Widespread fraud and harassment of opposition supporters, candidates, and observers are being reported through out Ethiopia in today’s parliamentary elections.

Ethiopian Review sources in Addis Ababa, Gonder, Gojjam, Tigray, Awassa, Ambo and other cities are reporting that Woyanne cadres and security agents are stealing votes in the open after chasing away observers. One observer described the scene in the town of Debere Markos as “day light robbery” of votes.

In Addis Ababa, trigger happy Federal Police have been observed detaining any one who makes complaints about voting related issues at polling stations. In Woreda 17, election monitors have observed unauthorized individuals inside voting rooms where only voter should have been allowed to enter.

In Adwa, where Meles Zenawi is competing against Medrek’s Aregash Adane, gross intimidation is being reported. Heading up to Sunday, Meles Zenawi’s supporters had disrupted a rally organized by Medrek where Aregash Adane appeared to speak. Meles’ supporters stoned Aregash’s car and chased her away.

In hundreds of districts through out the country, election observers were chased away by Woyanne gunmen, in some cases at gun point.

Election monitors and journalists this morning have observed election irregularities in southern Ethiopian town of Awassa where Southern Regional state president Shiferaw Shigute is a candidate. Ethiopian Review sources are reporting that when election observers and journalists arrived at polling stations, ballot boxes were already unsealed and unauthorized individuals had access to them.

Similar voting irregularities and intimidation of opposition candidates and supporters are being reported in other parts of the country as well. Officials of the major opposition bloc, Medrek, told reporters that they are being followed by the ruling party’s security forces.

In Addis Ababa, few voters turned out to vote compared to the 2005 elections 5 years ago. In some polling stations there are were no observers.

In Tigray region’s town of Temben, Medrek election observers have been chased away from polling stations, according to Ato Seye Abraha, a spokesman for Medrek. Heavy gun shots were also heard near the town of Adwa yesterday, and on Friday fighter jets flew over Meleke, Ato Seye told reporters this morning.

… more report shortly

By ANITA POWELL

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Ethiopia’s largest opposition bloc said they have evidence of voter intimidation and vote-rigging that may lead them to reject the results of Sunday’s national election.

The vote is being closely watched by international observers and by critics who say the U.S.-allied ruling party has harassed voters and challengers.

Opposition members and the ruling party’s critics say the poll will likely lead to a new decade of power for Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who seized control of the Horn of Africa country in a 1991 coup. Opposition leaders say they worry the election may turn into a repeat of the contentious poll in 2005, when about 100 opposition politicians and activists who challenged the results were arrested.

The largest opposition bloc, Medrek, complained of intimidation soon after Sunday’s vote began.

Medrek spokesman Negasso Gidada said with just three hours into voting, some of his party’s observers have been blocked and arrested in northern Ethiopia, and others have been intimidated in southern Ethiopia.

Negasso said his party also believes voting booths are not private and that Medrek has complained to election officials.

“We think we may not accept the results,” Negasso said.

Government spokesman Bereket Simon, however, said he was not aware of not any election irregularities or problems and when told by The Associated Press of the opposition claims, he said “this is simply, simply an orchestrated lie.

“If they reject the result before it’s declared, it means they know how they’ve been accepted,” he said “They know they have lost it squarely.”

Negasso said a group of his party’s election observers were arrested Saturday in Tigray. He also said that his party’s observers are being intimidated in Oromia and Amhara regions, and that voter cards are being denied to eligible opposition voters. He also said that the plastic sheets separating election booths in the capital are not private enough and that voters can speak to each other and pass notes under the barriers.

“In many places the secret ballot is being violated. This is very serious,” Negasso said.

Meles’ Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front denies it repressed its opponents and says candidates have been able to campaign freely. But opposition members say they have been harassed and two of their campaigners have been killed under mysterious circumstances.

The opposition and some analysts also say the government has systematically stifled the competition since 2005 and ensured an uneventful election by enacting restrictive laws that restrict aid groups from working on human rights issues and hinder the media.

While the ruling party and election officials have said the election would be free and fair, Ethiopia is frequently criticized for its human rights record, including by the U.S. State Department, which in a March report cited reports of “unlawful killings, torture, beating, abuse and mistreatment of detainees and opposition supporters by security forces, often acting with evident impunity.”

Still, the U.S. considers Ethiopia an ally. Both countries want to curb Islamist extremism in Somalia, Ethiopia’s unstable neighbor to the east. Ethiopia is reliant on billions of dollars of foreign aid, most of it from the U.S.

Meles’ rule has weathered many challenges: droughts, tensions over a disputed border with Eritrea and rebel movements around the country. The Ethiopian army also made an incursion into neighboring Somalia in late 2006 to support the weak U.N.-backed Somali government in its fight against Islamist insurgents before withdrawing last year.

The ruling party has based its campaign on promises of economic growth, agricultural development and improvements in health and education.

At a polling station in central Addis Ababa, dozens of voters queued at dawn to vote before polls opened at 6 a.m. (0300 GMT; 11 p.m. EDT Saturday).

Kinde Moges, a 35-year-old private security guard, said he came early to vote before starting work.

“The party I voted for is my choice because I know its past experience and its future hopes,” he said, indicating he voted for the ruling party. He said he thought the party he chose would help his three children get a good education and jobs, he said, to “support me in my old age.”

Polling stations in the center of the capital appeared calm and orderly, a marked contrast to the long lines and excited voters in the 2005 election. That year, a then-energetic opposition won an unprecedented number of parliamentary seats in this country of 85 million, only to endure police crackdowns and the killing of 193 demonstrators after the votes were counted.

The government has said observers from the European Union and the African Union can monitor the vote along with 40,000 local observers.

Associated Press writer Samson Haileyesus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia contributed to this report.

By Jason McLure | Bloomberg

Ethiopians went to the polls today to vote in the Horn of Africa nation’s first national elections since 2005 after a campaign marred by allegations of intimidation by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling party.

The polls opened at 6 a.m. local time, with 31.9 million registered voters slated 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, is expected to win re-election easily, according to human rights groups and analysts.

Meles’ Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has used a combination of harassment and arrests and withholding food aid and jobs to thwart the opposition Medrek alliance, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a March 24 report entitled “One Hundred Ways of Putting Pressure.”

The “EPRDF is just set to rig this election,” Medrek Chairman Beyene Petros told reporters on May 20 in Addis Ababa, the capital. Medrek says that three of its activists have been murdered during the campaign and that hundreds more have been beaten and jailed on trumped-up charges.

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.

Fight in Somalia

Meles has been a key ally in the fight against Islamic militants in neighboring Somalia.

Development aid to Ethiopia from the U.S., U.K., the World Bank and other donors rose to $3.3 billion in 2008 from $1.9 billion in 2005, according to the Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development.

The government dismisses opposition charges of harassment as false and intended to discredit the vote. It says economic growth in Ethiopia of more than 7 percent annually over the past five years is the main reason it will win re-election.

Ruling party campaign posters featured candidate photos next to drawings of gleaming skyscrapers and superhighways.

The European Union has sent a 160-member monitoring mission to observe the vote led by Thijs Berman, a Dutch member of the European parliament.

Medrek, a coalition that includes jailed opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa’s Unity for Democracy and Justice party and a number of ethnic-based parties, is divided on how it would govern the country if elected, David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia from 1996-1999, said in a May 11 phone interview.

Opposition

“They are a disparate group,” he said. “It’s the kind of grouping that can try to hang together to defeat the EPRDF, and if they don’t do that they’ll go their separate ways.”

In 2005, EU monitors were blocked from observing ballot counting by Ethiopian officials after early results showed the opposition winning all 23 parliamentary seats in Addis Ababa, Ana Maria Gomes, the head of the 2005 EU observation mission, said in a May 11 phone interview.

Official results released after the elections showed the ruling party and its allies winning more than 360 seats in the 547-member parliament.

At least 193 people were killed in Addis Ababa by security forces loyal to Meles in unrest following the poll. Birtukan and more than 120 opposition leaders, democracy activists and journalists were jailed and later charged with treason or related crimes.

They were released under a pardon by Meles in 2007. Birtukan was re-arrested in December 2008 and jailed under a life sentence after saying her pardon had been part of a political deal.

(Editors: Karl Maier, Paul Richardson)