ABSTRACT
After 1991, representative institutions in Ethiopia such as the council of representatives (1991 to 1995) during the transitional period became places where the voice of the opposition was excluded and suppressed. Exclusion took place mainly through controversial elections whose outputs always favoured the incumbent; and suppression took place through different legislations and decisions endorsed by the parliament such as proclamations on issues of civil society, anti-terrorism and MP codes of conduct. These became the basis for the detainment of rebellious parliamentarians, the cutting of funding of opposition parties and the silencing of opposition within. During this period, more than others, the parliament became one of the central platforms of resistance because the executive branch, through centralised political party structures that continuously entrenched itself in the secretariat of the parliament, continued to stifle the voices of the public by occupying the spaces of the parliamentarians. The parliament secretariat became a party machinery. This was a growing trend in all public and policymaking spheres in Ethiopia: top figures in the executive branch refused to trust the outcome of a genuinely free democratic system that would put the fate of the country in the hands of its citizens.
