• Meles said there is “zero” chance that opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa will be released from prison in time to compete in the elections.
• Meles could stay in power five more years 

(Bloomberg) Meles, who is 54 and has been in power since 1991, reiterated an April 2008 pledge that he would like to step down after next year’s elections. He indicated he would stay for part of an additional five-year term if his ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front requests it.

He said he would resign from the ruling party only as a matter of “fundamental principle” and not over a small difference in how long he should remain in office.

“My guess is this is going to boil-down to plus or minus a year or two,” he said. “I’m simply thinking aloud. Now if it were to boil-down to plus or minus a year or two, I would probably say this is not a matter on which I ought to leave the party.”

It’s also possible, “some would say very likely” that he will be succeeded as prime minister by a person from outside the Tigrayan ethnic group, Meles said.

Veterans of Meles’ Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a rebel group from northern Ethiopia that helped defeat Ethiopia’s Communist Derg government in 1991, form the core of the current ruling party. Though Tigrayans make up just six percent of the country’s population, they dominate the upper levels of Ethiopia’s civilian and military leadership.

Meles said there is “zero” chance that opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa will be released from prison in time to compete in the elections scheduled for next May. He also said Birtukan’s jailing is not a pretext to eliminate political opposition.

Birtukan, a leader of the now-defunct Coalition for Unity and Democracy alliance, was first jailed along with more than 120 other opposition leaders, activists, and journalists after unrest following Ethiopia’s disputed 2005 elections.

Government Pardon

Birtukan was freed under a government pardon in 2007, before being put back in jail under a life sentence in December after she denied requesting the earlier amnesty. Her supporters say she was jailed because of the growing popularity of her new party, Unity for Democracy and Justice.

The prime minister also defended local elections last year, in which opposition candidates won just three of 3.6 million seats, saying that “democracy is about process, it’s not about outcome.”
Ethiopia’s largest remaining opposition parties withdrew in advance of the poll, citing government intimidation.

“If the process is clean and you get zero, tough luck,” he said.

Source: Bloomberg