May 28, 2015
SMNE Press Release
(Washington, DC)– The fake and unlawful election of May 24, 2015 is over in Ethiopia. No one is
surprised with the sweeping victory of the incumbent regime, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), over the stifled opposition. Over the last five years, the EPRDF, which is mainly controlled by one ethnic group making up 6% of the population, the Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), has focused enormous efforts on closing all political space to any contenders. They are now claiming themselves the winners—by a landslide. Although the final “count” is not yet in; some early reports indicate the EPRDF has “won” every seat in parliament—a 100% victory. This highly unpopular regime has somehow managed to improve upon the results of 2010 when they received a mere 99.6% of the vote. What is surprising is their apparent lack of shame and embarrassment when everyone knows the results are blatantly false.
surprised with the sweeping victory of the incumbent regime, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), over the stifled opposition. Over the last five years, the EPRDF, which is mainly controlled by one ethnic group making up 6% of the population, the Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), has focused enormous efforts on closing all political space to any contenders. They are now claiming themselves the winners—by a landslide. Although the final “count” is not yet in; some early reports indicate the EPRDF has “won” every seat in parliament—a 100% victory. This highly unpopular regime has somehow managed to improve upon the results of 2010 when they received a mere 99.6% of the vote. What is surprising is their apparent lack of shame and embarrassment when everyone knows the results are blatantly false.
Thanks to new technology, pictures of some of the obvious manipulations by election officials are already being posted on the Internet. For example, election results are hand-recorded on official documents. These documents carry the logo of the election board and are signed and dated by election officials; yet, one can see that the numbers have been repeatedly crossed out and changed to the advantage of the EPRDF candidates only. This resulted in some candidates being listed multiple times with various different numbers of votes. A specific example is of a Blue Party candidate who was winning by nearly 800 votes over the EPRDF candidate. The Blue Party candidate’s votes were crossed out and the lead disappeared. Conversely, the EPRDF candidate’s lower numbers were crossed out and replaced with much higher numbers, but the continuing manipulation of the number of votes could easily be seen and occurred multiple times in some cases. No one knows why votes suddenly disappeared for non-EPRDF candidates while large numbers were added to the regime’s candidates. The election board did not even make an effort to hide what they were doing, not anticipating that the documents would be leaked. Please read the whole press release from SMNE from the link http://ecadforum.com/2015/05/28/new-opportunities-post-fake-election-it-is-the-peoples-time-now/
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