Local elections in Ethiopia in 2008
Ethiopia held nationwide elections for local branches for Kebele and Woreda assemblies on April 13-20 , 2008 .
By-elections were also held for seats in the Addis Ababa City Council and in the national and regional parliaments, which were vacant because the Coalition for Unity and Democracy ( Kinijit ) refused to vote at the same time. By law, the local elections should have taken place as part of the 2005 general election , but the ensuing unrest has postponed them.
background
These election winners would control the local government structures, the Kebeles and Woredas , which are the main institutions for governing local communities and the main service providers. For the previous members of the community councils, re-election was a question of their economic survival; Candidates for places on the municipal council hoped to gain access to state resources through the Kebeles and Woredas.
While the international community was a major player in the 2005 elections, it played a minor role in the 2008 election. In a letter dated December 26, 2007 to a group of nations providing aid to Ethiopia, three party leaders spoke to each other - Beyene Petros ( United Ethiopian Democratic Forces ), Temesken Zewdie ( Coalition for Unity and Democracy ) and Bulcha Demeksa ( Federal Democratic Oromo Movement ) - for these states to intervene in the 2008 election: “What we need is your attention to the critical issue of election observation, because we fear that the way in which the NEBE is currently progressing the process up to the Going through elections is predictably a path to a non-consensual election result. "
Possible pressure from donor countries on the Ethiopian government has been neutralized by the desire to meet the Millennium Development Goals .
Results
The ruling party, the Revolutionary Democratic Front of the Ethiopian Peoples (EPRDF), gained control of the Addis Ababa City Council and 39 of the 40 parliamentary seats in the by-elections. In the local elections, the EPRDF won around 3.5 million of the 3.6 million open places. The National Electoral Commission of Ethiopia reported that the turnout was 93%.
Although this was the first election in Ethiopia since the turbulent 2005 election, the opposition played a subordinate role in the 2008 election. After the election, many of these opposition parties complained, in some cases massive, that their candidates were unable to participate in the election. Bulcha Demeksa criticized that his party was only able to put up 2% of the originally planned 6000 candidates because the rest had been threatened by supporters of the government. The opposition alliance , the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces , also complained that only around half of its 20,000 candidates could actually be registered. Of the candidates actually registered, only 6,000 were actually able to put their names on the lists in the voting booths.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lovise Aalen and Kjetil Tronvoll, "The 2008 Ethiopian local elections: The return of electoral authoritarianism" ( Memento of the original from February 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 68 kB), African Affairs , 108/430, page 111 (last accessed on March 17, 2009)
- ↑ Aalen and Tronvoll: 2008 Ethiopian local elections. Pages 116f
- ↑ Aalen and Tronvoll: 2008 Ethiopian local elections. Page 117
- ^ "Clean sweep for Ethiopian party" , BBC website, first published on April 13, 2008 (last accessed on October 26, 2009)
Web links
- The National Electoral Board of Ethiopia official result of the local and by-elections on April 13 and April 20, 2008 ( Memento of May 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), website of the Walta Information Center
