EU Poll observer quits after Ethiopia’s bias accusation
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Apr 4, 2005 (AP) — A senior European Union election observer monitoring Ethiopia’s third democratic ballot has quit after the authorities accused him of bias, an Ethiopian official said Monday.
Siegfried Pausewang pulled out after the chairman of the National Election Board said he had been unjustly critical in the past and “lacked objectivity.”
Pausewang, who said he had been observing elections in Ethiopia since 1991, insisted he would of remained objective, but he concluded it would be better that he leave at the end of the week
Three U.S. organizations helping to improve democracy in Ethiopia were ejected from the country last week after the government accused them of operating illegally.
All the elections have been convincingly won by the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. The EPRDF and affiliated parties hold 519 of 548 seats in the federal parliament.
More than 25 million of Ethiopia’s 71 million people have registered to vote.
Opposition parties have already accused the government of not providing a level playing field for the May 15 national elections.
Pausewang is part of a 159-strong mission, one of the largest ever fielded by the E.U. He arrived March 19.
“The Ethiopian government said I would not be neutral, and that of course put the European team in quite a difficult situation,” Pausewang told the Associated Press. “If they insisted I stay, they would always be confronted with accusations they are not neutral.”
“If, on the other hand, they sent me home, the opposition might say that the mission is not neutral because they have already yielded to government pressure,” he said.
He was a U.N. observer in Eritrea in 1993, when it gained independence from Ethiopia . Pausewang was hired as the country expert by the E.U.
Kemal Bedri, chairman of Ethiopia’s National Election Board, said he was concerned that Pausewang arrived with “preconceived ideas” about Ethiopia .
“He was not really objective in assessing what he did,” he told The Associated Press. “When someone comes in as an observer I think they should be someone who doesn’t have preconceived ideas about what the whole process is about.”