Election turmoil in Ethiopia

2005-08-19 14:20

Anthony Mitchell

Addis Ababa - Ethiopia's main opposition parties filed for an injunction on Friday to prevent reruns of elections in 31 constituencies, demanding more information from the national electoral board about why they were taking place, said an opposition leader.

Brehanu Nega, vice-chairman of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy, said lawyers filed the suit against the electoral board at Federal High Court.

The board had scheduled a rerun of elections on Sunday in 20 parliamentary constituencies, where the ruling party complained of irregularities and in 11 districts, where it also complained.

Nega said: "We have not seen any decision from the election board as to why they are having the re-elections."

Massive irregularities

Nega said: "The election board are taking the places where we have won and holding reruns, but we don't know on what basis these decisions have been made."

Both Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front and the opposition had said that massive irregularities took place in many districts across the country.

The electoral board was expected to argue later on Friday that the elections should take place as planned.

Ethiopia's national elections had been embroiled in allegations of fraud and vote rigging since polling day on May 15.

According to human rights groups, security forces killed 42 people when they took to the streets to protest alleged fraud.

The ruling coalition had won 296 seats in the 547-member body, and its allied parties won 22 seats.

Opposition parties won 12 seats

The election board had said the opposition had won 161 seats. Opposition parties only won 12 seats during the last 2000 elections.

Tesfaye Mengesha, deputy head of the election board, said they were prepared to release details on why reruns were being held.

He said: "The election board had to decide on the decision of the complaints panel following investigations.

"At that time, we were working on the documents so we could not release them.

"The board has now decided to hold reruns based on those investigations and now we are ready to give them any document on the investigations and why we are having re-elections."

Some of the reruns being held were in the constituencies of senior government officials, including the Information Minister Bereket Simon.

According to provisional results, he was narrowly defeated, but lodged complaints of voter intimidation.

- AP