Ruling party gains majority seats in parliament

Ethiopia's ruling party has taken the majority of seats in recent parliamentary elections but suffered large losses to opposition groups, provisional results from the electoral board showed on Monday. After 14 years in power, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's coalition saw their parliamentary majority cut by more than 163 seats - in a country that has never before had a genuine opposition. Results for the 547-member parliament showed that the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) had taken a majority with 274 seats. The opposition parties had won 174 seats, and there were more than 61 where ballot counting was still incomplete. Parties allied to the ruling four-strong coalition took 15 seats. The results were radically different from the May 2000 polls, when the opposition won just 12 seats in the parliament. Bereket Simon, Ethiopia's information minister and spokesman for the EPRDF, welcomed the results and said that the high number of seats going to opposition parties was a sign of growing democracy in the country. "These results have confirmed once again that the EPRDF has a clean win, both in the federal parliament and the regional parliaments," he told IRIN. "There are significant seats that have not been declared yet, and we expect to take between 25 and 35 of those seats as well, bringing our total to over 300. "This election says a lot about democracy in the country," the minister added. "It has shown that people can vote for whomever they want. It shows that Ethiopian democracy is maturing. The biggest achievement of the election is that [however] people have voted, they have done so freely." More than 22 million people voted, according to the election board. Before Meles starts his third five-year term in September, however, opposition parties are threatening legal action in more than 139 seats, which could upset the balance of power. "We cannot accept results in areas that are still contested," said Berhanu Nega, the vice-chairman of the largest opposition party, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy. "Our lawyers are already preparing our case," he said. "The evidence of abuse is simply overwhelming, and there is no way the results can be announced in those seats. "We are preparing a court injunction to prevent the election board announcing results in those contested seats until all avenues have been explored and investigations complete," he added. Beyene Petros, vice-chairman of the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces, also rejected the provisional results. "Some seats the EPRDF has claimed are contested by us," he said on Monday. "We won't accept these results until we have a legal ruling on them." Although the 15 May polls were labelled the most open in the country's history, they have been dogged by allegations by all parties of irregularities and criticism from EU observers over delays in the count. Official results are expected to be announced on 8 June, but the election board says that it could be delayed because of the massive number of complaints. The ruling lost a number of high-profile seats, with Education Minister Genet Zewdie, Revenue Minister Getachew Belay and Minister for Capacity-Building Tefera Waliwa losing the election. The prime minister has pledged more democracy, and many consider the legislative race - the third ever in Ethiopia's history - a test of his commitment to reform the country of 70 million.