Page "Politics of Ethiopia" Paragraph 14

Ethiopia held another general election in May 2005, which drew a record number of voters, with 90 % of the electorate turning out to cast their vote.

While the European Union election observer team of Ana Maria Gomes deemed the elections to have fallen short of international standards for fair and free elections, other teams drew totally different conclusions.

The African Union report on September 14 commended " the Ethiopian people's display of genuine commitment to democratic ideals ", and on September 15 the US Carter Center concluded that " the majority of the constituency results based on the May 15 polling and tabulation are credible and reflect competitive conditions ".

However, it was noted that foreign election observers ( including Gomes ) were not given the authority and / or documentations in order to travel and monitor rural areas of the country.

Even worse, these delays occurred a couple of days before the election day and some have indicated the governments role in these delays, but couldn't provide substantial proof for their accusations.

Still, the US Department of State said on September 16, " these elections stand out as a milestone in creating a new, more competitive multi-party political system in one of Africa's largest and most important countries.

" Even the EU preliminary statement of 2005 said that "... the polling processes were generally positive.

The overall assessment of the process has been rated as good in 64 % of the cases, and very good in 24 %.