No hope for Ethiopian elections, MEP tells RFI

A European Union team of election observers has arrived in Ethiopia to monitor the elections which are scheduled for this weekend, as a former election monitor in the country tells RFI there is no point even trying to monitor the polls and that those who do will face pressure from Ethiopia and the European Union to write a favourable report.

Reuters

The 170-member Election Observation Mission is the largest international observation mission. It says it is neutral and independent. 

Other foreign observers, including the Carter Centre, have refused the Ethiopian invitation to send election monitors to Addis Ababa.

Ana Gomes, a European Parliament member who headed the European team that monitored the 2005 Ethiopian elections, says she doesn't expect the upcoming elections to be democratic.

“I have tried to discourage the European Commission and Council from sending a mission to Ethiopia because the conditions are not there for a genuine election, knowing what happened in 2005 and since then in terms of the repression of the regime,” she said.

She also said Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and European Union institutions tried to pressure her into writing a favourable report five years ago.

“Some member states have been responsible for giving some international respectability to the regime of Meles Zenawi, which doesn’t deserve it because of the oppression. It’s a totalitarian regime.”

She said France, Britain and Germany had major interests in the products they sell to the regime and added that the industry of aid is not much better.

“It gives no benefit to the people of Ethiopia because it’s run by a regime that absolutely doesn’t provide development,” said Gomes.

Meles has been prime minister for 19 years. His Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front has run Ethiopia since ousting the communist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991.

The other parties in competition on 23 May are a coalition of eight main parties called Medrek, which is the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Forum, the All Ethiopian Unity Organisation and the Ethiopian Democratic Party.