Local observers to sue election board

A coalition of Ethiopian groups announced plans on Wednesday to file a lawsuit against the country’s electoral commission, saying that new rules could prevent thousands of local observers from monitoring May’s legislative elections. "We believe this decision by the National Election Board [NEB] is in contravention of the national election law of Ethiopia, and violates our constitutional rights," said Netsanet Demissie, director of the Organisation for Social Justice (OSJ), which comprises 35 Ethiopian organisations. As many as 2,000 observers from the coalition could be barred from monitoring the elections because of the rule change, he added. "It is going to be in the form of a class action," he added. "This litigation is very important in many ways, because it sends a message that contradictory directives will not be tolerated by the public and civil-society organisations." Ethiopia will go to the polls on 15 May - the third democratic ballot in the history of the country. Netsanet said he was gathering written consent from all OSJ’s member associations, and would lodge papers at the end of this week or early next week. Meanwhile, the coalition was continuing to apply for accreditation for its domestic observers "under protest". Under the new law introduced earlier this month, local groups wanting to monitor elections must have registered with the government as election observers when they were first founded. Getahun Amogne, NEB’s spokesman, told IRIN that the board stood by its new directive, but that "any citizen in Ethiopia has the right to go to court to appeal their case if they are not satisfied with the decision [of] an institution or public body." International observers have been invited into the country to monitor the elections. At the weekend, the EU – which will field one of its largest election-observing missions ever - expressed disappointment at the new NEB law, saying it would "potentially exclude many, many observers from monitoring" the elections. Meanwhile, former US President Jimmy Carter will lead at 50-member observer team to Ethiopia, arriving on 10 May. An advance team of these observers has already been deployed to regions outside the capital to monitor the political environment, election preparations and political parties’ campaigns. "This election is an important step in the consolidation of democracy since the 1991 transition," Rachel Fowler, senior programme associate at the Carter Centre’s Democracy Programme, told IRIN. "The centre is encouraged by the broad participation in the process, and its [the centre’s] observation would support a more open, transparent process." More than 25 million of Ethiopia's 71 million people have registered to vote in the legislative elections. Some 35 political parties will vie for seats in the 547-seat Council of People's Representatives, said a spokesman for the NEB. Voters will also elect representatives in nine regional state parliaments that appoint members of the 112-seat Council of the Federation, the upper house.