Ethiopia delays election again as Tigray conflict persists
Ethiopia has again delayed its national election after some opposition parties said they wouldn’t take part and as conflict in the country’s Tigray region means no vote is being held there.
The delay is further complicating Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s efforts to centralise power.
National elections board head Birtukan Mideksa, in a meeting with political parties’ representatives on Saturday, said the June 5 vote in Africa’s second most populous country would be postponed, citing the need to finish printing ballots, training staffers and compiling voters’ information. The board said she estimated a delay of two to three weeks.
Ethiopia last year delayed the vote, the first major electoral test for Abiy, citing the Covid-19 pandemic.
That heightened tensions with the
Tigray region’s leaders, who declared that the prime minister’s mandate had ended and defiantly held a regional vote of their own that Ethiopia called illegal.
Since then, war in Tigray has killed thousands and led the United States to allege “ethnic cleansing” against Tigrayans was being carried out in the western part of Tigray, a region of some 6 million people.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday said the United States is “gravely concerned by the increasing number of confirmed cases of military forces blocking humanitarian access” to parts of Tigray, calling it “unacceptable behaviour.”
The statement again urged the immediate withdrawal from Tigray of soldiers from neighbouring Eritrea, who witnesses say have blocked or looted aid and carried out atrocities including gang rapes.
Ethiopia’s prime minister, who introduced sweeping political reforms after taking office in 2018 and won the Nobel Peace Prize the following year, has vowed that this election would be free and fair.
But questions about the vote have been growing amid sometimes deadly ethnic tensions in other parts of the country of 110 million people and more than 80 ethnic groups.
Yilkal Getnet, campaign director for the Hibir Ethiopia Democratic Party, one of Ethiopia’s largest opposition parties, said his party has long believed the country is not ready to hold an election.
“There are lots of peace and security challenges across the country in addition to the border issue with Sudan,” Yilkal said, adding that the safety of millions is in question.
“As opposed to the ruling party’s thinking, we don’t believe that the election will solve these problems. A national dialogue on a range of issues should come first.”
The European Union recently said it would not observe the vote, saying Ethiopia failed to guarantee the independence of its mission and refused its requests to allow the importation of communications equipment.
Ethiopia replied that external observers “are neither essential nor necessary to certify the credibility of an election.”
The opposition Oromo Federalist Congress earlier this year pulled out of the vote. Several of the party’s leaders remain behind bars after a wave of violence last year sparked by the killing of a popular Omoro musician.
Late last month, five US senators wrote to the US special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, expressing concerns about Ethiopia’s ability to hold fair elections while the Tigray conflict continues.
In response to that, Ethiopia’s national election board said it was “striving” to ensure the poll will be free and 36.2m people have registered to vote. —AP