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International election observer organisations
invited by the Government of Ethiopia for the
upcoming elections in May 2010 have started making
preparations to send their election observers here.
Teams of electoral experts from the European
Commission (EC) are expected to arrive any day this
week, while a delegation from the African Union
Commission (AUC) has been in Addis Abeba since last
week.
The AUC delegation is comprised of five people, one
from Ghana, another from Uganda, two from Kenya and
one from the commission itself.
This team was sent for a pre-election assessment
mission last week, according to Wahide Belay,
spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA).
It already had a meeting with Seyoum Mesfin,
minister of Foreign Affairs last Tuesday, February
9, 2010.
It is also scheduled to meet civil society
organisations, opposition leaders, as well as
executives from the Federal Supreme Court, according
to Wahide.
Observers will be assigned following the assessment
made by the committee, he said.
These two organisations and the Carter Centre were
invited by the Government of Ethiopia to deploy
observers for the May election, Bereket Simon, head
of the Government Communications Office with a
ministerial portfolio, said. They were all in
Ethiopia during the 2005 election.
The Atlanta (United States) based Carter Centre,
established by former President Jimmy Carter,
reports that it has observed 77 elections in 30
countries since 1989. This year, though, it has yet
to send a delegation.
Its office in Addis Abeba, working on health issues,
says that it has not yet been informed if any
delegation will be arriving to observe the elections
from the centre’s Peace Program. The Carter Centre
observers were based at the Hilton Addis Hotel in
2005.
The election campaign officially started on February
8, 2010, while the registration of voters is
expected to be completed by February 17. The
National Electoral Board anticipates a total of 32
million voters to be registered.
Addis Abeba alone is expected to have 1.3 million
voters. By Saturday, February 6, with 11 days
remaining for the end of the registration period,
701,000 voters had acquired their voting cards in
the city’s 23 constituencies. Voting will begin on
May 23, 2010.
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