Ethiopia seats its new parliament on 5 October — with Tigray's 38 seats empty

The Speaker's notice says a government will be constituted on 5 October; it does not say how a parliament with no member from Tigray constitutes one while the federal army fights Tigrayan forces in Tigray, Afar and Amhara. Our Power block gives the date its weight: of the 15 sitting leaders we grade, only two govern under no term limit at all — Abiy Ahmed, and Isaias Afwerki, his partner in the 2018 peace declaration, whom Abiy's government now accuses of funding the alliance against it, a charge Asmara denies. If the House returns him, as its majority makes likely, a new five-year term runs to 2031, thirteen years after he took office in April 2018, and our Scorecard reads that tenure in two directions at once: development delivery at the 79th percentile of African countries since 2018, rights and participation at P36. We said on 26 September that growth did not buy the Pretoria peace; Monday shows what it did buy — a 438-seat majority from an election in which Tigray's 38 constituencies never voted. The real test is whether Abiy's first address of the new term offers Tigray a seat at a table, or only the seats it has already left empty.