Huge turnout at Ethiopia’s local election

April 14, 2008 (ADDIS ABABA) — Ethiopia’s first elections since a disputed 2005 parliamentary vote drew a huge turnout at the weekend despite an opposition boycott, the election board chief said Monday.

Merga Bekana said Sunday’s local and federal elections went off peacefully and “some 95% of the 26 million registered voters had cast votes.”

With the opposition boycott, many ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front party candidates were unopposed.

About 3.7 million local and federal council seats were up for grabs and the opposition fielded only a few thousand candidates.

“The casting of the votes was concluded peacefully and successfully across the nation,” Merga told the state-run Ethiopian News Agency.

Before the polls, Human Rights Watch said there was evidence of “systemic patterns of repression and abuse that have rendered the elections meaningless in many areas.”

In 2005, around 200 people died in post-election violence sparked by charges that the party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had rigged the ballot. The unrest landed several top opposition officials in jail for 18 months.

(AFP)