Donors urge calm as Ethiopian election returns show opposition gains

ADDIS ABABA, May 21 (AFP) — Ethiopia’s foreign donors appealed for calm on Saturday as the first preliminary returns from last weekend’s hotly contested elections showed the opposition almost doubling its parliamentary seats.

Amid fierce disputes over the credibility of Sunday’s polls and complaints about the slowness of the release of results, ambassadors from 21 foreign nations urged the Ethiopian government, opposition and people to be patient and respect the authority of the national election board.

“The Ambassadors Donors Group calls upon all political parties to be calm and patient as the tabulation process is under way,” it said in a statement published in Ethiopian newspapers.

“We ask all parties to respect the role of the national election board in counting and declaring the results,” the group said. “We ask all political leaders to engage in constructive dialogue.

Describing the current situation as an “historic time,” it also urged all parties concerned “to maintain integrity in the vote tabulation process and to respect the expressed will of the people at the ballot box.”

The statement came as the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) began to release official preliminary results from a handful of the country’s 547 constituencies with the opposition posting large gains.

With results from 33 districts tabulated, the board said 25 parliamentary seats had been won by the two main opposition groups with eight going to the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

Before the election, the opposition parties in the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) and the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEFD) had held only 12 seats in parliament.

Among the 33 constituencies reporting results, 19 were in Addis Ababa and were all taken by the CUD with large majorities, according to the board which had planned to release a nationwide preliminary tally on Saturday.

The capital, where Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has banned all demonstrations for one month, is allocated 23 seats in parliament and the opposition claims to have won them all.

While Meles’ EPRDF has conceded defeat in Addis Ababa it has claimed to have won a majority in parliament with at least 300 seats based on strong rural support.

The opposition, which accuses the EPRDF of massive vote rigging and fraud, says it has won at least 223 seats and on Friday warned of “grave consequences” if allegedly tainted results are released.

The preliminary returns that were to have been released were based on vote counts in more than 30,000 polling stations around the country.

But amid rising tension between the government and the opposition and overwhelmed by massive turnout of more than 90 percent of the country’s 26 million voters, NEBE officials were mum on when the full preliminary totals might be released.