Ethiopia electoral reform law falls short of opposition hopes
ADDIS ABABA, Jan 18 (AFP) — Reforms to Ethiopia’s electoral law were adopted by parliament on Tuesday ahead of a general election in May, but they fell short of changes hoped for by opposition groups in the Horn of Africa country.
“The reform of the election law has been adopted with two objections and seven abstentions from the opposition,” said Ethiopian parliament spokesman Almaz Makoneen.
This is the first reform to Ethiopia’s electoral law since the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) came to power in 1991, but the opposition did not get all it wanted ahead of the May 15 polls.
The government rejected opposition parties’ main demand that they play a part in the nomination of the seven-member electoral commission.
As the law stands, the commission will continue to be named by the prime minister, whose choices are to be validated by parliament.
The country’s principal opposition party, the Ethiopian United Democratic Forces (EUDF), which has just seven of the 547 parliamentary seats, said it had abstained in the vote because of the government’s refusal to budge over the commission issue.
But Tesfaye Mengesha Abegaz, the electoral commission’s vice president, said: “The fact that they are appointed by the parliament does not mean that they are partisan. … They are not members of any party, they are civil servants.”
The EPRDF had previously announced it would respect “75 percent” of the electoral reforms called for by the EUDF. Of 30 proposed amendments to the electoral law, 19 were in the end adopted.
Three Ethiopian opposition parties launched a new coalition in November in a bid to challenge the EPRDF, which has an iron grip on the country’s political landscape, holding 481 seats in parliament.
Among the most significant of the reforms was a reduction in the number of signatures required for a candidate to stand in an election.
More symbolically, the reforms now enshrine in law the right to call meetings and stage demonstrations.
The Ethiopian government has invited observers from Russia, China, Japan, the European Union and the African Union to monitor the May vote.