ADDIS ABABA, (The Southern African Times) – Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, on Monday welcomed the proclamation by the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) of the final results of Ethiopia’s six general elections.
On Saturday, the NEBE announced that Ethiopia’s ruling Prosperity Party won more than 400 out of 436 parliamentary electoral constituencies of the sixth Ethiopian general elections held on June 21.
“The chairperson takes this opportunity to warmly congratulate Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for the overwhelming victory of the Prosperity Party at the national and regional level,” an AU statement issued on Monday quoted Mahamat as saying.
Chairperson of the 55-member pan African bloc commended the NEBE, political parties, civil society, and all other stakeholders for their collective efforts in ensuring largely peaceful, orderly, and credible elections, despite challenges relating to security, logistics and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Under Ethiopia’s parliamentary government system, the prime minister who is the highest authority of the land is selected from the party that wins the majority seats at the Ethiopian House of Peoples’ Representatives (HoPR), the lower house of the Ethiopian parliament, and will be sworn in after parliamentary vote.
The AU had deployed an Election Observer Mission, chaired by the former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, to observe the election.