Ethiopia : Parliament Extends Abiy Ahmed Stay As PM

Ethiopia's parliament has voted to extend Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed stay in office beyond his mandate after elections planned for August were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The vote on Wednesday, June 10, 2020 recorded 114 in favour of extension, four against and one abstention. 
"The House of Federation has approved a decision to extend the term of all assemblies until international health institutions have deemed the threat from coronavirus to be over," the Ethiopian News Agency reported on Wednesday, June 10, 2020 referring to the upper house of parliament.
Though lawmakers did not specify when the new elections will be held, their vote was however an endorsement of recommendations by the Council of Constitutional Inquiry, an advisory body that had held public meetings to decide a way forward after the delay. The body recommended for the "elections to be held nine to 12 months after the coronavirus is deemed not to be a public health concern".
Ethiopia's election board announced in March that it would be impossible to organize the vote on time because of the pandemic, in which 2,506 infections have been confirmed in the country with 35 deaths. The circumstances meant that the election could not happen before legislators' terms end in October.
The decision came two days after the speaker of the Assembly Keria Ibrahim who is from the opposition Tigray People's Liberation Front Party (TPLF), resigned in an apparent protest against the delay. The Ethiopian constitution does not clearly address the path forw...