The Ethiopian electoral commission announced Tuesday the sine die postponement of the general elections planned for August 29, because of the pandemic of the new coronavirus.
The upcoming general elections in Ethiopia, the second most populous country on the continent with some 100 million inhabitants, are widely seen as a crucial step in the political transition that Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is trying to complete. 2019.
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"Due to the problems associated with the coronavirus, the electoral commission decided that it could not organize the elections on the scheduled date and therefore it decided to cancel this date and to suspend all its activities," the commission said in a communicated.
No new date was given by the electoral commission which specified that a new calendar would be proposed "when the pandemic is over".
The official campaign was due to start on May 28 and the results to be released before September 8.
