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Beginning on 15 May 2005, Ethiopia conducted the first genuinely competitive multiparty elections in its long history. As of this writing in early September 2005, it appears that the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which has been at the heart of a de facto single-party regime for 14 years, has secured a further five-year mandate. Yet the EPRDF saw its majority in the 547-seat Council of People’s Representatives (CPR) drop dramatically from the 481 seats that it had won in 2000 to just 327 seats five years later. Two opposition coalitions and an array of independent candidates collectively garnered 45 percent of the popular vote and as many as 200 or more seats. Elections in the Somali Region, delayed by political unrest and flooding, gave all 23 seats to an independent party that collaborates with the EPRDF.