Ethiopian groups to sue over revoked election monitoring status
ADDIS ABABA, April 20 (AFP) — Ethiopian civic groups plan to sue national electoral authorities for barring them from monitoring the country’s upcoming general elections, officials said Wednesday.
A group of more than 30 local non-governmental organizations said a decision taken this month by National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) to revoke their poll observer status on registration technicalities violates the constitution.
“We have decided to sue the NEBE for breaching our right to observe the election,” said Netsanet Demissie of the umbrella organization Social Justice in Ethiopia which is to file the suit late Wednesday.
“At a time when the very concept of election monitoring is just starting to take root in the country, banning local (groups) is illogical,” he said late Tuesday, announcing plans to file the lawsuit.
Ethiopia goes to the polls on May 15 in the third election since the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) came to power in 1991 and the first to be monitored by international observers.
But earlier this month, the election board effectively barred about 3,000 local observers because their organizations do not identify themselves as professional election monitoring groups and are not registered as such.
The move came just six weeks before the elections and followed the expulsion of three US-based democracy advocacy groups, prompting concerns the government intended to improperly limit access to polling stations.
On Saturday, the European Union, which will have about 150 monitors in Ethiopia for the election, expressed concern about reports of pre-vote harassment and said the decision on the local observers was “disappointing.”
Under the new directive, only two local groups, the Ethiopian Human rights Council and Addis Ababa Women’s Association, are eligible for pre-election monitoring and that status will expire on the day of the vote.
Netsanet said the groups understood the desire of the government to have professional non-partisan observers, but maintained that the election board’s criteria should be “condemned for its subjectivity.”
NEBE officials have denied any intent to keep local observers away from the polls.
“Our directives are not to deter local observers,” said Mekonnen Wondmu, the board’s acting head of party registration. “We need to see that it is done in line with the law of the land.”
“We would be glad to see more local observers, but we have to go by the rule of law,” he told AFP.