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Oil Opposition members 'denied food aid'
November 12, 2009 Edition 2
ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopian opposition parties said yesterday that their members were being refused food aid to force them to join the ruling party before the national elections which were to be held in May.
The Ethiopian government said 6.2 million people would need emergency food this year. It has appealed to the international community for help.
Another 7 million Ethiopians were part of a long-running food-for-work scheme, so more than 13 million of the country's 80 million people relied on aid.
"Our members can't get on the food-for-work scheme," said Gebru Asrat, a spokesman for Medrek, a coalition of eight parties seen as the most serious threat to Meles's nearly 20 years in power. "Only ruling party members can join the programme, so it forces desperate people to leave the opposition."
People who joined the ruling party would not be able to work for the opposition or stand as opposition candidates.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's administration rejected the complaint.
"It's simply a ridiculous and outrageous thing to say," Bereket Simon, the government head of information, said. He said the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front party had fewer than half the number of people enrolled in the food-for-work scheme.
Aid workers said a five-year drought was afflicting more than 23 million people in seven east African countries, with Ethiopia worst affected. Ethiopia's latest appeal came on the 25th anniversary of the 1984 famine that killed more than 1 million. - Reuters
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