Ethiopian prime minister’s party easily wins parliamentary election

Nobel Peace Prize winner will stay in power, as analysts warn of renewed conflicts.Ethiopia’s Prosperity Party has comfortably won another parliamentary majority in this month’s elections, with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed set to keep the top job.The Nobel Peace Prize winner had been widely expected to win the national elections as his Prosperity Party candidates campaigned on the government’s economic record and on improving food security in a country that has experienced several famines in the past.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Can US-Iran peace ‘deal’ survive Israeli bombing of Lebanon?list 2 of 3Israel slams EU’s Kallas for ‘apartheid’ comment: Are ties unravelling?list 3 of 3South Africa’s immigration crackdown divides Johannesburg’s inner cityend of listAbiy, who was appointed in 2018 following mass protests against the long-ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition, created the Prosperity Party the following year. The party won more than 90 percent of the available seats in the last parliamentary elections in 2021.The Ethiopian leader received widespread praise at home and around the world for freeing journalists, activists, and other political prisoners and revoking bans on many political parties after taking power. He was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for ending hostilities with neighbouring Eritrea.But his opponents and human rights activists accuse his government of reversing those gains in ⁠recent years by detaining journalists and shutting down civil society groups.Ethiopia has faced years of violent unrest in several of the country’s ethnically organised regions, including Abiy’s native Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest, and the second-biggest region, Amhara, where a militia known as Fano has seized swathes of the countryside since 2023.A civil war in the northern Tigray region from 2020-2022, which stemmed from a breakdown in relations between Abiy and the Tigrayan leaders who dominated national politics before his rise, ⁠resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, researchers say.