The much-talked about, but never analyzed, Ethiopia’s 2010 Election Code of Conduct is a work of plagiarism, a direct line-by-line and word-by-word translation into Amharic of the English-language “sample” document originally authored by the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA). Even though the translation was mentioned in news stories distributed by TPLF (the ruling party), the extent of the “translation” was never disclosed. Four political parties: the ruling party, AEUP and two others referred by many as “moles of the ruling party in the opposition” have signed the Electoral Code of Conduct after weeks of “negotiations.” As it stands now, the Code of Conduct seems to have been intended to hoodwink the international donor community.

The major opposition coalition, Medrek – the Forum for Democratic Dialogue, had not partaken in the document “translation” efforts of the other four parties. According to Medrek, “translating” an English-language document into Amharic does not count as a “negotiation” with the ruling party, that abuses government and state power to promote party agendas. It is puzzling to many what part of the “translation” project needed a “negotiation” among the other four political parties – the appropriate choice of an Amharic word for the English-language equivalent? Or whether the verb should be past tense or present?

The contributions of AEUP and EDP to the Code of Conduct document were said to be their inputs about electoral learning from Ghana and South Africa. Well, the IDEA English-language document clearly states that learning from Ghana and South Africa have been taken into consideration (see the Annex of the document given below). From the list of countries in the Annex, Ghana and South Africa were chosen by TPLF propagandists for they’re popularly known to hold democratic elections. Does copying a document from elsewhere make the election in Ethiopia fair and free? It’s action that counts; otherwise, the “document” that the law is written in becomes a piece of paper.

The “negotiation” should be about overhauling the electoral system; it should be about making the Election Board accountable to the public, not TPLF; it should be about stopping the intimidation of opposition members by TPLF; it should be about stopping TPLF’s use of food aid to buy votes and support; it should be about freeing all political prisoners; it should be about allowing the state-owned media to be used fairly by all political parties and not making it a TPLF monopoly, and so on.

Here are the English-language document from IDEA and the Amharic translation from the ruling party – both PDF files:

- Code of Conduct for Political Parties (IDEA)
- Electoral Code of Conduct – Ethiopia