Ethiopia has again delayed surveys, including security and logistical challenges Ethiopia News

The polling station says delays in opening polls and voter registration have pushed back voting day.

Ethiopia has again postponed national elections after saying some opposition parties would not participate and that the conflict in the country’s Tigray region does not vote, making it difficult for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s efforts to centralize power.

Birtukan Mideksa, chairman of the Ethiopian National Electoral Board (NEBE), said “delays in opening polling stations and voter registration have boosted voting day,” the state news agency Fana reported on Saturday.

Midex told Reuters news agency that the election is not scheduled for June 5.

“We will leave it to everyone [know] to find out how many additional weeks or days there are to complete the delayed tasks … It would not be more than three weeks, ”he added.

Mideksa mentioned a number of logistical delays, such as the completion of voter registration, the training of election staff, the printing and distribution of ballot papers.

“Practically, it was impossible to deliver all of them on originally scheduled dates,” he said.

With just a few weeks to go before the election, there were few indications of a campaign, and several opposition parties intended to boycott the vote, describing it as a “farce”.

Voting was originally scheduled for August last year, but was postponed for the first time due to the coronavirus pandemic.

At the time, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which was leading the northern region, faced the delay and held regional elections in September.

It was a factor that led to the conflict between the TPLF and the central government in Addis Ababa since early November.

The fighting in Tigray has killed thousands of people and the United States has been accused of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” against Tigrayar in the western region where about six million people live.

The Prime Minister, who took office in 2018 and won the Nobel Peace Prize the following year, introduced massive political reforms and has repeatedly promised that these elections will be free and fair.

Abiy will retain his post if his Prosperity Party wins a majority of seats in the national assembly.