Ethiopian PM says will accept defeat if rejected by voters

ADWA, Ethiopia, May 15 (AFP) — Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said Sunday he would accept the verdict of his country’s 26 million voters even if he loses the hotly contested general election.

An Ethiopian woman casts her vote at a polling station in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Sunday, May 15, 2005 during the third democratic elections in Ethiopia’s 3,000-year history. (AP).

Casting his ballot in his birth town of Adwa in northern Ethiopia near the tense border with Eritrea, Meles said he would cede power if the opposition, which has complained of widespread fraud and government abuses, won.

“If the international observers say that the opposition won, we will accept the decision,” he told reporters here. “We’ll wait for the outcome of the election to be glorified by the international observers.”

Meles, 50, who has run the country since the 1991 ouster of a Soviet-backed dictatorship and is seeking a third term, said he was pleased with the massive turnout reported at the more than 30,000 polling stations around the country.

“I feel very proud,” he said. “I fought to make sure that the Ethiopian people have the right to make their own decision.”

“I’m now exercising it as an Ethiopian and I am very proud of this achievement,” Meles said.

A huge majority of Ethiopia’s 26 million registered voters turned out to cast ballots in Sunday’s contest, the impoverished Horn of Africa country’s third since Meles took power, second since the advent of multi-party politics and first with invited international observers.

Despite opposition claims of concerted government harrassment, intimidation and interference, the two main observer groups, the European Union and the US-based Carter Center said long lines and lengthy ballotting procedures were the chief problems encountered by voters.