International election observer organisations invited by the Government of Ethiopia for the upcoming elections in May 2010 have started making preparations to send their election observers here.

Teams of electoral experts from the European Commission (EC) are expected to arrive any day this week, while a delegation from the African Union Commission (AUC) has been in Addis Abeba since last week.

The AUC delegation is comprised of five people, one from Ghana, another from Uganda, two from Kenya and one from the commission itself.

This team was sent for a pre-election assessment mission last week, according to Wahide Belay, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA). It already had a meeting with Seyoum Mesfin, minister of Foreign Affairs last Tuesday, February 9, 2010.

It is also scheduled to meet civil society organisations, opposition leaders, as well as executives from the Federal Supreme Court, according to Wahide.

Observers will be assigned following the assessment made by the committee, he said.

These two organisations and the Carter Centre were invited by the Government of Ethiopia to deploy observers for the May election, Bereket Simon, head of the Government Communications Office with a ministerial portfolio, said. They were all in Ethiopia during the 2005 election.

The Atlanta (United States) based Carter Centre, established by former President Jimmy Carter, reports that it has observed 77 elections in 30 countries since 1989. This year, though, it has yet to send a delegation.

Its office in Addis Abeba, working on health issues, says that it has not yet been informed if any delegation will be arriving to observe the elections from the centre’s Peace Program. The Carter Centre observers were based at the Hilton Addis Hotel in 2005.

The election campaign officially started on February 8, 2010, while the registration of voters is expected to be completed by February 17. The National Electoral Board anticipates a total of 32 million voters to be registered.

Addis Abeba alone is expected to have 1.3 million voters. By Saturday, February 6, with 11 days remaining for the end of the registration period, 701,000 voters had acquired their voting cards in the city’s 23 constituencies. Voting will begin on May 23, 2010.

By HILINA ALEMU
Source: FORTUNE STAFF WRITER