[jrydberg@tjorven managed]$ cat p1.py

from elementtree import ElementTree as ET
from cStringIO import StringIO

text = StringIO("""
<a xmlns="foo">
  <e a="value" />
</a>
""")

tree = ET.parse(text).getroot()
print ET.tostring(tree)

[jrydberg@tjorven managed]$ python p1.py
<ns0:a xmlns:ns0="foo">
  <ns0:e a="value" />
</ns0:a>