Prescribing Constitutional Interpretation for Postponing the 2020 National Election: The covid-19 Complicatedness in Federalist Ethiopia

Abstract

The covid-19 pandemic has become a global health, economic, social and political problem since January 2020. Like other countries, Ethiopia has been seriously threatened by the effects of the pandemic. Among the impacts, the Ethiopian government was forced to declare a state of emergency and thereby postpone the 2020 national election. The ruling party (the Prosperity Party) came up with four options for postponing the election, namely: dissolving the parliament, a constitutional amendment, a declaration of state of emergency and constitutional interpretation. The parliament eventually approved the fourth option, constitutional interpretation. Consequently, the objective of this article is to assess the constitutionality of the four mechanisms considered by the ruling government to postpone the national election, putting emphasis on constitutional interpretation. The article hence evaluates the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the action taken by the Ethiopian government in postponing the 2020 election by assessing all of the alternatives, with a particular emphasis on the constitutional interpretation option which the government eventually pursued.