Ethiopian High Court overturns election rules banning observers
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, May 3, 2005 (AP) — The High Court overturned election rules that had effectively banned thousands of local observers from monitoring Ethiopia’s May 15 parliamentary polls.
High Court Judge Brehanu Teshome said Tuesday that the rules “contravened” the laws of the country.
Mekonnen Wondimu, a lawyer for the National Election Board, said it would appeal the decision.
In the lead-up to the May vote, opposition parties have accused the government of not providing a level playing field for the elections in which the ruling coalition is expected to prevail over the small, fragmented and underfunded opposition.
Ethiopia last month expelled three U.S. organizations promoting democracy – the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute and the International Foundation for Election Systems – on charges that they were operating illegally in Ethiopia.
On April 5, the National Election Board made new rules requiring local groups to have registered as election observers when they were originally established, which meant almost all of the 35 groups that form the Organization for Social Justice would have been unable to field observers. The group went to court to challenge the rules on April 20.
“We have shown that such arbitrary decisions will not be tolerated by the public,” said Netsanet Demissie, director of the Organization for Social Justice.
But Netsanet said that with only 12 days to go before the vote, the group would be unable to train and deploy all 3,000 monitors it had originally planned to use.
About 25.6 million of Ethiopia’s 71 million people have registered to vote.
Some 35 political parties will vie for seats in Ethiopia’s 547-seat lower house of parliament, the Council of People’s Representatives. Voters will also elect representatives in nine regional state parliaments that will appoint members of the 112-seat Council of the Federation, parliament’s upper house.
The May elections would be Ethiopia’s third democratic vote. The previous two were won handily by the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. The governing party and affiliated parties hold 519 of the seats in the federal parliament.