Debebe
Deres
June 04, 2010
Is
Professor Al Mariam also mathematically challenged? In his latest smear
on the election and PM Meles’ victory speech, he wrote the following:
“By
the way, [Meles] gave a solemn promise to the 0.4 percent of the people who did
not vote for him… In 2015, the vote will be 100 percent for Zenawi and his
party.”
Professor,
you did not really think that this was about 99.6% of the voter population
voting for EPRDF and the remaining 0.4% of the voters for the opposition, did
you? It surely was an act of the usual dishonesty this time construing
statistics. It is very embarrassing to risk such a ridiculous vulnerability on
your part. Please, respect your readers if not yourself. Should I remind you of
the common expectations from a college professor? You are supposed to act like
one.
In
case, there is someone confused about such assertions or at the risk of
explaining the obvious, let me say this. Nowhere has it ever been reported as
Al Mariam has insinuated- be it in any of the reports by the journalists who
covered the event or in the claims by the parties who run for the seats; nor
can there be anything of such nonsensical joke in a serious national election
as this one. You may only need a fifth grader’s common sense to dismiss a claim
of 99% popular vote for one party. The 99.6% landslide win in the recent
Ethiopian election only refers to the number of seats that have been pocketed
by EPRDF candidates because of their winning edges over their opponents in all
respective constituencies.
If
we take Addis Ababa, for example, EPRDF got 564,764 votes
combined whereas Medrek won 384,245 votes,
EDP won 35,405 votes, AEUP won 19,234 etc.
The opposition all together won over 472,552 votes. That makes EPRDF a winner
of about 60% and the opposition block 39% of popular votes in Addis.
However, because Ethiopia has “a majority vote winner takes all the
seats” electoral rule, EPRDF took nearly all Addis seats of the Federal House
|
EPRDF |
MEDREK |
EDP |
AEUP |
CUDP |
others |
|
564,764 |
384,245 |
35,405 |
19,234 |
13,795 |
19,873 |
|
Election
2010 voter break down for the City
of Addis Ababa |
|||||
Here
in the U.S., too, we may refresh our memories to recall that Al Gore had to
concede defeat to Bush, even if he had won more popular votes on a national
level. The logic here is the Ethiopian opposition would have still been defeated
even if they had won the total number of votes. It is very unusual to see
higher than 65% (let alone 90% or 99%) going to the winning one party; very
rare lower than 30% losing parties on one national election. In a heterogonous
society like ours, such scenarios are even unthinkable.
Dear
Al Mariam, you may think all that matters in election is the number of seats,
but EPRDF is not there for the name of it but to lead and administer the
country to yet another level of transformation.
It is no laughing matter when the BBC’s Will Ross admitted that Addis is
no more known as the “Great Addis Run,
but has been elevated to be referred to as "the Great Addis Turn
Around".
EPRDF
needs every single Ethiopian vote of confidence in order to implement its
policy. When PM Meles was talking about
voters he was not talking about the two seats but about the almost half million
voters who did not vote for EPRDF in the case of Addis Ababa! EPRDF has always believed that if Ethiopia is
to extricate itself from the devastating poverty the country needs every single
Ethiopian to buy the development agenda. It is in light of that the PM Meles
Zenawi spoke the necessity that everyone feels the government is his/her
government! To that end EPRDF is ready
to serve everyone whether they voted for EPRDF or not since the election is not
about the vote of a party but the vote to speed up the development and propel
the country and people to prosperity.