borkena
September 3, 2019
Ethiopian Political Party Council, mainly draws membership from major opposition parties legally registered with and recognized by the county’s election board, is calling for the postponement of the National election which is due to take place in 2020.
The council has 107 political parties as members.
The position of the opposition group is premised on their claim that they have opposed the new political party’s registration and ethics legislation and they did not get a response to it. In their view, it will take time to get a response from the government on ways of addressing concerns those parties rose regarding some provisions of the new legislation.
The new legislation was formulated and approved in parliament hastily, the opposition groups argue.
All major opposition groups in the country and the ruling coalition, Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), have signed a covenant before the Ethiopian government enacted the new legislation. And the opposition is rejecting the new legislation on alleged grounds that it does not give a room for the themes that informed the covenant. They also see it as an obstacle to achieving the goals of the Ethiopian Political Parties Council.
In the Covenant that the ruling coalition signed, the government agreed that “political parties have roles comparable to government and responsibility,” but the new legislation rather intends to perpetuate the customary practice, political parties council argue, as reported by DW Amharic service.
On top of the draft bill was approved in the parliament before the opposition parties’ request to have one more discussion on it was not addressed, according to Ato Moussa Adem who is the chairperson of the council.
75 percent of members of political party’s council have requested about 40 articles not to be included in the legislation and have requested the Ethiopian Parliament to reconsider them.
And the council is calling for the Ethiopian parliament to amend the legislation which was approved unanimously, according to reports by state-affiliated media.
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What a tragedy….instead of working to build the country and help the impoverished escape poverty …107 parties want to compete for the position at the helm. May God save us.