“The board is dismayed by the impertinence of Medrek to present
alleged prejudices of the electoral board as one of the reasons for a
rerun of the election,” said the concluding remarks of the board’s
fiery letter to Medrek, the largest opposition. “Having failed to
substantiate the allegations, the board rejects your request for a
rerun of the election.” (Oddly, the letter was copied to “His
Excellency Professor Merga Bekena, Chairperson of the Board.” Where
was the Professor when the letter was being written, ask many pundits.)
Medrek’s eighty-seven page long petition for a rerun detailed ten
complaints, and was supplemented by an assemblage of supporting
documents. All of them, with no exception, were curtly rejected by the
board. But it is noteworthy that only once, out of the ten instances
in which board members voted, was a unanimous decision specified in
the letter to Medrek. Admittedly, there is no evidence that they voted
any other way in the remaining nine instances, but we could count on
an official letter from the board not to tell us of dissenting voices
even if there were some. The board is nominally headed by Merga
Bekena, a soft spoken absent minded natural science Professor at AAU;
but it is his deputy, the upperly mobile Adisu GebreEgzehaber, a PhD,
and a genus of the dependable educated elite the EPRDF is working hard
to nurture, that is the power that is to be reckoned with. (The EPRDF,
by the way, is still wary of most of the educated elite regardless of
class and ethnicity, a legacy of its anti-establishment roots.) This
is a board specifically tailored for a post-2005 Ethiopia, none expect
its members to sway from the official line; which is why any dissent
would be a significant political bombshell.
Medrek’s first complaint, which, according to the letter it received
from the board, was struck down by a unanimous vote, detailed a voters
registration process skewed in favor of the EPRDF. The second
complaint was also about registration, though this time it was that of
candidates, which the board also rejected. “Medrek’s Secretary General
had come to our office and thanked us personally about the multiple
extensions of the registration process,’ said the board in its letter.
“And that clearly shows the extra length we had gone to serve all
parties impartially.” The third complaint was diffidently conceded by
the board, but was deemed insufficient “to warrant a rerun as you had
requested.” But it promised to summon and penalize some of the board’s
officials “in accordance with the law for abuse of their designated
powers.” But these were isolated cases, insisted the board adamantly;
outraging the opposition. “No nationwide pattern has been proved to
the board.” Not true, told me a western diplomat. “We know that the
irregularities were nationwide. We believe the opposition.”
The fifth complaint elicited, what is, in my opinion, one of the most
fascinating — and revealing — response from the board. “You have been
unable to prove that the public meetings summoned by Medrek had been
disrupted by ruling party members,” wrote the board, refusing to
tackle the issue of disrupted meetings in Nazreth and Adwa — both of
which had not only attracted extensive media attention but were also
publicly addressed by Meles Zenawi.( He had self-consciously denounced
the disruptions.) Where were, it seems relevant to ask at this point,
the board members when the incidents were in the national limelight,
prominently exemplifying the narrowing of political space that in the
words of EU observers had affected “both the process and outcome” of
the election? Indubitably, they couldn’t have missed it if they were
in Ethiopia; and there is no reason to suppose that they were all
elsewhere.
The sixth complaint raised an intriguing constitutional question:
could a seating member of a regional parliament run for a seat in
federal parliament without resigning from his seat? This is exactly
what Abadulla Gemeda, president of Oromia, did this year. If the
answer is no, then his “victory” would have to be nullified. Lucky for
him, however, the electoral board ruled in his favor. “It’s perfectly
legal,” evaluated the board, yet again ruling against Medrek in rather
snappish words.“There is no law that says otherwise.”
Down at number nine, the sensitive and well documented – by HRW, among
others– issue of food aid was raised. “Food aid was used to
intimidate farmers. Suspension of aid was threatened against those who
do not vote for the EPRDF,” complained the petition by Medrek. The
board gave its shortest reply, only in one sentence. “No evidence has
been presented to show food aid has been used as a campaign weapon.”
But a report this week by IRIN, the UN news agency, affirms Medrek’s
position: Yimer Ahmed, 45, an opposition candidate for the regional
council in the central Amhara region, said his wife recently divorced
him because his membership of an opposition party had kept their
family from receiving US food aid. “Because life is hard, people are
saying that being a member of the opposition will invite hunger,” he
says. “This aid is coming through the government and without this aid
they will starve, so they don’t want to have any problems with the
government.”
At number 12 the board could not resist lashing out at EU
Observers Mission, echoing the EPRDF line by implying that it has an
ulterior motive. The issue was that of political party
representatives, which the EU Observers Mission, in its preliminary
report, said that only in about 50 percent of polling stations it
monitored were Medrek representatives present. Medrek disputed the
veracity of the election’s outcome in context of the absence of its
observers in more than 50 percent of polling stations, and submitted
the preliminary report as one of its supporting documents. “The EU
observers scanned only 800 of the more than 44,000 polling stations,”
responded the board bitterly. “And even then, rather than probing if
representatives of other political representatives were present too,
it chose, for reasons that are not clear, to specifically seek only
Medrek’s observers. Furnishing this (EU observers report) as evidence
(for lack of transparency on a large scale) is completely
unacceptable.” But AEUP, the party that had fielded the most
candidates after Medrek, and a signatory of the election code of
conduct, was also cited by EU observers; who reported that its
representatives were present in only 20 percent of polling stations
they had screened. The board’s astounding omission of this fact
probably betrays a partisan’s compulsion to jump in the fry and take
side against the EU Observers Mission in its row with the EPRDF.
It’s too early to ascertain how this will affect EU observer’s
attitude towards the board, but this is clearly reason enough to pause
and reassess their early impression; not because they have been
slighted, but because the way the complaints were handled is a litmus
test for the board’s objectivity and professional credentials. The
board’s petulant letter to Medrek reveal what the opposition has
always said: a board that is partisan in its outlook, methodology,
sentiment, ruling and loyalty.
