Ethiopia ruling party wins local election amid opposition boycott
May 18, 2008 (ADDIS ABABA) — Ethiopia’s ruling party swept local polls largely boycotted by opposition parties who accused the government of intimidating voters and blocking their candidates, results released on Sunday showed.
The National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) declared Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) victor of the first vote in the Horn of Africa nation since 2005 elections ended in deadly violence.
Out of 623 districts, the EPRDF won 559 seats and won all but one of 39 parliament seats up for grabs in by-elections, the board said.
The largest opposition party in parliament, the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces, pulled out three days before the April 13 start of the polls. The Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement pulled out before a second round was held a week later.
“The election in which a total of over 3.5 million candidates from 30 political parties participated were conducted in a free and peaceful manner and in accordance with the law of the country’, the Election Board said.
It said out of a total over 26 million registered voters, 24.5 million or 93 percent voted.
EPRDF also won all major seats in the administration of the capital Addis Ababa.
It had been run by caretaker administrators after opposition politicians who won most of the seats there were jailed on charges of usurping the state after the 2005 polls.
They have since been pardoned after a genocide and treason trial that dragged for two years and drew widespread criticism from human rights and democracy watchdogs.
Two rounds of post-election violence saw more than 200 people killed in battles between security forces and opposition protesters. The violence and an ensuing crackdown on opposition leaders tarnished Meles’ once-sterling Democratic credentials.
But analysts say the courtroom pursuit of the opposition effectively splintered its cohesion, just after it had made its biggest-ever political gains at the ballot box.
Full parliamentary elections are due in 2010.
(Reuters)