Ethiopia Parties Hope To Wow Voters Ahead Of Polls

As Ethiopia gears up for its fifth national elections next month, 58 political parties are vying for the hearts and minds of the country's roughly 36.8 million registered voters.



National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) Deputy Chairman Addisu Gebregziabher said that rival parties had already begun reaching out to voters nationwide.



"They are communicating their ideologies, politics and action plans to voters via multilingual radio and television [channels], as well as newspapers," Gebregziabher told The Anadolu Agency.



"The parties were provided with a total of 600 hours of airtime on television and 700 columns [worth of] space in newspapers on an equal basis, free of charge," he said.



"All government, private and community media houses are involved," he added.



"As per the law, a campaigning and election administration budget of 30 million birr [around $1.5 million] was earmarked by the government for the parties," he noted.



Eligible voters, who will cast ballots on May 24 at 45,000 polling stations across the nation, will elect members of Ethiopia's 547-seat federal parliament (House of Peoples' Representatives) for a five-year term.



Regional states and two charter cities, Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa (located about 445km east of Addis Ababa), are also set to elect council members.



"All parties [combined] have fielded 5,819 candidates for the federal parliament and regional councils," Wondwosen Benti, NEBE's communications director, told AA.



-Clash of ideologies-



The ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of four regional  parties that toppled Ethiopia's military junta after a 17-year armed struggle, has dominated the past four elections, the first of which was held in 1994.



Observers see the elections as being between "revolutionary democracy" – long advocated by the EPRDF – and "liberal democracy" touted by the country's main opposition parties.



EPRDF spokesman Desta Tesfaw told AA that the party's electoral platform was based on combining democracy and development within a capitalist framework.



"Over the last 20 years, we have transformed a bankrupt, famine-prone, autocratically ruled nation into a democratic one and one of the fastest growing economies of the world," he said.



"We are the party of Ethiopia's renaissance, peace and stability," Tesfaw asserted. "These are the fundamentals of our campaign's talking points, supported by detailed strategies and policies."



"All forms of liberal democracy could not transform Ethiopia," he argued.



But Chane Kebede, leader of the opposition Ethiopian Democratic Party (EDP), believes otherwise.



"The 'revolutionary democracy' ideology has created a one-party system," Kebede told AA.



"We are liberal democrats, pure and simple," he said. "Tolerance, the establishment of a democratic state, shared economic benefits and a corruption-free and united Ethiopia are the foundation of our campaign platform," he added.



"We are running a campaign against the incumbent party that uses public funds and property," he charged.



Tesfaw, however, dismissed these claims.



"The EPRDF does not use public funds or property," he said. "We have a card-carrying 7.4 million members who we deploy and pay from our office to run our campaign."



-Propaganda-



According to Gebregziabher, the NEBE is closely following up on the electoral propaganda used by all parties to ensure they are abiding by the rules.



"Some parties properly utilized their airtime and print space, while others failed to make use of it," Gebregziabher told AA.



"Some had injected hate messages into their campaigns, but were corrected," he added.



Both the EPRDF and the EDP plan to hold mass rallies and campaign tours in the weeks ahead, with officials from both sides voicing their satisfaction with debates broadcast on Ethiopian television.



Azaria Samuel, a 38-year-old public servant, told AA that he had watched recorded TV debates and some of the parties' election advertisements.



"Debates were frank, free and enlightening. This is good," he said.



"But this is a one-time show that comes once in five years," he added. "Frank discussions and criticism before a national audience should become a permanent feature of our democracy."



Adanech Ahmed, 29, told AA that her family had watched all the debates.



"Once a debate ends, my family begins its own debate along partisan lines," she said.



"But I haven't watched the debates myself because there's nothing new," she added. "They're the same people saying the same things."



www.aa.com.tr/en - Addis Ababa