Ethiopia Ruling Party Leads Vote Marred by Intimidation Reports

By Jason McLure

May 24 (Bloomberg) -- Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling party headed for victory in the Horn of Africa nation’s first national elections since 2005 after a campaign that was marred by allegations of intimidation.

With about 7.3 million votes tallied of an estimated 29 million cast yesterday, Meles’s Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front had 6.8 million, compared with 458,242 for the opposition Medrek alliance, Mergera Bekana, chairman of the National Electoral Board, said today.

The EPRDF was ahead in 20 of 23 seats in the capital, Addis Ababa, with Medrek leading for one parliamentary seat and two constituencies not yet reporting, he said.

“In all regional states, EPRDF is leading,” Mergera said in the capital.

Government and ruling party official used a combination of harassment and arrests and withholding food aid and jobs to thwart Medrek in the weeks running up to the polls, New York- based Human Rights Watch said in a statement today. The government has denied the allegations, saying economic growth in Ethiopia of more than 7 percent annually over the past five years has bolstered its support.

About 31.9 million registered voters were eligible to cast ballots to elect 547 members of parliament and representatives to regional councils.

A former Marxist guerrilla leader who has ruled Africa’s second-most populous nation since 1991, Meles, 55, has been a key ally in the fight against Islamic militants in neighboring Somalia. Under Meles, Ethiopia, Africa’s top coffee producer, has pursued an economic model that mixes a large state role with foreign investment in roads, dams and power.

The government controls the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corp., a state-run monopoly, and owns all the land, while companies owned by the state or the ruling party dominate banking and trucking. Almost a sixth of its 85 million people depend on food aid.

Medrek is a coalition that includes jailed opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa’s Unity for Democracy and Justice party and a number of ethnic-based parties.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jason McLure in Addis Ababa via Johannesburg at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.