Ethiopians voted in a first round of general elections that an international rights group said would be unfair as the opposition coalition boycotted the polls to protest alleged intimidation of its candidates.
Governing coalition candidates are running virtually unchallenged after the main opposition coalition pulled out of the races for nearly 4 million positions, ranging from neighborhood council jobs to parliamentary seats. Some 4.5 million or so candidates are left vying for the seats.
The electoral board received no reports of irregularities or incidents before polls closed nationwide on Sunday evening, board official Tesfaye Mengesha said.
The board did not have an official turnout figure, but Tesfaye estimated it would be around 90 percent of Ethiopia’s 26 million registered voters.
The country’s total population is around 80 million.
In deeply religious Ethiopia, where the Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds lengthy, early-morning Sunday services, some even skipped their morning worship to cast ballots.
“It’s a good government,” Asrat Fanta, 43, said after voting for the ruling party.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said, however, that opposition candidates and prospective voters had been threatened, attacked and arrested during campaigning, and that hopes for fair elections were doomed.
The largest coalition of opposition parties — the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces — said it was boycotting the vote because some 14,000 of its candidates had been forced to drop out after receiving threats or being denied registration.
Its leader, Beyene Petros, said that if any of the opposition coalition’s 6,000 remaining candidates win because their names remained on the ballots, printed before the boycott, they would withdraw.
Another opposition group said its 3,000 candidates also dropped out in similar circumstances.
Government and election officials denied the allegations of threats or intimidation, and said they expected these elections to be Ethiopia’s most free and fair.
Ethiopia has struggled in the past with election irregularities and violence, notably in the aftermath of 2005 general elections when security forces killed 193 protesters.
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