Somalilandsun: Ethiopia’s electoral board announced on Thursday that elections in two regional states would be postponed, citing irregularities and problems with the printing of ballot papers.
The chairwoman of the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE), said that Harar and Somali regions would cast their vote in September.
“For some constituencies the election will be done in a second round on September 6,” Birtukan Mideksa told reporters in the capital Addis Ababa.
The nation of 109 million people – which has 37.4 million registered voters – will hold national and regional parliamentary elections in two weeks, in what might lead to the country’s first democratic transfer of power.
centre in Jigjiga province Somali regional state of Ethiopia
Voting will not take place either in the northern conflict-torn Tigray region, where hundreds of thousands of people are suffering from famine. A new date for a vote in Tigray has not been set.
Together the three regions account for 63 out of 547 parliamentary seats.
Ethiopia’s elections were originally scheduled for August 2020 but Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed postponed them due to COVID-19.
Earlier this month the board said the vote would not be held in 78 out of the 547 constituencies, due to logistical and security problems.
A day before the announcement was made Ethiopia Insight posted on a commentary titled “New Faces, Old Problems: Reforms, Clans and Parties in Ethiopia’s Somali Region” by Abdirahman Ahmed, Jigjiga University.
The author discusses party, personality and clan dynamics in Somali Region in the runup to Ethiopia’s parliamentary elections scheduled for later this month.
“A much less brutal party-state is set to consolidate its power in a slightly more democratic environment” asserts the author HERE
