Poll results delayed after complaints from 299 constituencies

Results of parliamentary elections in Ethiopia, initially scheduled to be announced on Wednesday, will now be delayed by one month after the country's electoral board received complaints from more than half of the constituencies where elections were held in May, an official said on Monday. Electoral chief Kemal Bedri told a news conference at the National Election Board headquarters in the capital, Addis Ababa, that the scale of the complaints had necessitated the month long delay. He made the remarks as police arrested several hundred university students at the main campus in Addis Ababa. The students' leaders said they were protesting the outcome of the elections, which, according to provisional results, the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front won. Police officers rounded up the students and took them away in eight trucks. The university was the scene of bloody clashes in 2001 where dozens of people were killed. Kemal said political parties had lodged complaints in 299 constituencies, affecting thousands of polling stations. He said it was "too premature" to say whether re-elections would be held. The ruling party had won 302 seats and its allies 26, according to the provisional results released so far. Opposition parties won 194 seats in the 547-seat lower house of parliament, up from the 12 seats they won during elections in 2000. Rival political parties have lodged 61 types of complaints, including gunmen intimidating voters, people being forced to vote for certain parties, ballot boxes being stuffed or disappearing and the number of ballots exceeding those of registered voters. Kemal said the board had established 10 investigation teams to study the complaints. Representatives of political parties and the National Electoral Board are due to investigate the complaints, and observers from the African Union, European Union and the Carter Centre would be invited to monitor the process. "The fact that there is a complaint does not mean there was a problem," Kemal said. "We take them seriously and we will investigate, but it is only at the end that we will know whether those complaints are borne out by the facts." The elections have been the most competitive in Ethiopia's history and are a test of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's commitment to greater freedom and democracy. The protests came as lawyers for the opposition went to court to challenge Meles' 15 May decree banning demonstrations, and his move to put the capital's police under his direct control. Six Ethiopian journalists were briefly detained and questioned by police last week over their coverage of the hotly contested elections and its aftermath. Police summoned the journalists on Thursday and held them for six hours, during which they questioned them on the publication of statements from opposition parties.