21st June, 2021
Agency Reports
Polling stations opened in Ethiopia on Monday in an election in which Prime minister Abiy Ahmed’s ruling Prosperity Party is the frontrunner.
In the capital, voters began to arrive shortly before polls opened at 6 a.m.
“Our hope is those we voted for will bring development,” said security guard Sisay Kebede, 50, after he cast the first ballot at his polling station.
Eight others waited in the cool morning air.
An African Union election monitoring team headed by former Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo is on ground in the country.
Prime minister Abiy has billed the election as proof of his commitment to democracy after decades of repressive rule in Africa’s second-most populous nation.
Abiy Ahmed, 45, oversaw sweeping political and economic reforms after his appointment in 2018 by the ruling coalition.
But some rights activists say those gains are being reversed and complain of abuses in a war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, charges the government denies.
Abiy said last week the vote would be the “first attempt at free and fair elections” in Ethiopia, whose once rapidly growing economy has been hit by conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Results of the vote could reverberate beyond Ethiopia.
The Horn of Africa nation is a diplomatic heavyweight in a volatile region, providing peacekeepers to Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan.
It also is one of the world’s biggest frontier markets.
Abiy’s newly-formed Prosperity Party is the favourite to win in a crowded field of candidates mostly from smaller, ethnically-based parties.
Billboards with his party’s lightbulb symbol adorn the capital.
Former political prisoner Berhanu Nega is the only other prominent candidate not running on an ethnic ticket.
But his Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice party has struggled to attract support outside cities.
During the last election, the ruling coalition and its allies won all 547 seats.
This time, more than 37 million of Ethiopia’s 109 million people are registered to vote, choosing from 46 parties for parliament.
The electoral board says more candidates are running this time than in any previous vote.
Not all parties are taking part. In Oromiya, Ethiopia’s most populous province, the largest opposition parties are boycotting over alleged intimidation by regional security forces.
Officials did not return calls seeking comment.
Problems with voting registration and simmering ethnic violence have delayed voting in a fifth of constituencies.
A second round of voting will take place in September.
No date has been set for voting in Tigray, where the government has been fighting the region’s former governing party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, since November.
The United Nations says some 350,000 people face famine there.