Ethiopia’s Sidama people vote for autonomy

THEY ROSE at dawn, quietly assembling in long queues and clasping their voting cards tightly in their excitement. On November 20th more than 2m people from Ethiopia’s fifth-biggest ethnic group, the Sidama, went to the polls to decide whether to break away to form its tenth semi-autonomous state. It was the first vote of its kind since the introduction of the current constitution in 1995, which granted federal states to many of the country’s biggest or most powerful ethnic groups—but not the Sidama. It also marked the triumphant culmination of a campaign for statehood by the Sidama which dates back almost as far.On November 23rd the electoral board announced that 98.5% of voters had backed the new state. This means the Sidama, a people numbering about 5m, will leave the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR), a state made up of a tapestry of more than 45 different ethnic groups of which they are the biggest. A new Sidama state will have its own constitution, parliament and security forces, as well as powers over tax, education, and land administration. But its formation may also fire the starting-gun for the unravelling of an especially fragile part of an already wobbly federation.