The House of Peoples’ Representatives, in its 12th regular session held on 27 December 2007, has approved the appointment of officials to the office of the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia and also ratified two bills on bilateral trade agreements.

The House has approved the appointment of officials to the office of the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia which was submitted by the Electoral Board of Election by virtue of the power vested to it in the amended law of election proclamation No. 532/2006 of Article 15, sub-article 1 with a majority vote of 268 for, 97 against and 2 abstentions.

As stipulated in the Rules of Procedures and Member’ Code of Conduct Regulation No. 3/2006, the House has approved the appointment of Ato Tesfaye Mengesha as Chief Secretary and W/ro Rahel Tadesse and Ato Ermias Asefa as deputy chief secretaries of the office of the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia after exhaustive discussions on the resumes of the appointees presented by honorable Fantaye Gezahagne, deputy chairperson of the Legal and Administrative Affairs Standing Committee.

Subsequently, some of the opposition parties with seats in the House reflected their comments that that question the lack of experience, expertise, inadequacy of qualification to the positions to be assumed, and also the political affiliation of appointees to the ruling party.

In response to this, chief whip of the government hon. Ato Shiferaw Jarso underscored that the suggestions forwarded by the opposition parties as regards the competence, qualification, and political affiliation to the ruling party are allegations with no proof and evidence ascertaining their qualification and experience of the candidate appointees match the positions and the political stands are properly scrutinized and found to be partisan by a committee organized by the National Board of Election for this purpose.

Following this, the House has endorsed two bills on bilateral trade agreements signed between Ethiopia and Equatorial Guinea as well as Ethiopia and Yemen, with a majority vote as Proclamation No. 560/2007 and No. 561/2007 respectively, after thorough deliberations on the Proposals and suggestions Submitted to it by the Trade and Industry Affairs and Foreign, Defense and Security Affairs Standing Committees.

At the end, the House has adopted the minutes of the 7th and 8th regular session of its 3rd tenure with a majority vote with a view to incorporate corrections made to the final draft authenticated against the original audio-video records.