Ethiopian election board delays results by one month
ADDIS ABABA, June 3 (AFP) — Election authorities in Ethiopia on Friday said official results from last month’s hotly contested legislative polls expected to be announced next week would be delayed by a month.
The National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) said that releasing final official returns on June 8 as planned was not feasible given the large number of allegations of fraud and vote-rigging it had to investigate.
“NEBE, having investigated the volume of complaints and realising that it needs more time to investigate, has decided today to extend the result announcement day by one month, that is until July 8,” board spokesman Getahun Amogne said.
“In addition to the volume of the camplaints, the NEBE also considered the request by the opposition to extend the result announcement,” he told AFP.
Ethiopia’s two main opposition groups had filed suit to prevent the board from certifying provisional results from the May 15 elections, alleging that returns from many constituencies were marred by massive irregularities.
They had threatened nationwide mass protests in the event those results, which show the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) to have won the election, are validated.
A high court in Addis Ababa is now considering the suit but on Friday referred a related opposition request to quash a month-long ban on public demonstrations to a constitutional commission.
In announcing their legal action, the opposition accused the NEBE of conspiring with the government to rig the polls and on Friday the election board said it would sue the groups for defamation.
“The election board will sue them in accordance with electoral laws,” the board said in a statement released before the delay in results was announced.
“Such statements, though baseless and fabricated, may mislead the public and discredit the efforts of the NEBE,” it said.
The polls were the country’s third since since the 1991 ouster of a Soviet-backed dictatorship, second since the advent of multi-party politics and first to be monitored by international observers.
Foreign monitors lauded the overwhelming turnout and peaceful conduct on polling day itself but have since expressed growing concern at post-vote developments, including the slow pace of the announcement of results.
Provisional results announced thus far give the EPRDF and allied parties 320 seats in the 547-member parliament.
Those returns, from 513 of the 524 contested consituencies, show opposition parties, which had only 12 seats in the previous parliament, and independents with 193 seats.
The EPRDF, which has been in power for 14 years, has conceded losses in the election but insists it has enough seats in parliament to form a new government.
In a related matter, officials said six Ethiopian journalists had been detained and questioned by police on Thursday over their coverage of the elections and their aftermath.
The six, who work for three independent newspapers in Addis Ababa, were held for six hours while they were questioned about their publishing of opposition party statements.
“They warned us of consequences that may follow for reporting the CUD’s press releases as is,” said Serkalem Fasil, editor and publisher of a weekly chief of the weekly Amharic-language Menelik newspaper.
The CUD, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy, is Ethiopia’s largest opposition group and has accused the government of massive fraud and vote rigging in the polls.
The CUD’s statements have been widely reported in the international press but have been all but ignored by Ethiopia’s state media, which until the election had given unprecedented equal time to opposition parties.