Wrapped in white prayer shawls as priests sang hymns over loudspeakers, Ethiopian voters yesterday were choosing between the ruling coalition that ended a brutal dictatorship in 1991 and new opposition parties who promise greater liberalization.
The campaign under a government that has sometimes shown authoritarian tendencies had won qualified international approval, and foreign election observers reported no serious problems as voting progressed yesterday.
Foreign election observers were monitoring the elections for the first time in Ethiopia's history.
PHOTO: AP
EU observers inspecting four polling stations found 454 ballots with an unclear irregular mark in central Addis Ababa and similar ballots outside the capital. None of the ballots were pre-marked for the ruling party, as earlier reported. Opposition politicians had charged that thousands of pre-marked ballots had been circulated.
The National Election Board said the mark was a printing error and Ethiopians finding such ballots need not worry that their votes would not be counted.
Late on Saturday, opposition leaders also accused the police of rounding up hundreds of opposition candidates and poll observers in order to rig the elections in the rural areas. Government officials denied the opposition allegations.
Voters had begun lining up before dawn on a cool, misty morning for the third election in the country's 3,000-year history. The turnout appeared extremely high, in marked contrast to the 2000 election. Polls close at 6pm local time, but anyone in line at closing time will be allowed to vote.
Derje Woubeshet, an unemployed 29-year-old, said he was voting for the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy because he felt the ruling party had failed to create jobs.
"They brought me disaster, all the people are fed up," he said outside a primary school in Addis Ababa. "They have been supported for the last 15 years, now we need a new government."
Wahib Toure, a cotton producer, said complaints do not make a political agenda and that he would vote for the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front.
"The opposition talked about grievances, but that is not enough to be elected, they are not organized," Wahib, 60, said.
Beyene Petros, vice chairman of the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces, said he had seen reports of vote rigging that "are only the tip of the iceberg."
Petros produced a marked ballot with an electoral seal which was already marked for Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's ruling coalition. He said thousands of such ballots began circulating on Saturday.
Information Minister Bereket Simon said that he called police stations across the country to investigate the opposition claims. "This is absolutely false," Bereket said.
Former US president Jimmy Carter said that the 24 teams of observers from the Carter Center had reported no problems with the balloting early yesterday, but they were looking into the opposition's allegations. More than 500 foreign observers were monitoring the polls.
Ethiopia was an absolute monarchy under Emperor Haile Selassie until the mid-1970s, when a brutal Marxist junta overthrew him.
Civil wars wracked the ethnically fractured country in the 1980s, and famine took as many as 1 million lives. Meles' rebel group overthrew the junta in 1991. Meles became president, then prime minister in 1995, and is now seeking a third term.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS