EU observer accused of bias

2005-04-04 12:52

Addis Ababa - A senior European Union election observer monitoring Ethiopia's third-ever democratic ballot has quit after the authorities accused him of bias, an Ethiopian official said on Monday.

Siegfried Pausewang pulled out after the chair of the National Election Board said he had been unjustly critical in the past and "lacked objectivity".

EU officials were not immediately available for comment.

Three US organisations working towards democracy in Ethiopia were kicked out last week after the government accused them of operating illegally.

All the elections have been convincingly won by the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front. The EPRDF and affiliated parties hold 519 of 548 seats in the federal parliament.

More than 25 million of Ethiopia's 71 million people have registered to vote. Opposition parties have already accused the government of not providing a level playing field for the May 15 national elections.

Pausewang, part of a 159-strong mission and one of the largest ever fielded by the EU, arrived in the country on March 19.

He has monitored three previous elections in Ethiopia and was a United Nations observer in Eritrea in 1993 when it gained independence from Ethiopia.

Pausewang was hired as the country expert by the EU, having written at least four books on democracy in Ethiopia and teaching at the University in Addis Ababa for four years.

But Kemal Bedri, chairman of Ethiopia's National Election Board, said he raised concerns that Pausewang arrived with "preconceived ideas" about Ethiopia.

"He was not really objective in assessing what he did," he said. "When someone comes in as an observer I think they should be someone who doesn't have preconceived ideas about what the whole process is about."

Kemal said Pausewang was well known to the Ethiopian government.

"When we saw the list everybody knew him. The election board knows him. It didn't take much investigation to know what he wrote," Kemal said.

- AP