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Children as young as three registered for Ethiopian elections

By ANTHONY MITCHELL, Associated Press Writer

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Mar 28, 2005 (AP) — Children as young as three have been registered to vote, the head of Ethiopia’s election board said Monday, adding those behind that and other abuses would be prosecuted.

The fraud ahead of May 15 general elections took place in the district of Hadiya, 200 kilometers (125 miles) southwest of Addis Ababa, where the 2000 national elections had to be rerun because of similar abuses, Kemal Bedri, the board’s chairman, told reporters.

“Children aged three had been issued with registration papers,” he said. “We found that some people’s names were registered three or four times.”

He said the election official who handed out bundles of registration cards to children was “negligent” and new registration would be carried out in the area.

He added that one man involved in the abuse was a member of the opposition United Ethiopian Democratic Forces party.

“The purpose of giving these cards out to children was to cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process,” he said.

United Ethiopian Democratic Forces officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Party officials have repeatedly complained to the authorities about registration problems in Hadiya.

Kemal said Hadiya was the only district so far where abuses have been confirmed and that those involved would be prosecuted. He said the electoral board received around 50 complaints about abuses in Hadiya.

The board also released overall statistics showing that 25.6 million people had registered to vote and 35 political parties will contest the election.

Some 1,845 candidates, 271 of them women, were contesting the election, only be the third democratic ballot in Ethiopia’s history. All the elections have been won by the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front.

Ethiopia’s has a two-house parliament: the 110-seat upper House of the Federation and the 547-seat lower House of People’s Representatives.

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