European Union’s election observation mission smacked Meles Zenawi’s smug off his bestial face today by announcing that the election was rigged. This came on the heels of Human Rights Watch’s stinging criticism of how the ruling junta conducted Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Ethiopia. What was planned as a victory celebration party this morning in Addis Ababa turned into a protest rally by Woyanne junta against the European Union and HRW, as Bloomberg’s Jason McLure reports from Addis Ababa:
(Bloomberg) — Tens of thousands of supporters of Ethiopia’s ruling party staged a protest in the capital, Addis Ababa, against a Human Rights Watch report critical of the country’s elections.
Prime Minister Genocidal dictator Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front crime family is headed for victory in the May 23 vote after it garnered 6.8 million of the 7.3 million votes tallied so far. An estimated 29 million ballots were cast.
Human Rights Watch said yesterday the government and ruling party officials used a combination of harassment and arrests and withholding food aid and jobs to thwart opponents in the run up to the election. 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.
“This election does not concern Human Rights Watch,” Mulugeta Gebegiorgis, a 38-year-old driver, said in an interview in Addis Ababa’s central Meskel Square ahead of a planned speech by Meles. Police maintained a heavy presence on the streets of the city, as protesters waved placards with slogans such as ‘We choose our leaders, no one else,’ and ‘Election observers yes, Trojan horses no.’
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.