Great Ethiopian Run : no major sign of protest

By Derese Tariku, Contributor of De Birhan Media, 
Addis Abeba 
27-11-11

The Great Ethiopian Run 2011 was held in Addis Abeba today with little sign of protest voices as it used to be in the past years. Over 36,000 thousand participants took part in this year's run sponsored by the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia. Most participants voiced their own local chants which were of little opposition toned. There were a group of runners who were holding the pictures of the Prime Minister, some  chanted against rebels in Somalia. Unlike previous years, the map of the race course has been changed this year , which could have contributed in the lack of opposition chants. This year runners did not pass through the National Palace where the Prime Minster is housed but run through Kera and Kaliti Ring Roads. In the previous years, when runners reached the Palace they chanted against the PM.

The second reason for the lack of opposing voices was because the majority of the participants were organisation sponsored runners, who had some kind of affiliation with the ruling party and the government. 

The majority, 20,000 participants have registered through different organizations while 15,000 were individual participants. The title sponsor of the race, Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (1,500), giz (1,225) and Ethiopian Airlines (1000) are some of the organization that have registered the highest number of employees to take part on the race. More than 200 international participants registered.  

Some participants said that they knew there was  little opposition as most of the participants were  sponsored government and NGO participants..The Official Website of the Great Ethiopian Run, says it is run by an independent NGO with the mission of staging mass-participation running events in Ethiopia, started in 2001.

Mesenet Geremew in men's category and Abebech Afewrok in female's category won the race.