In-depth analysis : waiting for Godot : pandemic and elections in Ethiopia

Abstract

The Prime Minister of Ethiopia has just announced that the ruling party will stay in power until the next election. Both the end of the Covid-19 and the polls are like waiting for Godot, and no one knows the arrival. In the absence of a constitutive dialogue with the people and given the futility of using brute force, the weapons of coercion for political authorities boil down to deception, manufactured legalistic confusion, and corrupt practices. In Gramsci’s words, this is a position ‘characteristic of situations when it is hard to exercise the hegemonic function and the use of force is too risky’.