Monday, July 29, 2019

Elections in End Times



Political theory, so often in our times either synoptic musings about essentialized principles locked in a Manichaean death struggle—collectivism and individualism, objectivism and relativism, right and obligation, freedom and constraint—or ideological commitments dressed up to look like ineluctable deductions from inescapable premises, needs to get a firmer grip on the hard particularities of the present moment…
Clifford Geertz, Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics
But between revolution and counterrevolution, empire and nationalism, communism and capitalism, there was also another domain, that of reform. Often beleaguered, beaten, and overshadowed by utopian Titans, this was a realm of purposive and often nonconsensual, and therefore conflictive, change whose pursuit aimed not to perfect humanity, but only to improve it.
Jeremy Adelman, Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman
Within a few hours on June 22, Ethiopia was rocked by the assassinations of regional leaders and federal military officers in Bahir Dar and Addis Ababa.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said they were part of a thwarted coup led by then Amhara security boss Asaminew Tsige, who was released in February 2018 after a December 2017 decision by the ruling coalition to ease extreme political pressures via an amnesty.
Detractors of Ethiopia’s experiment with multinational federalism did not hesitate to attribute it causally to Amhara nationalism, and thus a direct outcome of ethno-regionalism. However, that flies in the face of the fact that Asaminew and his proud Amhara allies wanted to dismantle chunks of the federal settlement; therefore, we could just as well argue it was caused by members of formerly privileged communities that reject sharing power and their former territory with the historically marginalized. Instead, a firmer analysis is that the tragedies were more a result of the bungled political and security sector reforms of the last year; a process dubbed moving towards democracy by the West’s finest media establishments.
A Brigadier-General sentenced to life in prison for orchestrating a previous coup ten years ago was released on pardon and his military ranks and privileges restored. He was then named chief of security of Amhara where he was empowered and endowed to oversee the recruitment and training of thousands of special forces, while not hiding his revanchist claims against Tigray, engaging openly in anti-Oromo rhetoric, and flattening Gumuz villages.
The TPLF Central Committee could not ignore these salient facts, which only reinforced several years of anti-TPLF activity by Amhara’s rulers. The exchange prompted by the Asaminew debacle saw the ERPDF enter the modern era of communications, as Tigray and Amhara’s ruling parties shot scalding statements at each other like bona fide social media warriors. This belated airing of the EPRDF’s filthy linen further buffeted Ethiopian politics, threatening to send the EPRDF-era into a tailspin.
So, whither Abiy’s pledge to hold for transformative elections in 10 months’ time?
Back on June 10, the Prime Minister made a surprise visit to Aksum in Tigray where he told residents in a town hall meeting that “holding elections isn’t an obligation. There are countries around the world that didn’t hold elections for 20 or 30 years.” The reluctant democrats he had in mind were presumably in nearby Eritrea, which he brought out from the cold a year ago, and whose autocrat he has embraced. It is ruled by a tyrant who has shelved its constitution since its writing, held no elections, banned free press and opposition, allowed close comrades to perish in jail, and won’t end the indefinite national service put in place since war with Ethiopia in 1998, even after the rapprochement.
If that sort of attitude displayed by Abiy towards democratic processes, coupled with assassinations immediately classed as a coup and the procrastination-induced instability in Southern Nations, indicates an intention to postpone 2020 polls due to insecurity, Ethiopia’s fledgling democracy is in retreat. Regardless, the international community continues to shower the so-called reformist leader with accolades, as he pays lip service to liberal democratic aspirations that may well end up solidifying as a still impoverished, still semi-authoritarian Ethiopia—but one that is decisively Oromo-dominated.
Another factor in Ethiopia’s current conundrum is the delayed national census, which, although not a precondition for holding elections next year, is important in at least two respects. First, the allocation of seats in the House of Federation, the parliamentary upper chamber, ensures minority representation but is otherwise based on population. Second, redrawing the House of Peoples’ Representatives constituency map depends on the count. Ethiopia’s 547 constituencies have not been modified since they were first ‘drawn round’ communities in 1995, during which time the population has more than doubled. There are understandable concerns around the census, given how many of Ethiopia’s flashpoints have a demographic glow, but twice postponing the census, a key constitutionally stipulated democratic event, arguably serves the purpose of softening up the public for delaying another, the election.
Also around two months ago, celebrated American public intellectual Francis Fukuyama visited Addis Ababa where he emphasized in a public lecture that Ethiopia needs democracy; the trip was paid for by a U.S. organization that promotes private enterprise. Fukuyama created controversy in 1992 with The End of History and the Last Man, synthesizing Hegel’s and Nietzsche’s thoughts, and predicated on a marked expansion of democracy across the world since the 1970s. The formative influence on his reading of Hegel comes from Alexandre Kojeve through Fukuyama’s own teacher the late Allan Bloom, who introduced Kojeve’s Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit to the English-speaking world.
EPRDF sought legitimacy through development
Relatively few will care much about Fukuyama’s ungainly parachute into Ethiopian affairs — he admitted he’d never set foot in this alien land before — but his remarks were far less astute than the ‘end of history’ thesis he’s endlessly unfairly maligned for by confused critics. Fukuyama actually correctly identified the direction of universal history and its twin driving forces: “economics” and “the struggle for recognition” — but in his Addis Ababa address he failed to locate Ethiopia’s particular location in the teleology.
If Fukuyama was right in pointing out the general direction towards liberal democracy, Larry Diamond has shown it is hardly linear. In his latest book, Ill Winds, he warns that democracy is retreating everywhere, and the foundations of democratic culture are eroding both in the U.S. and overseas. He takes pains to update his original article “Facing Up to the Democratic Recession”, written a quarter of a century after the publication of Fukuyama’s original 1989 essay. Diamond’s general point is that many more countries have seen their freedom decrease than increase since 2007, reversing the post–Cold War trend.
Some might argue that postponement of Ethiopia’s elections would not constitute democratic regression because, after all, they claim, the 2015 election was a sham. They can even support their stance with political science scholarship. Thomas Flores and Irfan Nooruddin in their Elections in Hard Times argued: “Over the past two decades, academic research has confirmed …that many of the elections held across the developing world since the end of the Cold War were at best dubious in their commitment to the best practices for protecting electoral integrity.”
The problem, however, is that they took Ethiopia’s elections in 2015 for the archetypal exercise in mock democracy, “where the ruling party won all the seats in an overwhelming show of dominance secured by harassing opposition figures and suppressing independent civil society.” They opined: “Common sense tells us that elections such as that of Ethiopia in 2015 will do little to further the cause of democracy in that country…And therefore cleaner elections should yield a greater democratic dividend, all else equal.” They are right in saying this, inasmuch as their assertion is tautological.
The academics are also right to express serious misgivings about the election. After all, EPRDF not only controlled all seats, but in terms of votes, 95 percent went to the front and its affiliates. (However, it was not exceptionally one-sided: in Egypt’s 2014 elections Abdel Fetah al-Sisi won 97 percent of the votes.) Yet regardless of the popular vote, when any ruling party controls 100 percent of the seats it magnifies a glaring democratic deficit, even if the domination is based on 51 percent of the ballots cast. The lopsided outcome was born of the same control-freakery, greed, and arrogance that generally militated against the introduction of gradual reforms required to forestall the type of radical demands that brought Abiy to power.
From a strategic perspective, the 100 percent victory, as Terrence Lyons and Leonardo Arriola rightly observed, made more sense, as it was also a way of sending “the message to potential rebels that there is only one game in town and that to imagine otherwise would be futile.”  They explain cogently the 2015 elections in terms of what they call “the retrenchment strategy.” The incumbent decided to retrench, in violation of Meles’s internal renewal policy.
The situation is somewhat explained by the fact that even had EPRDF decided to cede ground to the opposition by letting them win some districts, the process would not have been easy since each constituent party wanted to maintain ethno-regional hegemony. All the four members of the EPRDF coalition and their allies are therefore complicit in retrenching without leaving room for the upward mobility of EPRDFites and oppositionists. Ultimately, the claims of managed democracy are fair, as EPRDF sought to garner legitimacy not through elections, but through development. The academics, however, were wrong to conclude that “[t]he regime is thus unlikely to be threatened by an internal coup.” That is exactly what happened after Abiy Ahmed’s meteoric rise from entrepreneurial securocrat to liberalism’s savior.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed with Tigray’s leader Debretsion Gebremichael; June 11 Aksum; PMO
Fast-forwarding half a decade, the issue now is not so much semi-authoritarian methods of political control, it is impending chaos. There is solid scholarship that calls into question the wisdom of holding elections during violent transitions, while holding founding elections is clearly an integral part of democratic emergence. However, that is not the case with Ethiopia right now. The founding elections took place in 1995. The upcoming ones will be the sixth since the new constitutional dispensation began a quarter of a century before. The outcome of these polls would be democratic consolidation, not emergence; although it will indeed be a landmark poll if EPRDF parties do not compete as a front for the first time. But not holding the elections as mandated by law will only amount to what Larry Diamond calls “democracy demotion” or “recession”.
Politically speaking, if the administration decides not to hold the elections, it would incur a legitimacy deficit, thereby inviting all kinds of insurgency, while there will also be a risk of moves to secession by members of the federation, and thus a return to civil war. If the prevailing insecurity is so great as to prevent campaigning or polling, or the chances are that the elections are going to be held under conditions that may generate deeper insecurity, postponement of the elections might be the lesser of the two evils, albeit it is unclear how that is done in a manner consistent with the constitution.
As a last resort, parliament could declare a State of Emergency and suspend constitutional provisions, other than a few that are non-derogable. Another alternative course of action for extending the elections for a few months is to dissolve parliament. Art. 60 allows for dissolution before end of term—which would actually shorten the election period to only six months. If early dissolution occurs, the current government continues as a caretaker as per sub-Art. 5. And the powers of the caretaker will be limited to only “conducting the day to day affairs of government and organizing new elections.” As such, it won’t be able to enact new laws or repeal or amend any existing laws. This, however, would be a terrible move. Legal gymnastics regardless, an acceptable solution lies in politics and backroom negotiations among the main actors. Lack of a legal solution to the problem of postponement necessitates a political solution. The decision to extend should be based on broad consensus; it cannot simply be in the hands of the prime minister, his handpicked electoral board, or the legislature alone.
As I am writing, Hawassa, the capital of Southern Nations, is on lockdown by security forces after the community threatened to self-declare a Sidama state, as today marked the expiry of the one-year constitutional deadline for organizing a referendum on their demand. I can’t think of a better example of the central government’s playing fast and loose with constitutional schedules in the interests of suppressing the rights of the historically marginalized; witness also the conceit of Addis’ intelligentsia as it dismisses the Sidama’s fundamentally human desire for recognition as backward tribalism. With regards to disregard for the constitution, my fear is the same will happen to the 2020 elections.
In making such a decision, it is important to consider the positions of the TPLF, OLF and other disgruntled parties. Any decision by fiat, no matter how wise on merit, is not going to go down well. Abiy, therefore, must rethink his obvious strategy of monopolizing power, and instead attempt to involve others in a meaningful way. Any extra-constitutional alternative to elections to entrench himself in power that isn’t based on political consensus would be a highway to political hell and should be a red alert among all Ethiopians. Ultimately, it is less about the decision on whether or not to hold elections. It is the process by which the decision is made. Therefore Abiy—and the rest—need to abandon vendettas and engineer an elite consensus of sorts, at least within the EPRDF, which is going to be tricky.
Talking of vendettas, in its latest statement, the TPLF Central Committee stressed that it would be difficult for it to work with the Amhara wing of the coalition until and unless it engages in self-criticism and take responsibility for the tragic events of 22 June. It also demanded an independent investigation into the killings of its generals as well as clarity on whether EPRDF is committed to holding the 2020 elections. To make things worse, the Amhara Democratic Party responded in kind, addressing TPLF with an unofficial name. While both sides are to blame, TPLF demanded reasonably that ADP owns its mistakes. But ADP appears more interested in burning bridges—not to mention blocking roads—than building them.
This spat is symptomatic of a situation where the chairman of EPRDF has largely surrounded himself with opportunists and oppositionists. That has come at the expense of letting his own party atrophy, which has had grave security implications in the absence of consensus and efficient-decision making guiding strong state action. Of late, he seems to have begun to smell the coffee. He seems to be realizing that he is the chairman of EPRDF and not of EZEMA, and that it was a mistake to ignore his own institutional power base. The antagonists he sees in the TPLF enjoy unchallenged control of Tigray. ADP is facing challenges from the right-wing National Movement of Amhara (NaMA), which has come under siege following an accusation that some of its members and leaders were complicit in the so-called coup. Abiy’s Oromo Democratic Party will make a deal or be outmaneuvered by populist ethno-regional opposition. And so Abiy is looking for alternative avenues to stay in office, not excluding an eventual alliance with Berhanu Nega’s EZEMA. After all his chemistry is better with Berhanu than Bekele Gerba.
When all things are considered, the difference the 2020 elections are going to make isn’t scalar; the choice is not between sham and clean elections. It’s another binary: the choice is between civil war and peace. Ethiopia would better hold another sham election than no election at all. Worse than the risk of elections triggering conflict is the consequences of no elections. Democracy is after all part of the culture of a polity that should grow organically rather than be imposed overnight. Postponing elections as conditions are imperfect is not democratic, it is dictatorial.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed with Francis Fukuyama; June 11; PMO
As well as avoiding catastrophe arguments, there are also escaping poverty reasons for sticking to the schedule.
Showing further signs of a lack of specialism, in his lecture Fukuyama cursorily pointed out that Ethiopia lacks a national identity. But instead he should have analyzed its diverse ethnic groups’ struggle for recognition in terms of Plato’s thymos and Hegel’s desire for recognition. As he argued brilliantly in End of History, if “an understanding of the importance of the desire for recognition as the motor of history allows us to reinterpret many phenomena that are otherwise seemingly familiar to us, such as culture, religion, work, nationalism, and war,” why fall short of doing that when it comes to Ethiopia?
Maybe it isn’t familiar to Fukuyama that students of multinational federalism also trace its roots to the theory of the politics of recognition, which can in turn be sourced to GWF Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, following the tack taken by its master-interpreter, Alexandre Kojeve. He says: “All human, anthropogenetic Desire — the Desire that generates Self-Consciousness, the human reality — is, finally, a function of the desire for “recognition.” And the risk of life by which the human reality “comes to light” is a risk for the sake of such a Desire. Therefore, to speak of the “origin” of Self-Consciousness is necessarily to speak of a fight to the death for “recognition.”
The best way then to make sense of our contemporary politics is to look at its not-so-distant past through the lens of the center-periphery cleavage, as I have arguedelsewhere. It is the desire for recognition as equal in worth and dignity by the diverse cultural communities that have shaped the history of modern Ethiopia, and if Fukuyama had taken the short flight to Hawassa, he could have seen it in action among the Sidama.
Ethiopia’s predicament also exposes tensions in Fukuyama’s two main areas of interest: liberal democracy and state building. Ethiopia is not close to liberal democracy, but it needs to loosen up, which is not conducive to state building. Ethiopia does not seem to have the conditions for steady growth that Fukuyama prescribes, and it does not have the capabilities or resources to immediately create them. If he identifies that national unity, the rule of law, and so the enforcement of property rights, are absent, then state-building should surely precede liberal political and economic reforms.
Practical idealism must be upheld with a vote
Now that Ethiopia’s federal settlement is threatened, after TPLF preeminence was propagated as Tigrayan totalitarianism, the government has no more space or time to be single-minded about creating them, and producing an overarching unifying identity is fraught with problems in the Ethiopian context. Yet Ethiopia is also being told to be more democratic. So how does it achieve the consensus and strength and length of government needed to create the conditions for growth? Or, if the conditions simply aren’t conducive in Ethiopia for that, what is the alternative?
Rather than fretting about a lack of homogeneity in a society still stuttering out of internal imperialism, what Ethiopia needs, therefore, is more Meles-style state building so the rule of law can be enforced and rights protected, more identity-politics analysis, and less boilerplate ‘liberal democracy now’ prescriptions. For stability’s sake, EPRDF can transform itself into a single party if it can hammer out a compromise among its constituent members so that it can situate itself better to play its role in the country’s multi-party politics amid the whirlwind of transformative change.
As well as building the meritocratic bureaucracy that the EPRDF has hitherto stunted the growth of, and which Fukuyama, and all and sundry, recommend, Ethiopia also needs to reform on both the economic and political fronts, guided by practical idealism. The agenda shouldn’t be a battlefield for ideologies. Rather than merely obsessing over identity, territory, and power, we should ask pragmatic questions about the paths that can take us towards peace, prosperity, and progress in measurable ways.
Even if it is agreed that liberal democracy cannot be challenged as the ideal form of government, it needs however to be tailored in creative ways to the needs of the people and until achievement of the ideal is possible. This isn’t far from John Dewey’s idea of democracy as he beautifully extolled in his essay Creative Democracy. American Democracy isn’t the embodiment of some pure form of the ideal of democracy. It’s part of the culture and history of an evolving polity. But this kind of practical idealism must be upheld with a vote, otherwise it is clinging to a void. The upcoming elections can be held as scheduled, and the political and economic reforms can be pursued under the less than optimal conditions post-election, if that is what the public vote for.
However, they should not be carried out posthaste to satisfy the demands of the Bretton Woods institutions.
If liberal democracy is the endpoint, multinational federalism, revolutionary democracy, and a Developmental State are transitory stages prompted by unfavorable conditions in the movement of history towards its landing zone, liberal democracy. This is also consistent with not only John Rawl’s view of liberalism, but also Meles Zenawi’s understanding of revolutionary democracy. Meles saw a strong state to maintain security and a dominant vanguard party urging development as priorities for an impoverished society. A focus on civil liberties would come later when a middle class emerged and pluralism developed.
During his time in office, his single-minded focus was therefore on economic development and transformation. Fukuyama’s end of history argument for liberal democracy as an endpoint should not be a bar to thinking about transitory arrangements. But he is apparently fixated on the notion that the only path to get to his End of History is through Abiy’s New Horizon, somehow sidestepping Meles’s Dead End. Whilst political liberalism has not yet been convincingly refuted in a decisive manner by any big thinker, Meles rightly observed that neoliberalism was a cul de sac for poor countries. So, it remains a distinct possibility that beyond Abiy’s horizon is a mirage—even if it is one studded with saplings.
Returning to the more pressing, earthy matter of the 2020 elections, there should be no administration so eager to earn legitimacy as Abiy’s, which is making sweeping reforms and preparing to privatize the commanding heights, as sketched out over the last 18 months by a bankrupt ruling coalition now on the brink of dissolution. As part of democratization, developmentalism is being sacrificed, which surely was not the plan of the remaining TPLF ideologues and their fellow revolutionary democratic travelers.
Quite apart from Ethiopia’s acute political concerns, and rather than merely trying to please everyone through vacuity in the absence of legitimacy, Abiy’s administration must embrace elections to earn a democratic mandate for his supposedly transformative agenda. But first, he has to keep the federation together.

Raya: a category error, and a catalog of errors



The people of Raya in northern Ethiopia have diverse origins and so defy simple categorizations. A more accommodating federation and responsive politics would help resolve their disputed administrative status.
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it”— Karl Marx
I was born and raised in Alamata, the heart of what people now call the Raya area of Tigray and Amhara. My maternal great grandmother was a Muslim and an Oromo who married my great grandfather, a native Christian highlander with the title of a Qegnazmach.
On that side, my relatives are mostly Muslims with typical Oromo names such as Gamada and Fereja, but they are all Tigrigna and Amharic speakers. The other side is entirely people of Ofla origin, who only speak Tigrigna. My relatives live in those parts of South Tigray and North Wollo that comprise Raya in the popular understanding.
I grew up speaking Amharic, but listening to Tigrigna, as my parents spoke it at home. As a kid, I could entertain the thought that Tigrigna is the language of the old and folks from the countryside, while Amharic is young and urbanite. The situation poses a typical existential puzzle: Who are my people? Who am I?
I never cared much about ethnicity or politics until an incident at Addis Ababa University in 2001 induced some soul-searching. A sociology student from my hometown used a pejorative for Oromo. Angry Oromo classmates beat the student and instructor, and it escalated into conflict between Tigrayans and Oromo. Windows of dormitories and the iconic John F. Kennedy Memorial Library were stoned. Ironically enough, the offending student is now a leader of the Raya Identity and Self-Administration Grand Committee and identifies as Raya-Amhara. The Committee demands for the inclusion of the Raya people of southern Tigray into Amhara Region.
Put into a simple syllogism, such activists argue:
Raya is Wollo
Wollo is Amhara
_______________________
Therefore Raya is Amhara
However, the argument is based on various fallacies. Raya did not become part of Wollo until 1957. And both Raya and Wollo give their names of Oromo sub-clans, which is testament to a complex history of intertwined peoples and shifting identities.
Raya has always been contested: some claim it is Amhara, others say it is Tigrayan, while still others say it is a distinct ethnicity. That dispute, which has flared dangerously in recent months, goes deeper when we realize that ‘the Raya’ are latecomers to the area.
Who are they then? What does it mean to be Rayan? Does it exclude being Tigrayan at the same time? How did the Raya manage to bequeath their name to a population that does not even speak their language?
Given the rise to prominence of anti-Tigrayan dog-whistle activism masquerading as identity politics, it is important to explore these questions, and to dispel some misunderstandings in the process. One of the first is that people are basing their identity on an essentialist theory that excludes social construction. Ethnicity is not purely genetic, insofar as it can change with experience. This is not only the case for those who are multiethnic by birth, but also for those who think they are in a pristine state. Therefore, as ethnicity is pliable, sometimes our administrative arrangements have not caught up with the latest shifts in identity.

Assimilation

Historian Bahru Zewde traces the rise of our identity politics to the creation of the Italian colony of Eritrea, which he describes as “the roots of the problem of secession.” But what accounts for the rise of identity politics in Tigray? Well, it began for real on May 2, 1889, when Menelik II established the Italian Colony of Eritrea, so dividing the Tigrigna-speaking people on the two sides of River Mereb. Harold Marcus writes: “We do not know why Menelik made this historic cession of territory—the first for an Ethiopian ruler.”
And while war over the Treaty of Wuchale ensued, it was not over this giveaway. Half a century later, Emperor Haile Selassie I compounded the insult when he took Alamata and other parts of Tigray into Wollo. The current vehicle for the diminishment of Tigray is the identity claim of the Raya. Does Tigray now face a similar territorial threat from Abiy Ahmed and his Amhara allies, or are current tensions a springboard for a more flexible interpretation of identity and accommodating federation?
Well, that depends on politics, of course, but a look back at an intertwined past illuminates a potentially more harmonious way forward—if only the bullheaded Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and their single-issue antagonists opened their eyes to start absorbing the light.

A 1976 Central Statistical Office E.C language map published in National Atlas of Ethiopia 1988
The Raya do not share a mutually intelligible language, as they speak Tigrigna, Amharic, Agawigna, Afarigna, and, only a few now, Oromiffa. A survey of its history since 16th century reveals Raya is a label for a diverse group of people that formed a collective identity of sorts due to intermingling and intermarriage.
The idea of a biological Raya group, and dualisms such as Raya-Amhara or Raya-Tigre, are therefore category errors: Raya is a cultural community, not an ethnic group. It is not homogenous like the Erob or Kunama, who also reside within Tigray. Raya refers to the cultural area inhabited by a diverse group of people located south of the historic province of Enderta and North of Weldia.
Commenting on the demography of the population south of River Mereb, Merid Wolde Aregay, another historian, writes that in the “fertile plains” of Azabo and south of Wajarat lived the pastoralist Doba, who spread into the plains of the nearby provinces of Angot and Qeda. He says that in 1619 new age-sets to leadership among Oromo clans, the Baraytuma and the Borana, meant the intensification of raids. Part of the Marawa bands erupted into Tigre, where Takla Giyorgis resisted them.
Citing Manuel Barradas, who travelled through Enderta, Merid reports that by 1625 the Oromo threat had subsided. When four years later Takla became a rebel, Oromo clans from Azabo and Doba supported him. It should be noted here that a clan of the Oromo, be it the Raya or Marawa, has already settled in the area that we now call Raya-Azebo.
Wolde Sellassie harnessed anti-Oromo prejudice
Mohammed Hassen describes the Doba as “peaceful nomads and fine fighters” that were attacked by Oromo. He wrote in The Oromo of Ethiopia that when Takla Giyorgis resisted, the Oromo clans instead successfully targeted the Doba nomads. Apart from being lowland pastoralist pagans, unlike the highland Christian peasant Tigrayans, it seems the Dobas were Tigrigna-speaking like the Wejjerat and Enderta, given the similarities of the contemporary dialects.
Harold Marcus details how in the early 19th Century, Wolde Selassie, Tigray’s conservative Christian governor, repelled the Yejju Oromo expansionists: “He hit out at them by conquering the Azebo and Raya Oromo and by taking control over all the important passes in Lasta leading to Tigray.” Marcus says this was the result of two centuries of “helplessness before the Oromo advance” and attempts at power sharing. “Wolde Sellassie harnessed the general anti-Oromo prejudice to move against the Yeju.”
So, Raya came from the Baraytuma tribe of the Oromo that migrated to the area after the 16th century. The existing inhabitants were the Dobas that are essentially extinct now as a result of assimilation. After the 16th century, they fought and mixed with the Oromos and the neighboring people of Afar, Amhara, and Tigray, to form the Rayan identity.

Contestation

Moving to significant events in the last century, which overlaid modern administrative maneuvering onto these tribal gatherings, Emperor Haile Selassie made two critical mistakes after his return from exile that still resonate through today’s anxieties. The first was ceding historic Tigrayan territory lying beyond the River Ala Wuha to Wollo Province. In 1942, Haile Selassie enlarged Wollo to include Yejju and Lasta, with Dessie as its capital. And in 1957, he enlarged Wollo again to include Raya, particularly, Alamata and Kobo towns, which were part of Tigray Province.
The second error was the abrogation of the federation with Eritrea and consequent annexation into his Ethiopian empire. These moves led to the emergence of the ethnic liberation movements in Tigray and Eritrea. The roots of the Tigrayan movement, though also found on campus, are traceable to the peasant rebellion of the Woyane of Raya and Wejerat of Tigray.
That resistance, of course, set the scene for the TPLF’s long and bloody journey south, and, eventually, a fully independent Eritrea and an autonomous and powerful Tigray; perhaps too powerful. As the TPLF has weakened in recent years, after decades of fervent opposition, Tigray’s internal contradictions have been increasingly exploited, leading to worsening tensions over Welkait and the Raya issue.

Districts and kebeles in South and Southeastern zones of Tigray region, 2016. Source
Under the current settlement, Raya is also more of a cultural group with an overarching identity than an ethnicity, as it includes the Amharic-speaking people of Kobo and its environs. With the advent of ethnic federalism post-1991, which built on Derg-era studies of nationalities, it was thus appropriate to include the Tigrigna-speaking people of Raya with Tigray, while keeping the Amharic-speaking people within Amhara region. But this neat differentiation masks festering divisions.
There was long-running dispute during the Derg between Kobo and Alamata towns, as Kobo demanded that the seat of the Raya and Kobo District be moved from Alamata to Kobo, which Alamata residents resisted. When TPLF-led rebels captured state power in 1991, Alamata, with a majority of Tigrigna-speaking residents, was incorporated into Tigray. The ‘loss’ of Alamata has never been accepted by some Amhara nationalists.
Now, making Amharic a second working language of the appropriate parts of the Southern Zone of Tigray—notice how the TPLF kept the names of sub-regional districts ethnically neutral—and allowing schools to run a bilingual program should be enough to accommodate the area’s diversity. But it is not clear that would satisfy today’s Amhara nationalists, who claim territory from four other regions, and wildly describe TPLF rule as fascist.
TPLF has an inability to learn from its past
Rayans, to call them by their borrowed name, of course have legitimate grievances that need to be addressed by the state government. The people resent the TPLF for appointing administrators and mayors without consultation, forcing smallholders to purchase fertilizers on credit, various rights violations, and maladministration.
What is disheartening is TPLF’s inability to learn lessons from its past and respond to such complaints in a constructive manner. It should refrain from throwing dissenters into jail. It must refrain from using undue force against protesters. It should withdraw charges and release political prisoners. Imprisoning ordinary people turns them into galvanizing symbols of resistance. How has the party not learned this?
The way the regional government is responding to Rayan activism is the same way TPLF hardliners responded from their federal perches to similar issues in other parts of the country in recent years. Look where that has left them. Then, the police and security services made deeply consequential decisions, instead of letting political leaders handle it, and taking direction from them. Security institutions should not be involved in resolving political grievances.

Accommodation

TPLF’s seemingly insatiable urge to micromanage is at the root of its undoing. Getting competent locals to run the city and towns should not be beyond the reach of its political imagination. TPLF/EPRDF has been guilty of systematically marginalizing and discrediting moderates in Ethiopia over the past 27 years, thereby helping set the stage for the advent of virulently parochial ethnic entrepreneurship. It is repeating that in Raya today. It must reach out and listen to its critics, not simply attempt to rubbish them and crush them.
TPLF support in Tigray right now is rooted in the strategic calculations of Tigrayans: they would rather support the devil they know than the angel they do not. An effective party would try to translate this strategic advantage into actual support through legitimate means. After de-escalation, Tigray could resolve these issues satisfactorily with a variety of tools, as long as, for once, they eschew the sledgehammer. Rather it requires soft skills and the time-tested traditional communal institutions for conflict resolution, such as the Abbo Ghereb.
Yet instead of treating the issue as rooted in legitimate local grievances, they have turned the entire affair into a pissing match with Amhara revanchists. Through rational politics, the TPLF could turn the table on their antagonists: If Rayans want self-rule, why is it only possible when they join the Amhara, but impossible while it is still under the State of Tigray? The multinational federalism that has been put in place since 1995 is designed to enable the self-rule of cultural communities. On that note, the Erob and Kunama should be able to send their children to schools taught in their languages. And in Raya, Tigray must allow schools in Waja, Timugua, Babo Korma, and Selen Wuha in Amharic. That is the point in having multinational federalism.
Eventually we will all meld into Ethiopians
Given that ethnicity is complex, fluid, and socially constructed—as the Raya story decisively illustrates—the system should accommodate people of mixed identities. This can be aided by dropping ethnicity, and religion, from local and the long-planned national identity cards, partly as such categorizations assists sectarian mobs. The upcoming national census will also allow for mixed ethnic backgrounds, when it finally occurs. But above all, all sides must cease the provocations and propaganda, and so create a space for the people of the area to choose their own destiny.
Such measures would encourage the system to evolve in accommodating ways towards a more perfect pan-Ethiopian union, which can only be achieved once the unfavorable conditions that prompted the existing federative arrangement have been definitively dealt with. The divisive anti-Tigrayan campaigning by my former fellow student perpetuates those conditions, and so delays integration.
Multinational federalism was not supposed to be a permanent arrangement for a well-ordered society. Eventually we will all meld into Ethiopians, just as the Rayan identity formed from disparate parts. Ethnic federalism was designed for a society afflicted by serious systemic discrimination. That too was the aim of the EPRDF ideology of revolutionary democracy, although, listening to recent TPLF rhetoric, it seems the party forgot that somewhere along the way.
Now would be an opportune moment for all of us to recall both our common past and our dreams of a collective future.

Ethiopia’s federation needs reviving, not reconfiguring

January 10, 2019

Ethiopia’s nationalities battled long and hard for recognition. A centrally driven effort to reconfigure the federation that does not consider their struggle is a recipe for disaster. 
“When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then has a form of life grown old, and with gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known; the Owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in” — Hegel, Philosophy of Right
History and theory conspired to bring about the demise of the Ethiopian unitarist state in 1991 and the emergence of a pluralist polity known as a multinational federation. This claim might suggest ideological bias, but it also reflects an important reality.
The current political system is not an intellectual ideal; it was an arrangement prompted by unfavorable political conditions. No attempt is made here to venerate this theoretical construct. Eminent thinkers from across the globe had gathered to discuss Ethiopia’s predicament in the 1990s, but mapping a country’s future is not the work of theorists and purists.
Instead it is up to the political forces of the day to compromise and shape the proposed order to their interests and needs. It is almost inevitable that the result will be a fudge, and that is what our imperfect federation is.
What the 1995 constitution addressed were the demands of diverse nationalities for recognition, which was the rallying cry of the Marxist student movements of the 1960s and 70s, and of the ethnonational insurgencies that were rooted in those campaigns.
And now, a quarter of a century later, we have almost come full circle, as the naive, the delusional, and the cynical ignore these origins, and thus imperil the state.
Students of the theory of the politics of recognition trace its roots to GWF Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit, whose interpreter Alexandre Kojeve put at the center of Hegel’s thought the desire for recognition as the most overriding human need:
“All human, anthropogenetic Desire — the Desire that generates Self-Consciousness, the human reality — is, finally, a function of the desire for “recognition.” And the risk of life by which the human reality “comes to light” is a risk for the sake of such a Desire. Therefore, to speak of the “origin” of Self-Consciousness is necessarily to speak of a fight to the death for “recognition.”
It is this desire for recognition as equal in worth and dignity that shaped the history of modern Ethiopia. Therefore, the best way to make sense of our contemporary politics is to look at its not-so-distant past through the lens of the center-periphery cleavage.
This split has affected the political landscape with varying intensity since the ascension to the throne of Emperor Menelik II in 1889. Tracing its history helps to identify the factors that prompted the emergence of multinational federalism.
During the Imperial era, the primary source of conflict was endless rivalry between the monarchy and the regional nobility. With the overthrow of royal absolutism in 1974, the ethno-national liberation movements replaced the nobility as regional powers.
Following the demise of the Derg in 1991, ethno-nationalists conquered the center. What accounted for their rise was the failure of the centralization project, which was bent on bloody cultural homogenization. The failure to incorporate the periphery into the center had exacerbated a sense of alienation from society.
The rise of ethno-national movements in the last years of Emperor Haile Selassie I signaled the end only of the beginning, but the Derg’s fall changed the constitutional landscape for good.

A transitory triumph?

In July 1991, the National Conference on Peace and Reconciliation was held in Addis Ababa. Commenting on that year’s revolution, Christopher Clapham said it overturned the centralization commenced by Menelik II:
This project, which provided the theme for Haile Selassie’s long reign, was tested to self-destruction by a revolutionary regime which provoked a level of resistance that eventually culminated in the appearance of Tigrayan guerrillas on the streets of Addis Ababa—a dramatic reversal of the process which, over the previous century, had seen central armies moving out to incorporate and subdue the periphery.”
This conference, as was apparent from its composition, made it crystal clear that state restructuring henceforth would scrupulously follow ethnic concerns. This became reality when the right to self-determination, up to and including secession, made its way to the National Charter.
Furthermore, Proclamation No. 1/1992 delimited the boundaries of the self-governing ethnically based regions. The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, which came into being in 1995, formalized the division of the country into nine regional states “delimited on the basis of settlement patterns, identity, language and the consent of the people concerned”.
The Constitution provides for the unconditional right to self-determination for every nation, nationality, and people in Ethiopia who “have or share large measure of a common culture or similar customs, mutual intelligibility of language, belief in a common or related identities, a common psychological make-up, and who inhabit an identifiable, predominantly contiguous territory”.
In this manner, identity made its way to the forefront of Ethiopian politics. The rise of regional self-rule was largely due to a desire to establish democratic institutions which would guarantee the right of national self-determination. Since then democratization has been inextricably linked to the protection of the sovereignty of Ethiopia’s cultural communities.
As Andreas Eshete noted: “The history and identity of the protagonists that emerged in the wake of the victory over tyranny thus explains why ethnic federalism proved to be a decisive political instrument in Ethiopia’s transition to democracy.”
Inclusive party was needed to maintain cohesion
Far from allegations that this arrangement was crafted by college dropout cave-dwelling insurgents, it was an intellectually stimulating process. Eminent scholars delivered papers at a Symposium on the Making of the New Ethiopian Constitution in 1993. Andreas, drawing on his networks, invited world-renowned lawyers, historians, political scientists, Ethiopianists, Africanists, and philosophers, including, Joshua Cohen, C. Edwin Baker, and Elaine Scarry.
But the contribution by the revered political scientist Samuel Huntington was particularly interesting, insofar as it dealt with constitutional design. In his 1993 paper entitled, Political Development in Ethiopia: A Peasant-Based Dominant Party Democracy?, Huntington argued: “Ethnicity is likely to be central to Ethiopian political parties, elections, and politics generally. Attempts to suppress ethnic identifications or to prevent ethnic political appeals are not likely to be successful.”
Despite this recognition, Huntington shies away from asserting that it should be a first organizing principle: “Drawing regional boundaries along ethnic lines…supplements what is unavoidable with what is undesirable…The combination of ethnic territorial units and ethnic parties…cumulates cleavages and can have a disastrous effect on national unity and political stability.”
He noted a dilemma, saying that while it was undesirable to have ethnic groups represented in government, it was also undesirable to ban their formation. His suggestion was that an inclusive party was needed to maintain cohesion: “If a broad-based, ideological party exists which appeals across ethnic lines, then ethnic territorial lines can be tolerated.”
That was how it started, and for the next two and a half decades, barring the odd bump in the road, that was how it continued, as the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) applied centripetal force to an ethnically demarcated federation.

Borderline reckless 

The ascendancy of Abiy Ahmed as Prime Minister has effectively killed EPRDF as a grouping of four ethnonational parties. Doctrines have been discarded, the front’s rule demonized, an impressive economic record rubbished, and decision-making is no longer collective. Abiy’s next target seems to be the multinational federation itself, and he is starting where one should: by attempting to reconfigure the territorial boundaries of its constituent units without their consent by an unconstitutional means.
His method is the establishment of the Administrative Boundaries and Identity Issues Commission. Its creation seems to have been prompted by the Prime Minister’s apparent belief that demands for ethnic recognition and readjustment of regional borders are the source of communal strife. He acts as if he views multinational federalism as the cause of communal friction, not a key part of the remedy.
While some will point to his Commission’s merely advisory role, and others to the necessity for the federal government to act to ease inter-regional disputes causing carnage, its establishment is of dubious constitutionality, and it is a political monstrosity.
Trying to implement future recommendations of the Commission to modify borders would be not just the end of the Ethiopian federation as we know it, but a casus belli for an asymmetric war, and grounds for a unilateral declaration of secession. This is primarily because Tigray has made it clear that it will not cede an inch of the land to which Amhara has laid claim—and those territorial designs are widely presumed to be a key factor in the Commission’s establishment.
The intention of the new statute is as radical as the one that remapped the regional units in 1992. Tigray’s rejection is explicit. But given Amhara and Oromo interest in territory currently under Southern Nations, Somali, and Benishangul-Gumuz administration, Tigray will hardly be the only dissenter. The ruling parties of Ethiopia’s two most-populous regions are currently the nation’s most powerful political entities, after all.
But the trouble with the current process is not just its inflammatory political effect, it is also its dubious constitutionality. I do not normally see eye-to-eye with Tsegaye Ararsa on politics, but I do when he describes prime ministerial justifications for the Commission as an “argument from ignorance”.
Legislation usurps state councils’ powers
Internal boundaries separating the constituent parts of the federation are not just administrative. They are sovereign. Consistent with federalist theory, there is dual citizenship, sovereignty, and constitutionalism.
It is clear that the intention of the Commission is to provide a justification for the alteration of state borders. But regional boundary changes require a constitutional amendment. The Council of Ministers did not have the power to initiate legislation on matters that fall outside of its jurisdiction, nor did the House of People’s Representatives have the power to pass the bill. Only the House of Federation can propose to establish ad hoc or standing committees on matters falling within its remit.
This legislation usurps the powers of the State Councils, the Council of Constitutional Inquiry, and the House of Federation. There is nothing in the constitution prohibiting the upper house from commissioning studies if it needs an expert opinion. What parliament and cabinet did is cut corners. The legislation unconstitutionally confers power on the Commission to initiate constitutional amendments regarding internal boundaries and identities.
The power to hear and decide on disputes over ethnic identity vests, in the first instance, with the State Council concerned. However, the new proclamation divests those institutions of that power and hands it to the House of Federation via the Commission. In other words, the proclamation has in effect stripped State Councils of their constitutional jurisdiction over matters relating to identity.
The new statute also raises questions of standing. Normally, only regional states have standing to petition regarding its boundaries. But the statute strangely provides the Prime Minister, House of Federation, or House of People’s Representatives with standing to refer matters relating to identity and boundary disputes, on its motion or upon petition, to the Commission for investigation and recommendations. Last, but not least, it is troubling to discover that the Commission is accountable to the Prime Minister, rather than to the House of Federation.

The trouble with Mamdani’s federalism

The policy of undermining states’ rights did not begin with this bill. It started with the military intervention in Somali region, and was then pursued with shake-ups in Southern Nations, Gambella, Benishangul-Gumuz, and Afar. But when it comes to the more onerous task of subduing Tigray, the campaign began with prosecution of Tigrayan securocrats accused of human rights abuses. While they may well be guilty as sin, so presumably are their former colleagues that still occupy high office.
In a statement, Abiy suggested Tigray’s boundaries are no bar to federal intervention to arrest suspects. Coming a day after the controversial torture documentary, this marked a new low in Addis-Mekele relations. Combined with the bellicose posturing of Amhara over Wolkait and Raya, the situation is grave.
By seemingly siding with Amhara elites, Abiy is unnecessarily precipitating a crisis. Even if states concede the central government the duty to enforce federal laws within their territories, and even if the unconstitutional Commission has parliamentary approval, being willfully negligent of the current political context is still the height of irresponsibility.
That also goes for commentators, such as Mahmood Mamdani in the New York Times with his oped entitled The Trouble with Ethiopia’s Ethnic Federalism. He argues rightly that the reforms underway are clashing with the Constitution and could push the country towards interethnic conflict. But Mamdani is wrong to draw parallels with British colonial policy of indirect rule and the creation of Soviet-style ethnic homelands.
He mistakenly thinks the constitution has created permanent majorities and permanent minorities. Instead, the constitution vests all sovereignty in nations, nationalities and peoples, rather than in regions. What once was a majority in its homeland could become a minority, as the constitution allows for change. The reason why we are witnessing the mushrooming demands for statehood and recognition of identity is because of the layered character of the right to self-determination.
What Mamdani declines to acknowledge is that ethnicity is now a fact of public life and it cannot be legislated out of existence by reconfiguring the federation based on residency, as he suggests. Whether or not ethnicity was just a lie to start out with, it has turned out to be, after its nearly 30-year career shaping Ethiopian politics, the tie that binds; and therefore at least a noble lie.
Undoing what has been done peacefully would require the consent of the ethnic groups concerned. Why would they dispense with an advantage to embrace a disadvantage for the sake of administrative convenience? It is one thing to get the approval of the NYT editorial board for such a wheeze, it is quite another to bring on board Sidama nationalists on the verge of finally achieving statehood.

Federal government took over vast portions of land

Mamdani’s claim that by replicating the British colonial system, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) ‘Sovietized and Africanized’ Ethiopia looks like an extrapolation from his book on the Rwandan genocide. Mamdani, who touted that the Hutu and Tutsi are political and not cultural identities, transposes this onto Ethiopia’s ethnicities, viewing them as only colonial constructs; a convenient delusion shared by nostalgic elites at home and oversees.
Mamdani also overlooks the fact that some member states of the federation were de facto independent states long before the overthrow of the Derg. A clear case in point is Tigray. The NYT opinion section is not the first place he expressed his misgivings about Ethiopia’s federalism. He is expanding on a view pronounced in April 2012 at the Tana Forum in Bahir Dar on a panel themed Managing Diversity in response to Andreas Eshete’s introductory remarks. He was countered by none other than the late Meles Zenawi.
The trouble with Ethiopia’s federalism does not lie in its ethnic character, but in its praxis. It has functioned more unitarist than pluralist by virtue of EPRDF authoritarian hegemony. The challenge now is to democratize the federation, which means destabilizing the EPRDF while also ensuring the edifice the front held together does not implode.
Ethiopia’s federal experiment can be thought of in three phases. After factional warfare, Meles Zenawi admitted TPLF hegemony over the country in 2001 and removed its shadowy advisors from regions. As an alternative, he called upon the regional governments to improve their constitutions, so that, for example, chief administrators no longer chaired state legislatures.
The second phase ran to the 2005 elections, which saw an opening of the political space, allowing anti-federalist powers to challenge the fundamental tenets of the constitutional order. After the elections were disputed, Meles cracked down and gave up on the opposition. He then embarked on his own centralization project, as the EPRDF system was repurposed for national development.
The federal government took over vast portions of land in developing regions with little consideration for local concerns. But that wasn’t the EPRDF’s downfall. Instead the obsession with development, and sidelining of democracy, ran into Oromo sensitivities, as Addis’ de facto expansion into the surrounding region was clumsily mapped out by technocrats.
The status of Addis Ababa is of course a thorny issue. However, the constitutional position is clear. Despite the fact that Addis is located within Oromia, and that the region has a “special interest” in it, the city’s residents are entitled to self-rule. What is left to decide is what Oromia’s “special interest” amounts to in practical terms such as fiscal, cultural, and language rights.
Mamdani implies that land rights and jobs are handed out based on ethnicity. But it is fallacious to believe that because land belongs to the state, and the governing system has an ethnic component, that land is distributed according to ethnicity. The constitution guarantees freedom of movement, choice of residence, and work anywhere within the federation, irrespective of ethnic affiliation. That goes for land rights too.

Brinkmanship

Of course, improvements are needed. Afaan Oromo should become the second working language of the federal government, and there is also a need for ethnic federalists to confront the problems caused by the absence of a lingua franca. In summary, the aim now must be to make multinational federalism a more potent instrument for the accommodation of ethnic and religious diversity. The promised democratization is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition, unless the ethnic bargaining on display in Kenya or Nigeria is considered a model to follow. What is needed is not less, but more federalism.
One mechanism under consideration appears to be a constitutional court, which would include all the presidents of the sub-federal supreme courts. This could ease political tensions by removing the responsibility for ruling on identity issues away from community representatives in the House of Federation. Yet this court should not be vested with jurisdiction over inter-regional territorial disputes. That should be left to the upper house.
But instead of carefully considering such delicate reforms, Ethiopia is now at another moment of constitutional crisis. The challenge of keeping the union intact seems even more acute now than in 1991. Political opposition decriminalized by Abiy openly disparage the federal system, while in the north Amhara and Tigray face off.
Across the land a breakdown of the party-state apparatus seems to have led to multiple instances of political aggression, which tear at the nation’s fabric. To muddy the waters further, the Southern Nations seem intent on taking the constitution at its word, as multiple constituent units push for statehood, to the detriment of EPRDF cohesion.
An anarchic predicament partly stems from an ideological as well as security vacuum, as Abiy panders to both Oromo and pan-Ethiopian nationalism, in the process browbeating the ruling front he chairs. More than ever, the federation needs a leader to steer it through this dark hour. But instead a centralizing liberal demagogue has risen on a leftist ethnofederalist platform.
Reform doesn’t call for a Messiah
However, despite the democratic facade, the Prime Minister’s appearances in military uniform are indicative of an enchantment with autocracy, as is the creation of his own commando unit. (Showing off their martial moves in t-shirts with his image, no less. I hope Vladimir is taking notes.) Meanwhile, Abiy’s occasional musings on the Ethiopian limits to freedom of expression suggest a paperthin commitment to liberal democracy.
What is complicating Ethiopia’s predicament is not just a burgeoning personality cult amid myriad structural challenges, but also Abiy’s lack of ideological commitment. Like Perfume’s Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, he displays an extraordinary passion and obsession with something that people love, but he essentially lacks. Grenouille loves scents, which led him to become a parfumier extraordinaire. But he discovered, to his own shock, that he himself doesn’t have a personal scent. Abiy, the politician, despite his penchant for obliterating everything the old EPRDF stood for, does not smell like a liberal.
Needed now is not hero-worship of a supposedly perfect leader, but perfecting the federation, which can only be achieved by grinding civic discourse aimed at reaching a compromise among all stakeholders, as occurred two decades ago. The constitution isn’t the Quran. The amendment clause is there. Reform doesn’t call for a Messiah or a prophet to reckon with. Nor even the philosopher-king. All it takes is a leader keen to listen and learn, not impose his vaguely conceived view of the good life on a divided polity.
But instead, in Abiy’s wake, to the dismay of those who sweated blood and tears for the constitution, a cohort of openly anti-federalist personalities, such as Major Dawit Woldegiorgis, parade their conceited ignorance in Addis Ababa. Apparently oblivious of how fundamentally the political landscape has changed, they demand that Abiy dissolve parliament, suspend the constitution, and disarm the regions, forgetting that the federation was forged by such forces.
Despite the opportunity for this noise-making in the cosmopolitan capital arising only because of the resurgence of Oromo and the emergence of Amhara nationalism, the anti-federalists—along with well-meaning but remote African thinkers—somehow do not realize that history and theory have together taken a different course since 1991, and that there is no hope whatsoever of peacefully reversing that direction.

Epilogue

Günter Grass
The Epilogue
Already righteous indignation has found its tailor.
Sunday irons out the everyday annoyance.
Oh, with the soup, impotent rage went up in steam.
     Exhausted and tamed we gently sit around the table.
     Little gains delight Father; worries keep us short,
     for in our household point after point is put to the vote.
So falling sickness makes us fall into impotence.
Still protests are taken into consideration
and —on demand—are mentioned in the minutes.
     There is a motion for a restraining clause:
       Never again shall we protest without power.
Voiceless, because unable to constitute a quorum,
we adjourn until tomorrow.