Ethiopian opposition party UEDF boycotts upcoming election - EPRDF fields candidates for all available seats

By Simegnish Yekoye

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia –One of Ethiopia’s largest opposition parties, the United Ethiopian Democratic Front (UEDF), announced yesterday Thursday April 10, 2008 that it would boycott the upcoming local and by-elections that is going to start this Sunday, April 13, 2008 are only two days away.
The party says, it no more believes that the election would be fair and does not want to risk lives and properties of its party members.

According to the party leader Professor Beyene Petros, the party decided not to continue taking part in the election because the party members have been intimidated and the party has been denied its right to campaign freely and enough media access was not accorded to it to reach its supporters.
“We publicly announced last week what our problems are and we even met with National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NBE) leaders in person. But they gave us no response,” Beyene said disappointed with the ruling party.

Thought UEDF says they had brought 20,000 candidates to run for the two local and bi elections, NBE has only registered and recognized 10,000 of them for no reason they are aware of. Beyene says during candidates’ registration, the board has been either refusing to register some of its members, or denying giving ID cards to those registered.
Although media access was allocated according to number of seats parties have in the parliament, the party leader says UEDF’s 50 seat is calculated as 12 and the air time they are given is very minimum.

“All our public meetings in regions are also interrupted by police and our people get arrested and our materials confiscated,” Beyene says.
According to the chair man of NBE, Tesfaye Mengesha, there are 32 parties registered to run for the local and bi elections to be held in the coming to consecutive Sundays. Tesfaye says for 3.6 million seats available for the two elections, there are 3,779,194 candidates are registered among which 3.6 million will run for the ruling party Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

“UEDF has 10,000 candidates and the rest small parties have very few candidates,” Tesfaye says.
Saying his party is running for the election only for the sake of taking part, Lidetu Ayalew chair man of Ethiopian United Democratic Party (EUDP-Medhin), says his party has only 140 members

running out of 260 they presented. Ledetu says his parties 120 candidates were denied registration for reasons he says doesn’t know of.
“It is obvious EPRDF has 99% of the candidates. Runners of opposition parties added up all together are less than 1%. They know they had nothing to loose but just fear to register our candidates,” Lidetu.
Lidetu’s says his party EUDP has only such small number of candidates because of financial problems, and they run in Amhara, Oromia, Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa, Harer and SNNPR.

According to Tesfaye, chairman of NBE, 26 million people have registered and took the election card and says all are expected to vote in both elections.
In addition to local government seats 40 seats are vacant in Ethiopia’s federal parliament 14 from Addis Ababa, 12 from Oromia, seven from Amhara, five from South, one from Gambela and one from Somali (no election to be held now