May 16, 2005
The great Ethiopian marked ballot paper scandal
One of the most serious allegations made against yesterday’s Ethiopian election was that voters were given pre-marked voting papers at a couple of voting stations in Addis Ababa. The papers, allegedly, had already been marked for the ruling EPRDF.
Well, we had a chance to have a look at one of the controversial voting forms this afternoon – and it seems that some election scandals are bigger than others. The marking turned out to be a tiny scratch left by the printer of the papers in the margin between the boxes for the EPRDF and one of the other opposition groups. “Please take out your magnifying glasses,” said Kemal Bedri, chairman of Ethiopia’s National Election Board at a press conference. “You can see that there is nothing to it.” Here are some pictures of the mark. You can judge for yourselves.
The overall message of the press conference was that the elections were free and fair with a huge turn out of more than 90 per cent. One of the main problems was the slowness of the whole process. At one Addis polling station people who queued up through the day were still voting at 5 this morning – a full 11 hours after the polls were supposed to close.
Kemal said there had been a few technical problems. Two polling stations in Gamo Gofa zone in the south received the wrong voting papers. Some ballot papers simply did not arrive at stations in Jimma and Alemaya universities, due to problems of registering some students, according to Tesfaye Mengesha, deputy head of the secretariat of the election board. In both cases, he added, people would be able to vote again in the next few days.
The opposition parties are, apparently, still considering their position about whether to refuse to accept the election result. After the press conference, Kemal Bedri seemed to suggest that their worries had no grounds. “I still stand by what the board is saying. I think they [the opposition] are really not doing justice to their supporters who were lined up for 16 to 20 hours to support them. My feeling is that once they know the results, maybe they will not repeat this allegation.”
Is that last sentence a hint that the opposition actually did rather well? We will have to wait until the end of the week, when the results should be clearer, to find out.
Posted by aheavens at May 16, 2005 11:27 AM
Comments
I wonder how many foreign journalists and observers poking around in rural Ethiopia.
Fraud in rural areas, which often consists simply of intimidation, bribery, and if that is not enough, violence, has been much more rampant in rural areas than urban during previous elections.
Fortunately for us, these practices were documented by EHRCO and Pausewang et al during their observations of the 2000 and 2001 elections, and previous elections.
It would be nice if some journalists joined them in their work.
Posted by: Salaam at May 16, 2005 4:54 PM
Hi,
I didn't find your email address on your blog.My name is Julien. I am building a new website for expatriates, and will be the webmaster of www.expat-blog.com. In the last three years I have spent a lot of time travelling and living away from my home country, hence me setting up www.expat-blog.com.
I had the idea to create a blog so I could share my experiences of living abroad and keep in touch with my family and friends. While reading other expatriate blogs the idea came to me to create a classified expat blog directory. This would include a free blog hosting platform with interesting features such as picture albums designed specifically for expatriates. I do not believe this would be in competition with existing blog platforms such as blogger.
The website is still in working progress. The present situation is as follows:
> The expatriate blog directory, including a classification per country and language - I am working on this at the present time
> The free Blog platform – this section will be completed by the middle of June.
> An Expat resource directory - this will include all expatriate suggestions.
> A forum designed to encourage interactivity and questions/answers from expatriate to expatriate
This is the global presentation of the website. Do you think my project is a good idea?
Would you like to add your blog in the expatriate blog directory?
I look forward to hearing from you
Julien
Posted by: Julien at May 16, 2005 6:06 PM
The opposition and specially CUD is making itself fool in front of the world by playing the game of Plan'A' accept the election if it appears that they are winning and Plan'B' reject the outcome and cry wolf when there is none, that's what exactly happen in the last 24hours after the last ballot casted, as the saying goes 'TWO TOUNGE AT ONE TIME'. First they cry fraud by the EPRDF, and claiming that,they are not going to accept the results of the election, not having the courage to wait atleast until the ballots close, and later changed their version of cry and thay appeared to accept the fairness of the election, when some unspecified diplomats speculated,that from what appears to be the CUD are winning big time in Addis, almost trauncing the ruling party by getting almost 20 out of 23 seats in the capital, they started to sing Victory. The maturity of political party includes the acceptance of peoples wish and accept defeat with Grace, even in these election the CUD is far from deafet, and we are going to see spectacular results of the election and some big upsets of the big name lists of the EPRDF, as we are wishing to see vibrant next parliament emerging from these election, not a mere rubber stamp. We also have not to foget the sucrificess paid for these level of Democracy and the level of maturity of EPRDF in putting the country above the party, finally we are at the forefront of an era of liberty for the entire Ethiopian people regardless of ethnic or affiliation.
Posted by: solomon at May 16, 2005 6:13 PM
As every body know how bad and ethnocentric the Government of Meles Zenawi is, we should do our utmost for the prevail of the ethiopian people over the EPRDF-Regime.
Posted by: Belachew at May 31, 2005 5:45 PM