Hailu Shawel, the former leader of the now defunct party, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), which gave the ruling party a big scare in the 2005 elections, has died at the age of 80.
According to the state-affiliated media outlet Radio Fana, Shawel died in Bangkok, Thailand where he was receiving treatment for the illness that he had been battling for the last two years.
In the 2005 election, described by observers as the most open in Ethiopia’s modern history, the newly-formed party CUD officially won all 23 parliamentary seats in Addis Ababa and 109 seats in Parliament, nation-wide.
It also won 137 of the 138 seats in the Addis Ababa city council. But the party claimed that only widespread vote rigging had prevented it from being declared the outright winner of the national elections and forming the new government.
The ruling Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and its allied parties won 327 parliamentary seats, according to the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia, enabling it to form the post-election government.
Another opposition party, United Ethiopia Democratic Forces (UEDF), won 52 parliamentary seats and despite also alleging vote rigging, it decided to take up its seats in the new Parliament.
But CUD called for street protests and launched a civil disobedience campaign, provoking a bloody crackdown by the Ethiopian security forces, which killed about 193 protesters, injured hundreds more and led to the imprisonment of tens of thousands.
Hailu Shawel and dozens of other upper and middle level CUD officials were imprisoned for 20 months before being released under an amnesty deal in July 20, 2007.
He then contested the 2010 elections under the banner of the new All Ethiopia Unity Party (AEUP) but it failed to win a single one of the 547 parliamentary seats.
EPRDF and allied parties won all but two seats in the chamber, with a lone opposition and lone independent candidate winning the two remaining seats. Since then Shawel, beset by party squabbles and ill health, Shawel gradually withdrew from public life to focus on his own business.
According to Radio Fana, Shawel had speculated in his autobiography, that part of the reason for the illness in his last years was the cold he contracted during his 20 months in prison.
