Opposition urges electoral board to resign

By Kirubel Tadesse

Opposition parties have called on electoral board senior officials to resign from their post.

Belittling the handling of the May 23 national and regional elections, opposition Members of Parliament this week called on the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) chiefs to resign from their post before the next elections.

In the latest election, the ruling EPRDF and its alliance won all but three of the 547 federal parliament seats.

Last Tuesday, while presenting annual performance report to the House of Peoples’ Representatives NEBE chiefs were met with strong condemnation from the opposition.

“While the ruling party was regarding peaceful campaigners as forces of destruction and categorizing them with foreign forces the NEBE kept silent and supported the EPRDF producing an election win of 99.6% which is bizarre in the 21st century,” opposition MP Wondimu Ibsa said.

“The latest poll further diminished the already poor record of the electoral board and the board should resign before the next elections,” the MP remarked.
The biggest opposition group, Medrek candidate MP Temesgen Zewdie, who didn’t keep his seat the elections, attributed the overwhelming EPRDF win to be a failure of the NEBE.

“It is so unfortunate that an electoral board which is an institution that executes process of democratic power transfers globally here in Ethiopia only serves as a tool of the ruling party,” the MP said.

When the current board was first enacted it had backing of some of the opposition parties who were involved in the selection process.

“We had to give the current electoral board a chance. I had some reasons to hope the best of its chairman Professor Merga Bekana given his age and educational merits. His deputy Dr. Addisu Gebreigzabhier was saying ‘you accuse us without seeing anything’ well he was right, they were newly-elected. So there was a feeling to give the benefit of the doubt to the board’s new leaders,” Girma Seifu, a single winner of the latest election from the entire opposition camp, has said in Capital interview adding the board’s handling later turned out to be a huge disappointment including at the constituency he won.
NEBE board chair Professor Merga, rejecting any bias or wrongdoings, touts a successful completion of the polls.

“Is it after the results that one questions our impartiality?” the chairman wondered stating the board positively responded to deliver to most of the opposition demands including replacing hundreds of thousands of elections observers with new recruits.

All election observers including the European Union have praised NEBE’s handling of the polls they said showed professional competence. The EU however noted that the board failed to win the trust of the opposition groups.

CapitalEthiopia