.
The president and the MEC appealed to the Supreme Court to have a stay order and also to have the whole ruling overturned but the Court quashed the stay order appeal which would have allowed the MEC not to conduct fresh elections.
To plunge the country further into a deep political crisis, Mutharika has refused to assent to the four Bills that Parliament sent him towards the end of February. He has also refused to sack the Commissioners as recommended by the Public Appointments Committee (PAC) of Parliament, who the Court found to be incompetent. Speaking through his spokesperson, Mgeme Kalirani, Mutharika said he has not assented to the bills “because they are in conflict with the Constitution”. And on the failure to fire the MEC commissioners as recommended by the Public Appointments Committee of Parliament, Mutharika argued that he would not fire the commissioners because they were not given ample time to defend themselves.

But some legal analysts have observed that the refusal by the president not to assent to the bills is ‘just a tactical move to buy time so that he remains in office for longer’. Others have hinted that Mutharika is putting this country into a Constitutional and political crisis. “Mutharika’s rejection of the Bills might be throwing this country into a Constitutional crisis”, said John Mwakhwawa, a private practicing lawyer. He said the legislature made the laws in accordance with what the Constitutional Court ordered them to do.
If Mutharika is rejecting the Bills it means that the Court and Parliament are in conflict with the Head of State.
Professor Danwood Chirwa, a Constitutional Law Scholar, at the University of Cape Town said the main reason why President Mutharika refused to assent to the Bills was both ‘grotesque and incoherent’. He said Mutharika who was holding office on an interim basis, violates the Constitution and that he (Mutharika) had an option of seeking an advisory opinion of the Constitutional Court if he was not sure. “But Mutharika was not seeking that Constitutional Court advice because he knows his position is untenable”, he said. “The truth is that the bills try to operationalize the decision of the Constitutional Court, which the interim president does not like. By refusing to assent to the bills, the interim president is disobeying that court’s decision and is acting in contempt of it, and he is not upholding the Constitution as he claims”, said Chirwa. He also said the president was stifling the law-making process of the legislature by advancing “dubious and irrational reasons for withholding consent”.

The University of Malawi’s Chancellor College Dean of Law, Sunduzwayo Madise, told the media that the Parliament can table the bills and have them be sent back to the president for the second time. But before they do that they can discuss the reasons given by the president not to assent to the Bills.He said however that Court orders must be respected and that “Parliament has the power to take the matter back to the court for more orders in the event that the elections fails to take place within the stated 150 days as ordered by the Court”. Ironically, Mutharika and his ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are preparing for the fresh elections and have already started campaigning. His party has entered into an electoral alliance with the former ruling party the United Democratic Front (UDF) whose leader is Atupele Muluzi, a son to Bakili Muluzi, former president of the party and State. Behind the scenes so many things are happening aimed at how parties can maneuver each other in the coming elections. Mutharika would like to see the same MEC commissioners organize the elections while the opposition and millions of Malawian voters are opposed to the move.

The main opposition parties, the MCP and UTM have also formed their own electoral alliance and they have been joined by five other opposition parties aimed at defeating the DPP/UDF alliance in the coming fresh polls.Since May last year the country has been witnessing nationwide demonstrations demanding the resignations of the MEC chair and commissioners. The demonstrations were and are still being organized by the Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) whose leaders are currently on bail on charges against overthrowing the government.
But the three HRDC leaders, Timothy Mtambo, Gift Trapence and MacDonald Sembereka are all denying the charges and have vowed to carry their demonstrations further to State Residences, should Mutharika continue refusing to sign the Bills, which he has, and failing to fire the MEC chair and Commissioners. It now remains to be seen what Parliament will do in the wake of the President’s refusal to sign the bills.

Meanwhile, at the beginning the April the government has declared the first cases of Coronavirus in the country. The health system is very weak and poorly resourced. Only 20 people a day can be tested for the virus, and there are just 25 intensive care unit beds and seven ventilators in the country of more than 18 million people. Since February, however, the government has been racing to curb Covid’s arrival. It has wheeled out a £24m preparedness plan, suspended international flights, banned weddings and gatherings of more than 100 people, closed schools and universities, and is making people arriving from Europe, China, or the US to self-isolate. According to the Ministry of Health, 4,603 people who have entered the country in the past few weeks are ‘under surveillance’.

Raphael Mweninguwe

The national elections that were scheduled for August have been postponed sine die because of the coronavirus outbreak. Some analysts fear that such decision could exacerbate the tense political situation in Ethiopia.

On the last 1^st April, the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) announced the postponement of the national legislative elections which were initially scheduled on the 29 August 2020. The Board justified its decision with the existing condition in the country, meaning the Covid 19 pandemics which prompted the government to declare the state of emergency on the following 8 April, after it had registered 52 confirmed cases, with two deaths. Indeed, the fight against the spread of coronavirus and the organization for the forthcoming election was hardly compatible since the government had already banned mass gatherings at the end of March, while regional states have suspended local transportation services and banned movements of people.  Such actions have delayed pre-election tasks, including the training over 150,000 election attendants, explained the NEBE.

The initial expectations were that these elections pushed by the wind of reform, following Prime Minister Abyi Ahmed’s election in April 2018, would be the first free and fair ones since the fall of the dreaded regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991 (except one, none was competitive). But analysts fear that the postponement of the election can increase an already tense situation characterized by protests, repression and censorship.  Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 as a reward for Ethiopia’s reconciliation with Eritrea, had promised that this year’s vote will be free. His reputation of reformist after he granted amnesty to thousands of political prisoners, allowed the return of exiles and lifted a ban on opposition parties, has given him a widespread popularity in the country But over the last months, the prospects are becoming gloom. The forthcoming campaign could be very tense in a climate that prompted the parliament to pass law punishing “hate speech” and “disinformation” on the 13 February.

The forthcoming elections have been indeed exacerbating ethnic tensions in many parts of the country. The Tigray region, the stronghold of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) which de facto ran the country as leader of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), finds itself in a state of near secession. On the 3 February, the Prime Ministre acknowledged the problem and said that there could not be two armies in the same country. Nevertheless, on the 7 February, the forces of the Tigray National Regional state defied him and made a parade in the regional capital, Mekelle. And after the announcement of the postponement of the election, the leadership of Tigray warned that this measure would pose a danger to the federation.
Ethno-regionalism is spreading throughout the country, including in Abiy Ahmed’s Oromo region, the most populated of the nine Ethiopian states. The Prime Minister is facing there the opposition of the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) whose slogan is “make Oromia great again” and which boasts from the support of the popular leader and media-baron Jawar Mohammed. Like opponents in Tigray, he criticized the decision to postpone the election.
“The Board was already behind the schedule by weeks before the coronavirus outbreak became an issue. There was no way they could have held the election as scheduled. The pandemic just gave them justifiable excuses”, accused Jawar Mohammed.

The OFC which absorbed the Oromo Liberation Front of Dawad Ibsa Ayana, is convinced it can win. It has set up a large coalition of other regionalists groups including the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) which is the likely winner in the Somali region, the Afar People’s Liberation Party (APLP), the Sidama People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the Agew National Council (ANC), the Benishangul Gumuz People’s Liberation Movemnt (BGLM), the Kimant Democratic Party (KDP), the Gambella People’s Liberation Movement (GPLM) and the Mocha Domocratic Party (MDP).
Besides, in the Amhara National Regional  State, Abiy’s Prosperity Party which replaces the former ruling EPRDF which was dissolved in January 2020, will be challenged by the National Movement of Amhara (NAMA) and the Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice (ECSJ). Yet, the dissolution of the EPRDF is considered as premature even within the government, by the Defence Minister, Lemma Megersa, a former president of the Oromo region, who fell out with Abyi over the issue.
The opposition takes sometimes a violent form. On the 23 February, 29 people were injured in a bomb attack in the town of Ambo, at 100 km west of the capital, Addis Ababa against a rally of Abiy’s unitarist Prosperity Party. The police suspects the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) – the breakaway armed wing of the OLF- for the attack and for the assassination of a top security official two days before in Burayu, a town on the outskirts of Addis Ababa.  The OLA is also blamed for bombings, bank robberies and kidnappings in Oromia.

Political violence could jeopardize the implementation of economic reforms which attracted billions of dollars of foreign investments. Over the last two decades, Ethiopia made huge progress in health, education and poverty reduction. Life expectancy increased from 52 years in 2000 to 67 in 2020. The economy grew more than 10-fold during this period. Nevertheless, free and fair elections, as promised Abiy may provoke his defeat. The way Abiy is confronting the challenges is raising lots of concern among human rights activists who deplore that in order to clamp down on protests, secession threats and hatred speech, the government is denying the opposition space to campaign openly.
Abyi’s staunchest opposition comes from his own region of Oromia, which celebrated in 2018 his election as a victory.
The PM is blamed for restricting the press and association freedoms. The OLF and the Oromo Federalist Congress complain that their offices have been closed lots of times.
On the 9 March 2020, the New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the Ethiopian government to lift the two-month shutdown of internet and phone communications in Oromia which was justified by the government as necessary during counterinsurgency operations there. Under Abiy Ahmed’s administration, communication blackouts have become routine, deplores HRW.  In January 2020, the Ethiopian government introduced a hate speech and disinformation law that could restrict free expression and access to internet, warns HRW.
According to the Addis Standard magazine, Abiy’s government is filling up the jails again with political prisoners. By end February, nine OLF members and leaders were arrested in Addis Ababa. One of them, former Commander of Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), Abdi Regassa now member of OLF’s Executive Committee, remains in prison. But the government’s refusal to reveal his whereabouts prompted Amnesty International to appeal for his release.

Some areas of Oromia look like an occupied territory. In the market town of Nekemte, residents complain that the presence of the army reminds them of the authoritarian regime which ruled the country from 1991 to 2018. Many local inhabitants see the military, not the OLA rebels, as the main source of instability.
The Oromos who had hoped that they would benefit from Abiy’s election as prime minister, are extremely disappointed.
The repression has become very harsh. Human rights organisations mention dozens of deaths. “Killings are occurring on a daily basis in rural areas,” says Asebe Regassa, a lecturer at Wollega University. Accordingly, farmers are afraid of harvesting because they fear that soldiers may accuse them of growing food for the OLA.  On the 10 January 2020, at Bule Hora University, security forces opened fire on a crowd of protesting students, killing one and injuring more than a dozen.  The bitterness is widespread. Opposition leader, Jawar Mohammed says that Abyi is trying to replace the one-party dominated system by a “one man-dominated system”. Critics are even saying that Abiy Ahmed got the Nobel Prize too soon. (F.M.)