tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7838585313381817332024-02-20T05:37:23.114-05:00Rasselas ReviewAlemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.comBlogger146125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-11894670540157323392019-07-29T05:37:00.003-04:002019-07-29T05:37:29.807-04:00Elections in End Times<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="updated" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">July 24, 2019 </span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">by<span class="vcard author" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span class="fn" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a data-wpel-link="internal" href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/author/alemayehu-weldemariam/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; display: inline-block; font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.29; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">Alemayehu Weldemariam</a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">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…</span></div>
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Clifford Geertz, Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">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.</span></div>
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Jeremy Adelman, Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman</div>
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<span class="mks_dropcap_letter" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-family: "libre baskerville"; font-size: 52px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">W</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "libre baskerville";">ithin a few hours on June 22, Ethiopia was </span><a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/04/abiy-ahmeds-reforms-have-unleashed-forces-he-can-no-longer-control-ethiopia-amhara-asaminew-adp-adfm/?fbclid=IwAR3a-IC_NZj0azZKWHdIVhZ2kdV3T1fF3ZVcqOcu5L_YTo7_MkICSV70mZg" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; font-family: "Libre Baskerville"; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">rocked</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "libre baskerville";"> by the assassinations of regional leaders and federal military officers in Bahir Dar and Addis Ababa.</span><br />
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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So, whither Abiy’s pledge to hold for transformative elections in 10 months’ time?</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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Another factor in Ethiopia’s current conundrum is the <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKCN1TB1PN-OZATP" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">delayed</a> 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 <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Ethiopian_general_election" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">1995</a>, 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.</div>
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Also around two months ago, celebrated American public intellectual Francis Fukuyama <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://addisfortune.news/news-alert/fukuyama-gives-public-lecture-in-addis/" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">visit</a>ed 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 <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.amazon.com/End-History-Last-Man/dp/0743284550" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">The End of History and the Last Man</a>, 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 <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Reading-Hegel-Lectures-Phenomenology/dp/0801492033" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit</a> to the English-speaking world.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EPRDF sought legitimacy through development</span></div>
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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.</div>
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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, <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/588987/ill-winds-by-larry-diamond/9780525560623/" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Ill Winds</a>, 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 “<a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/facing-up-to-the-democratic-recession/" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Facing Up to the Democratic Recession</a>”, 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.</div>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/elections-in-hard-times/7887C5171FD47F49D3260C3C99506495" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Elections in Hard Times</a> 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.”</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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From a strategic perspective, the 100 percent victory, as Terrence Lyons and Leonardo Arriola rightly <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Arriola-27-1.pdf" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">observed</a>, 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed with Tigray’s leader Debretsion Gebremichael; June 11 Aksum; PMO</div>
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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”.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed with Francis Fukuyama; June 11; PMO</div>
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As well as avoiding catastrophe arguments, there are also escaping poverty reasons for sticking to the schedule.</div>
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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?</div>
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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.”</div>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="internal" href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Legal_Pluralism_in_Light_of_the_Federal_20170111-29201-f5uhl9.pdf" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">argued</a>elsewhere. 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Practical idealism must be upheld with a vote</span></div>
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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?</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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However, they should not be carried out posthaste to satisfy the demands of the Bretton Woods institutions.</div>
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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.</div>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="internal" href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2019/06/10/from-meles-dead-end-to-abiys-new-horizon/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">New Horizon</a>, 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-65089117916262146072019-07-29T05:35:00.001-04:002019-07-29T05:35:07.117-04:00Raya: a category error, and a catalog of errors<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="updated" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">March 24, 2019 </span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">by<span class="vcard author" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span class="fn" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a data-wpel-link="internal" href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/author/alemayehu-weldemariam/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; display: inline-block; font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.29; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">Alemayehu Weldemariam</a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The people of Raya in northern Ethiopia have diverse origins and so defy simple categorizations. A</span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> more accommodating federation and responsive politics would help resolve their </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">disputed administrative status.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it”— </span>Karl Marx</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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?</div>
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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.</div>
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Put into a simple syllogism, such activists argue:</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Raya is Wollo</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wollo is Amhara</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">_______________________</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Therefore Raya is Amhara</span></div>
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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.</div>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="internal" href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2018/10/28/after-eritrea-thaw-tigrays-southern-border-with-amhara-heats-up/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">flared</a> dangerously in recent months, goes deeper when we realize that ‘the Raya’ are latecomers to the area.</div>
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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?</div>
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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.</div>
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Assimilation</h4>
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Historian Bahru Zewde <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Modern-Ethiopia-1855-1991-Eastern/dp/0821414402" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">traces</a> 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.”</div>
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And while war over the <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://hornaffairs.com/2011/08/17/text-of-wuchale-treaty-1989-ethio-italian-treaty/" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Treaty of Wuchale</a> 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 <a data-wpel-link="internal" href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2019/02/22/the-rayan-people-want-an-end-to-rule-by-tigray/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">identity claim</a> 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?</div>
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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.</div>
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A 1976 Central Statistical Office E.C language map published in National Atlas of Ethiopia 1988</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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Commenting on the demography of the population south of River Mereb, Merid Wolde Aregay, another historian, <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.308149/" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">writes</a> 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wolde Sellassie harnessed anti-Oromo prejudice</span></div>
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Mohammed Hassen describes the Doba as “peaceful nomads and fine fighters” that were attacked by Oromo. He wrote in <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/29226/1/10731321.pdf" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">The Oromo of Ethiopia</a> 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.</div>
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<a data-wpel-link="external" href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.374.313&rep=rep1&type=pdf" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Harold Marcus details</a> 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.”</div>
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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.</div>
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Contestation</h4>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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<img alt="" class="wp-image-34858 alignleft" height="283" sizes="(max-width: 306px) 100vw, 306px" src="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Northern-Ethiopia-old-1-300x278.jpg" srcset="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Northern-Ethiopia-old-1-300x278.jpg 300w, https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Northern-Ethiopia-old-1-150x139.jpg 150w, https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Northern-Ethiopia-old-1.jpg 488w" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; float: left; height: auto; margin-right: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="306" /><img alt="" class="wp-image-34857 alignright" height="279" sizes="(max-width: 345px) 100vw, 345px" src="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Northern-Ethiopia-new-1-300x243.jpg" srcset="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Northern-Ethiopia-new-1-300x243.jpg 300w, https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Northern-Ethiopia-new-1-150x122.jpg 150w, https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Northern-Ethiopia-new-1.jpg 439w" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; float: right; height: auto; margin-left: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="345" /></div>
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<img alt="" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41591" class="wp-image-41591 size-full" height="600" sizes="(max-width: 850px) 100vw, 850px" src="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Geographical-map-of-study-districts-and-kebelles-in-South-and-Southeastern-zones-of.png" srcset="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Geographical-map-of-study-districts-and-kebelles-in-South-and-Southeastern-zones-of.png 850w, https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Geographical-map-of-study-districts-and-kebelles-in-South-and-Southeastern-zones-of-150x106.png 150w, https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Geographical-map-of-study-districts-and-kebelles-in-South-and-Southeastern-zones-of-300x212.png 300w, https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Geographical-map-of-study-districts-and-kebelles-in-South-and-Southeastern-zones-of-768x542.png 768w" style="border: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: 730px;" width="850" /><br />
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Districts and kebeles in South and Southeastern zones of Tigray region, 2016. <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0006288.g001" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Source</a></div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="internal" href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2018/12/16/violent-qemant-dispute-fueling-explosive-amhara-tigray-divide/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">today’s Amhara nationalists</a>, who claim territory from four other regions, and wildly <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://welkait.com/?p=12201" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">describe</a> TPLF rule as fascist.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">TPLF has an inability to learn from its past</span></div>
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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.</div>
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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?</div>
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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.</div>
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Accommodation</h4>
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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.</div>
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TPLF support in Tigray right now is <a data-wpel-link="internal" href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2019/01/17/is-tigray-really-a-drop-in-the-bucket-for-abiys-administration/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">rooted</a> 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Eventually we will all meld into Ethiopians</span></div>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/node/3575" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">long-planned national identity cards</a>, 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="internal" href="http://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Legal_Pluralism_in_Light_of_the_Federal_20170111-29201-f5uhl9.pdf" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">designed</a> 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.</div>
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Now would be an opportune moment for all of us to recall both our common past and our dreams of a collective future.</div>
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Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-53592060193142650002019-07-29T05:33:00.000-04:002019-07-29T05:33:01.047-04:00Ethiopia’s federation needs reviving, not reconfiguring<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="updated" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">January 10, 2019</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">by<span class="vcard author" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span class="fn" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a data-wpel-link="internal" href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/author/alemayehu-weldemariam/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; display: inline-block; font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.29; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">Alemayehu Weldemariam</a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">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. </span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“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</span></div>
<span class="mks_dropcap_letter" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-family: "Libre Baskerville"; font-size: 52px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">H</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Libre Baskerville"; font-size: 16px;">istory 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.</span><br />
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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What the 1995 <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/et/et007en.pdf" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">constitution</a> 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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:</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“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.”</span></div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A transitory triumph?</span></h4>
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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:</div>
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“<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">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.”</span></div>
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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.</div>
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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”.</div>
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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”.</div>
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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.</div>
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As <a data-wpel-link="external" href="http://fletcher.tufts.edu/InclusionInc/Events/Inclusive-City/Bios/Andreas-Eshete" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Andreas Eshete</a> 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.”</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Inclusive party was needed to maintain cohesion</span></div>
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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.</div>
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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, <a data-wpel-link="internal" href="http://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Huntington-A-Peasant-Based-Dominant-Party-Democracy.pdf" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Political Development in Ethiopia: A Peasant-Based Dominant Party Democracy?</a>, 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.”</div>
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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.”</div>
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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.”</div>
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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.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Borderline reckless </span></h4>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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While some will point to his Commission’s merely advisory role, and <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://addisstandard.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Special-Edition-in-PDF-By-Tilahun-.pdf" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">others</a> 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="external" href="http://www.gudumaale.com/Articles/tsegayeAjhujku.html" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">describes</a> prime ministerial justifications for the Commission as an “argument from ignorance”.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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This <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://chilot.me/2018/12/administrative-boundaries-and-identity-issues-commission-establishment-draft-proclamation/" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">legislation</a> 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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In a <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.facebook.com/157746334716558/posts/507873306370524/" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">statement</a>, 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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That also goes for commentators, such as Mahmood Mamdani in the New York Times with his <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/opinion/ethiopia-abiy-ahmed-reforms-ethnic-conflict-ethnic-federalism.html" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">oped</a> 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.</div>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="internal" href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2018/11/28/as-southern-nations-break-free-pressure-mounts-on-eprdf/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">mushrooming demands for statehood</a> and recognition of identity is because of the layered character of the right to self-determination.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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Federal government took over vast portions of land</h4>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://books.google.be/books/about/When_Victims_Become_Killers.html?id=QUEamxb89JcC&redir_esc=y" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">book</a> 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.</div>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="external" href="http://www.ipss-addis.org/y-file-store//2012_tana_forum_report_final.pdf" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Tana Forum</a> 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="external" href="http://www.irinnews.org/report/19575/ethiopia-government-moves-dissident-group" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">removed</a> 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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 “<a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://chilot.me/2018/01/draft-proclamation-determine-special-interest-state-oromia-addis-ababa-city/" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">special interest</a>” amounts to in practical terms such as fiscal, cultural, and language rights.</div>
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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.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Brinkmanship</span></h4>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="internal" href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2018/10/28/after-eritrea-thaw-tigrays-southern-border-with-amhara-heats-up/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Amhara and Tigray face off</a>.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Reform doesn’t call for a Messiah</span></div>
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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.</div>
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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 <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfume_(novel)" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Perfume’s</a> 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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, <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://youtu.be/ArjgcrpsT5k" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">parade</a> 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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Epilogue</h4>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Günter Grass</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Epilogue</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Already righteous indignation has found its tailor.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sunday irons out the everyday annoyance.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Oh, with the soup, impotent rage went up in steam.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Exhausted and tamed we gently sit around the table.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Little gains delight Father; worries keep us short,</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> for in our household point after point is put to the vote.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So falling sickness makes us fall into impotence.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Still protests are taken into consideration</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and —on demand—are mentioned in the minutes.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> There is a motion for a restraining clause:</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Never again shall we protest without power.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Voiceless, because unable to constitute a quorum,</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">we adjourn until tomorrow.</span></div>
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Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-15142279965691514782019-07-29T05:29:00.002-04:002019-07-29T05:29:43.691-04:00Domestic despair shadows Abiy’s diplomatic waltz<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"><span class="vcard author" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="fn" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/author/alemayehu-weldemariam/">Alemayehu Weldemariam</a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"><span class="vcard author" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="fn" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">September 18, 2018</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As Abiy Ahmed embraces the region to Isaias Afewerki’s gain, Ethiopia’s internal strife continues. A domestic focus is urgently needed to reinforce a fragile federation, writes Alemayehu Weldemariam</span></h6>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="mks_dropcap_letter" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-size: 52px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I</span>n my previous </span><a data-wpel-link="internal" href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2018/08/01/riding-the-wave-of-populism/" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">piece</a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, I attempted to offer, far from the madding crowd, a sober assessment of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s first 100 days in office, which rendered the public euphoric. </span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There had been the Eritrea detente, political amnesties, and the shuttering of a torture chamber. But also </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">more mass displacement from conflict, and</span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> anarchy in parts of Oromia.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Since then, amid pledges to institute the rule of law, a man rumored to have been carrying explosives was <a data-wpel-link="external" href="http://www.africanews.com/2018/08/14/ethiopian-activists-condemn-mob-action-violence-during-rally-in-oromia//" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">hung</a> from a lamppost at a rally for Jawar Mohammed’s return, Somali Liyu police massacred 41 Oromo in Eastern Hararghe, and a Tigrayan suspected of arson was <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.ethiopianreporter.com/article/12721" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">stoned to death</a> in Bure, Amhara. Tigrayans were also victims of mob killings elsewhere.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Also of concern, Semegnew Bekele, the revered project manager of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, died from a gunshot wound in his car at Meskel Square. That has been ruled suicide, but doubts persist.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To crown the horror, in the past few days, Ethiopians suffered the killings of non-Oromo residents on the periphery of Addis Ababa.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I previously highlighted the risk that despite his romantic rhetoric, the Prime Minister’s methods were undermining the political system that ties Ethiopia’s federation together, so risking spiraling ethnic violence, and, ultimately, disintegration. I suggested he would come face-to-face with this challenge when the euphoria subsides and his honeymoon ends. Well, it has now ended.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He is constrained, as he does not want to antagonize the Qeerroo</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Speaking of the protests that swept the country in 2015, Getachew Reda, then government spokesman, observed, “he who summons demons cannot be sure if he has control over them. Likewise, the people they have unleashed now aren’t sure they have control over the demons they themselves have summoned.”</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As lawlessness spreads, these often <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.tesfanews.net/getachew-reda-exorcist-opens-his-big-mouth/" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">misleadingly paraphrased</a> remarks are now looking prophetic. Accordingly, some of the optimism surrounding Abiy has dissipated, as Ethiopians’ moral sensibilities are offended by the macabre chaos.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The premier had shown signs of getting to grips with the crisis by emphasizing that the government has a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence. He has also conducted an overdue press conference, although it left much to be desired, as he failed to offer fulsome answers to the questions that the public care about most. After the Addis carnage, he must go live on EBC to defuse tensions, and also try and redress the harm done by his urging for neighborhood watchfulness, which may have contributed to vigilante violence.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">However, he is constrained, as he does not want to antagonize the Qeerroo, the Oromo youth network that helped catapult him to power. Such reticence may even have slowed the police response to this weekend’s murderous rampage around Burayu.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Abiy’s dilemma is illustrated best by the even starker predicament facing activists such as Jawar: he does not trust Team Lemma, so he cannot let Qeerroo go. While Jawar apparently wants a strong government that can administer fair elections, he also wants people power. “We have two governments in Ethiopia: Abiy’s government and Qeerroo’s government,” he <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_84sTJZJg4" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">told</a> Nahoo TV. Well, you had better choose one then, Jawar, unless, of course, your model is post-Gaddafi Libya.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Shuffle diplomacy</span></h5>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the diplomatic arena, there are misplaced priorities amid headline-grabbing moves. Fittingly, as Addis burned this weekend, Abiy jetted off to Jeddah.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It was puzzling that Abiy was slow to encourage a people-to-people approach to the normalization of relations with Eritrea until the New Year. At last, Abiy and Isaias made good on New Year’s day by attending the openings in Bure and Zalambesa with mingling soldiers and jubilant communities.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">These events helped build his rapport with Tigray. Soon after, Adigrat and Mekele were flooded by Eritreans who came to shop. However, since these transactions are taking place at a Birr-Nakfa parity, there is a pressing need for institutionalization. After all, it was trade disputes that led to the outbreak of war in the first place.</span></div>
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<img alt="" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1077" class="wp-image-1077 " height="528" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" src="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/PM-Abiy-Ahmed-Isaias-Afwerki-Drink-in-Asmara-Eritrea-1-300x193.jpg" srcset="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/PM-Abiy-Ahmed-Isaias-Afwerki-Drink-in-Asmara-Eritrea-1-300x193.jpg 300w, https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/PM-Abiy-Ahmed-Isaias-Afwerki-Drink-in-Asmara-Eritrea-1-150x97.jpg 150w, https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/PM-Abiy-Ahmed-Isaias-Afwerki-Drink-in-Asmara-Eritrea-1-768x494.jpg 768w, https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/PM-Abiy-Ahmed-Isaias-Afwerki-Drink-in-Asmara-Eritrea-1-1024x659.jpg 1024w, https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/PM-Abiy-Ahmed-Isaias-Afwerki-Drink-in-Asmara-Eritrea-1.jpg 1200w" style="border: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: 730px;" width="820" /><br />
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Abiy Ahmed and Isaias Afewerki toast their friendship in Asmara, photo from Eritrean Government</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is sometimes claimed: “good fences make good neighbours”. Citing poet Robert Frost, I think it would be wise to ask at this juncture:</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“</span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">Why </span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it</span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.</span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Before I built a wall I’d ask to know</span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What I was walling in or walling out,</span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And to whom I was like to give offence.</span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,</span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">That wants it down.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The question of border demarcation would be irrelevant if there was mutual trust, or, in the words of Abiy, “a bridge of love”. Yet, despite such tidings, the devil is still in the detail. And the detail is still vague. What exactly is the letter and spirit, the text and subtext, of the peace deal? How does it resolve differences that led to war in 1998, such as exchange rates and tariffs? </span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Despite the progress, there are still fears that Abiy and Isaias seek to exclude Tigray. Kjetil Tronvoll, a veteran observer, <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10212088859757458&id=1253796686" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">sees</a> first the Oromo-Amhara alliance and now Isaias’ overtures to Bahir Dar as a classic case of regional realignment of allegiances; in this case, with the aim of encircling Tigray. And as <a data-wpel-link="external" href="http://www.africanidea.org/The-future-of-ethiopia_development.pdf" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">documented</a> by Alex de Waal, the late Meles Zenawi saw much of this coming: “Isaias … cannot forgive the Weyane for defeating his unconquerable army and so he is looking to punish them. One way he would like to do this is to dismantle Ethiopia, which is proving a lot more difficult than he thought. The other strategy is to hang on until he can find enough Ethiopians who can also demonize the Weyane.”</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If Ethiopia’s long-term Eritrea game plan is murky, it has at least become clear that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia brokered the peace. De Waal joins the chorus arguing that Abiy’s priorities are also those of the U.S. and its Gulf allies, who sweetened the Eritrea deal for Abiy with lashings of petrodollars. Abiy seems to have decided to side with the Sunni monarchs, despite Ethiopia having steered clear of the Middle East’s toxic intra-Islamic schism.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Furthermore, Abiy’s diplomacy’s primary effect so far has been emboldening regional enfant terrible, Isaias, now recast as statesman. Coming out of self-imposed isolationism, Eritrean diplomacy is on steroids, zipping across the Horn of Africa, the Gulf, and beyond, while hosting leaders at home, as it strives to get sanctions removed.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We should all be wondering what is really going on in the Horn</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Foreign Minister Osman Saleh met with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart, who <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://qz.com/africa/1377434/russias-sergey-lavrov-confirms-plans-for-logistics-base-in-eritrea/" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">pledged</a> a logistics port, oil pipeline and a refinery, while thanking Eritrea “for the close coordination of our approaches at the UN and other international venues, where our positions are identical or very close.”</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There has also been an end to enmity between Eritrea and Djibouti, so the next step in this dizzying waltz looks set to be the removal of sanction against Asmara. Isaias looks to have rendered Ethiopia, whose stellar diplomatic corps are <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.ethiopiaobserver.com/2018/07/23/berhane-gebrekristos-recall-from-china-reportedly-followed-criticism-of-abiys-approach/" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">caught up</a> in a distracting transition, irrelevant. </span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Isaias and Abiy, who just met again in Jeddah, say rapprochement will be a catalyst for positive regional relations, but Isaias looks set to try and reshape IGAD, even as Eritrea is readmitted to it. And the role of Cairo and trends in hydro politics are worrisome, especially given Abiy’s undermining of the Renaissance dam.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We should all be wondering what is really going on in the Horn, as Cairo’s spy chief makes Addis a regular stop-off. Surely we are not being cynical to imagine that it involves more than peace, love, and open borders. To imagine that would be to buy into the beneficent motivations of Field Marshal</span><a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdel_Fattah_el-Sisi" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"> <span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Abdel Fattah el-Sisi</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and President Isaias Afewerki. After all, Asmara’s autocrat is not John Lennon. Although perhaps Abiy thinks he is.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Domestic rift</span></h5>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In addition to the need for urgent domestic fire-fighting and savvier regional strategizing, there is also the never-ending never easy business of politics. Which just got trickier as Oromo nationalism slammed up against Ethiopianism in AddisFinnee.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Leaving the opposition to taunt each for a moment, Abiy needs to bring the EPRDF parties together, along with the affiliates, to forge a new arrangement. He can ill-afford for the ruling coalition to divide further into rival factions all because he is focused on making life comfortable for their opponents.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A key arena will obviously be the 2020 elections. Abiy’s OPDO faces a struggle for the Oromo vote, especially while he preaches a rehashed national unity. The run-up to the elections is likely to get uglier, unless Abiy empowers the security apparatus to enforce law and order. But coercing liberated people into competing peacefully for power without triggering a backlash is a conundrum that has flummoxed many aspiring statesmen. Managing the disparate ideologies and interests will require unusual foresight and wisdom.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Of course, in contemporary Ethiopia it is not just a nascent democratic system that has to be tenderly but forcefully nurtured, it is also its stunted federation. We have heard a lot about togetherness from Abiy, but is it unity in diversity, or the start of another suppressive homogenization?</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In 1994, <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_O._Hirschman" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Albert O. Hirschman</a>, asked “How much community spirit does a society require?” To put it crudely, too much gives us Mussolini’s Italy, or the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia. So, how much </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">andinet </span></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">does Ethiopia’s political, religious, and ethnic diversity require? The Derg didn’t survive its radical mottos of “</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ethiopia Tikdem</span></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">”. The question now is whether Abiy Ahmed’s, </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">medemer</span></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, will provide the foundation for a functioning political community that accommodates diversity.</span></div>
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Supporters welcome the OLF, Sep 15, Addis Ababa, Petterik Wiggers</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As I have opined, Ethiopia will continue to struggle under its burdens from yesteryear. There are reasons of history as well as theory that prompted the emergence of ethnic federalism. The nationality question, and the ethno-national movements that oversaw the drafting and adoption of the constitution, are alive and well. Any thinking that ethnic federalism can be amended away is at best wishful. If Abiy makes imprudent attempts to reform the federation, it is a recipe for disintegration.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thus far, his actions in this arena have been clumsy exercises of central power.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hirschman, in his most famous work, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, develops a theory of loyalty as the key factor in the interaction between voice and exit. Loyalty can postpone exit, while voice is more effective with the possibility of exit. The theory is helpful in thinking about the relationship between the Ethiopian federation and its states.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When regions have a credible exit threat, and federations are dependent on their member states, federations are less likely to take action that member states object to. This, roughly, is the rationale behind the self-determination right enshrined in Article 39. This leaves three options for all major players: loyalty to the constitution, voice opposition, or exit via secession.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet the Abiy-led federal government does not seem to be paying heed to exit threats emanating from Somali and Tigray.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the case of Somali, Abiy used federal troops, in blatant disregard of the constitution, to remove <a data-wpel-link="external" href="http://www.theafricareport.com/East-Horn-Africa/ethiopia-the-somali-strongman.html" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">brutish</a> Chief Administrator Abdi Mohammed Omer. The relationship between the federal government and Tigray is also tenuous, exemplified by the sidelining of the region during the Eritrea normalization, and in the detention of a group of Federal Police that tried to enter Tigray without consent.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The relationship between the federal government and Tigray is also tenuous</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Although rightfully condemned by Abiy for their authoritarian methods, the EPRDF’s previous leaders have also, at times, used force judiciously, and, above all, for sound reasons: to maintain law and order, defend the nation, and disrupt anti-constitutional activity that threatened the federation.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Abiy and his activist vanguard have quickly discovered that they also have to ruthlessly apply the power of the federal government to manage Ethiopia. But up until the present moment, it is by no means clear what vision of the Ethiopian state it is that they are forcefully trying to secure.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The irony of Ethiopian politics today is that the Prime Minister is visiting Saudi, while Ethiopians are massacring each other on the outskirts of our capital. Our air force is <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://apnews.com/82277815f2924e5c97ea1c471c95a61a" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">bombing</a> Al Shabaab in Somalia, while our security apparatus is in feckless turmoil at home.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Since our gravest national threats are domestic, if he hopes to become a great Ethiopian statesman, the Prime Minister is best-advised to look inwards at the horror, rather than reach outwards to acclaim.</span></div>
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Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-14244215169643177152019-07-29T05:23:00.001-04:002019-07-29T05:23:14.889-04:00Ethiopia’s Charismatic Leader: Riding the Wave of Populism or Reforming Ethnic Federalism?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><a href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/author/alemayehu-weldemariam/">Alemayehu Weldemariam</a></b></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“But even regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimised — the question involuntarily arises — to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.” </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">GWF Hegel</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“The boundary at which the past has to be forgotten if it is not to become the gravedigger of the present, one would have to know exactly how great the plastic power of a man, a people, a culture is: I mean by plastic power the capacity to develop out of oneself in one’s own way, to transform and incorporate into oneself what is past and foreign, to heal wounds, to replace what has been lost, to recreate broken moulds.” </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Friedrich Nietzsche</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Since it is one that can have no end till experience itself comes to an end, the task of democracy is forever that of creation of a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute.” </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">John Dewey</span></div>
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The rise of Abiy Ahmed Ali, the new chairperson of the Oromo wing of the EPRDF, to become the third Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia took many by surprise. His rapid ascendance can be attributed largely to accident, rather than design, as seen by a competitive party election and the unpredictable path to Abiy’s candidacy.</div>
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When it became probable, following three years of chaotic protests, that the next leader was going to come from the Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation (OPDO), it dawned on Lemma Megersa, then the popular chair of that party, the need to hand his position to Abiy. At that time the future PM was head of the OPDO secretariat and, crucially, a member of the House of People’s Representatives, which Lemma was not, ruling him ineligible for the premiership. Few had predicted Lemma’s selfless strategic move, but without it Abiy’s rise would not have occurred.</div>
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The rest, as they say, is history; albeit a history facilitated by Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen’s last-minute withdrawal from the EPRDF chairperson election.</div>
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At his inauguration, Abiy then delivered an electrifying speech at parliament that spoke to all sections of the Ethiopian polity. Although mere rhetoric, it went a long way in healing the body and soul of a fractured and feverish polity. On the hill of that historic address, Abiy set out on trips to Jigjiga, Ambo, Mekele, Gondar, Hawassa, and most recently Semera, giving motivational speeches on the theme of love and unity. These were laudable attempts to build bridges between Ethiopians and the national-regional divide, thereby easing tensions. With his trademark talk of love and integration, coupled with his charismatic persona, he has not only become the rock star of Ethiopian politics, but also a messianic figure.</div>
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The logic of the politics of hatred in Ethiopia is such that “ressentiment” and “historicism” feed each other, resulting in a vicious cycle of social conflict.</div>
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Abiy’s grand appearance on the Ethiopian political scene has to be seen against the backdrop of 27 years of ethnic politics that has seen the rise of autonomy but also enhanced competition. It’s no surprise he has found a receptive audience for his aspirations to transform communal relations and counter the prevailing problem of what Max Scheler calls “ressentiment,” Nietzsche’s “historicism”, or Hegel’s problem of “the slaughter-bench of history.”</div>
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We Ethiopians indulge excessively in “<a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">ressentiment</a>”, “historicism”, and counting the number of people of one’s ethnic group killed on the “slaughter-bench of history”. As a result of which, we suffer a great deal. The logic of the politics of hatred in Ethiopia is such that “ressentiment” and “historicism” feed each other, resulting in a vicious cycle of social conflict. Abiy appeared at a time when Ethiopians were desperate enough for someone who would break this vicious cycle and imbue social hope.</div>
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Many analysts attempt to frame their questions regarding the circumstances that led to the rise of the new PM and his subsequent actions in terms of whether it is a rivalry between an emerging, young cadre of politicians of liberal democratic persuasion, and an old guard of elites towing the official revolutionary democratic line. However, arguably it is not so much a competition between revolutionary democracy and liberal democracy as it is the outcome of an opportunistic populist jockeying for power on a democratizing platform.</div>
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In what follows, I wish—albeit his instant popularity renders it difficult—to assess the scorecard of Abiy’s short tenure, to offer a sober analysis of his first 100 days in office, and the promises and perils of his reform agenda. By engaging in critical scrutiny, I hope to contribute to mitigating the risks of passing off showmanship as statesmanship.</div>
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Impressive scorecard</h6>
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The scorecard of his first 100 days is indeed impressive. He has done a great job pardoning and releasing a multitude of domestic prisoners, securing the release of compatriots from foreign jails, setting in motion a wholesale amnesty law, closing the notorious torture chamber Maekelawi, lifting a state of emergency, exposing systematic human-rights abuses (particularly, the use of torture in federal detention facilities, as revealed on the state broadcaster), proactive regional diplomacy, opening peace talks with Eritrea, suggesting limiting his own tenure, and, above all, delivering compelling speeches, which were not only received warmly by the public, but have also rendered it literally euphoric.</div>
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First, it should be noted that not all of these initiatives are novel, as some are carried over from his predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn. Going by his word and deed, Abiy seems to have high political ambitions. He appears to be hellbent on radically reforming the federal system, but that is a daunting task, which is impossible to achieve peacefully without the support of the ruling coalition and allied parties. This is because radically reforming the federation requires not just constitutional amendments, but a thorough constitutional review where the stances of all political and non-political participants are considered from the grassroots up.</div>
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Such reform is fraught with peril and Abiy needs to be cognizant of the risks. The reform conundrum facing federations is how to democratize without risking disintegration. If you set out on that treacherous course by attacking the EPRDF, the elephant that carries the federation on its back, you risk disintegration. The problem is particularly acute for ethnic systems, so, it would be wise to err on the side of caution.</div>
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Another test of Abiy’s statesmanship will come when dealing with the consequences of his liberalizing acts, which have included welcoming parties previously designated as terrorist organizations. Now, all factions of the OLF, Patriotic Ginbot-7, and the so-called loyal oppositionists, old and new, are invited to operate in the politics of the homeland.</div>
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Abiy’s Herculean task is managing these disparate interests and ideologies.</div>
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Abiy’s Herculean task is managing these disparate interests and ideologies. In the absence of any guiding principles, I am not surprised that the ONLF has, days after its commander Abdikarim Muse Qalbi Dhagah was freed, renewed its promise to disrupt oil and gas extraction in Ethiopia’s Somali region.</div>
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So far, the PM has not detailed in concrete terms his vision of the country’s political future. We do not know whether his aspirations are for Ethiopia to become a liberal democracy or to stay the course with his party’s revolutionary democracy. This will be important when he comes face-to-face with real challenges after the euphoria subsides. When there are no more prisoners to release, the people will want to see how the promises of radical democratic change—namely, political pluralism, an independent judiciary, and de-securitization of ethnic relations—are to be translated into reality.</div>
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The problem with his talk of love and unity—which I’d rather render into familiar political vocabulary as “fraternity and solidarity”—is the lack of clarity on how to translate it into reality. How does he want to operationalize such ideals within the constitutional framework? Or how does he want such ideals to guide his agenda?</div>
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Although there is still time, he has not yet laid out a roadmap for the steps that will lead to free and fair elections, which creates a vacuum. For instance, at the <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.borkena.com/2018/07/01/bahir-dar-lets-support-change-lets-reinforce-democracy-rally-a-huge-success/" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">pro-Abiy rally in Bahir Dar</a>, Ms. Emawayish Alemu, a recently freed activist, asked whether the plan is to set up an inclusive transitional government, or for the opposition to use this opening to participate in the democratic process.</div>
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Speaking of the dangers, in an appearance on VOA Amharic, Professor Messay Kebede aptly observed that Abiy’s rise from within the ruling coalition was unexpected and drew a reasonable parallel with USSR’s Mikhail Gorbachev. He also claimed that the problem with Gorbachev’s reforms were that they paved the way for Putin’s dictatorship.</div>
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He did, however, miss one important historical fact that took place between the Perestroika and the Glasnost and Putin’s autocracy: the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He fast-forwarded from the USSR to the Russian Federation. Disintegration, rather than dictatorship, is the greater peril of Abiy’s agenda. To reiterate the key point, the democratic reform problem facing multination federations is how to democratize them without triggering disintegration. Can Abiy do that?</div>
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Love starts at home</h6>
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Never before has Ethiopia gotten anywhere near disintegration as quietly as it is now during this spell dominated by the PM’s mesmerizing rhetoric of unity. Arguably, he is consolidating his power by marginalizing member parties of the ruling coalition, thereby endangering the unity that he preaches. It is outside of my remit to speculate on responsibility for the grenade attack at the pro-Abiy rally at Mesqel Square. But I can say with some certainty that had the attack killed the new prime minister, it would have put Ethiopia in the fast lane to 1991 Rwanda.</div>
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In a training session held for the top brass of the National Defense Forces, Abiy said that the military must be able to absorb regime change. While he was right in pointing out the threat from the military becoming involved in politics, he was wrong to say that its commanding officers must be able to absorb regime change. I think he mistakenly used the term “regime change” to mean a change in government. It was strange indeed for a head of government to talk in this manner.</div>
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Abiy also held a “training” meeting with artists and with members of his cabinet where he delivered a Powerpoint presentation on self-help advice from <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/habits-of-highly-effective-people-summary" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Steven Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People</a>. I hope against hope that Abiy would quickly deliver presentations where he analyzes Ethiopia’s macroeconomy and the international political economy, followed by Ethiopia’s foreign affairs priorities. Alas, he does not seem as prepared for those critical tasks as was his political hero, Meles Zenawi.</div>
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Abiy has to take care that the hopes he has raised are not replaced by despair. He should take his lessons from the recent flare-ups of ethnic strife, which took a heavy toll in <a data-wpel-link="external" href="https://www.ethiopiaobserver.com/2018/06/14/deadly-violence-hits-hawassa-as-protesters-call-for-sidama-state/" rel="noopener external noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #cf4d35; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Hawassa</a>, Sodo, Assosa, Kemissie, Bati, and have led to a very large displacement of people in Gedeo and Guji zones. While admirable, rather than personally addressing each crisis by holding meetings with those affected, he needs to get to grips with the levers of the federal system designed to help solve such disputes. Unless he gets on top of this remit, more chaos will unfold. Entropy increases with time.</div>
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If Abiy can avoid riding the populist wave, he can make a fine Ethiopian leader.</div>
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If Abiy can avoid riding the populist wave, he can make a fine Ethiopian leader. But he had better realize soon that sidelining member parties of the ruling coalition is detrimental to his agenda. His rhetoric of love and unity should start at home with his own political base. TPLF, for example, seems to be still wondering whether Abiy is doing EPRDF’s bidding, or his ego’s.</div>
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It will also be wise to include the TPLF leadership in the dialogue with Eritrea. It doesn’t help to operate on the assumption that talks with Eritrea are a matter of foreign policy, and that the TPLF, or Tigray state government, have no business in the matter. After all, the border is shared between Eritrea and Tigray region, a member of a multinational federation with constitutional rights to self-determination.</div>
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Snubbing key regional actors will only lend credence to perceptions that this is a one-man show and that Abiy has unseated the EPRDF, making not just the TPLF, but all member parties, irrelevant. This would leave Abiy in a strange place where he is a prime minister who is distant from nine regional governments that enjoy a de jure right to secession and a de facto right of nullification of federal legislations.</div>
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If Abiy, as chairman of OPDO and EPRDF, is unable to work with the other member parties of the coalition, then the responsibility for quelling riots and ensuring peace and order falls solely with him and his party. He therefore has to move beyond the rhetoric of love and unity, rise to the occasion, and show his mettle.</div>
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Ultimately, Abiy needs to prove that he is the reformist, not the populist, that Ethiopians have long been waiting for.</div>
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Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-10708358077233924282015-04-05T00:06:00.000-04:002015-04-06T00:25:24.551-04:00In memoriam: Donald Nathan Levine <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Alemayehu Weldemariam</b></div>
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Scholar, activist, aikido sensei. Born Jun 16, 1931, in New Castle, PA; died Apr 04, 2015, in Chicago, IL, of prostate cancer, aged 83.<br />
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Donald N. Levine was the Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Chicago and former dean of the College. He graduated with BA in 1950 from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maynard_Hutchins"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">"Hutchins College"</span></a>, MA in 1954, and PhD in 1957 from the University of Chicago under the mentorship of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Redfield"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">Robert Redfield</span></a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_McKeon"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">Richard McKeon</span></a>. </div>
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Levine had a brilliant career as the world’s most eminent social theorist and Ethiopianist. He published over a hundred papers and five books and his corpus includes critical interpretations of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Comte"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">Auguste Comte</span></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Durkheim"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">Emile Durkheim</span></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">Max Weber</span></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">Talcott Parsons</span></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_K._Merton"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">Robert Merton</span></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.N._Eisenstadt"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">S.N. Eisenstadt</span></a>, and above all <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Simmel"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">Georg Simmel</span></a>. In the realm of social theory, his work focused on reunifying the sociological traditions and imaginations in a book venture that he titles “Visions of the Sociological Tradition” (1995). One evening during my visit at the University of Chicago in 2011, as we were walking to his home where he generously hosted me for the first week, he started telling me "how sociology used to be as big as Humpty Dumpty and how it had a terribly great fall. And after Humpty Dumpty had that fall, it broke into pieces, and all sociologists and social theorists that came “couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.” That is exactly what I wanted to do with my book <i>Visions of the Sociological Tradition</i>."</div>
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In Ethiopian studies, he is most famous for his two books Wax and Gold (1965) and Greater Ethiopia (1974). He managed to put together and publish a collection of essays on Ethiopia which came to be his last book, <i>Interpreting Ethiopia</i>, with which my name is associated for which I feel proud and ashamed at the same time. Ashamed because I could not help as much as he wanted me to and proud because I was involved in the project from its inception to its completion, albeit an unfortunate hiatus in between. </div>
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Levine served as Chair of the Theory Section of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sociological_Association"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">American Sociological Association</span></a> in 1997,as editor of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Chicago_Press"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">University of Chicago Press</span></a>'s Heritage of Sociology series for two decades, and as member of the editorial boards of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Journal_of_Sociology"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">American Journal of Sociology</span></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Classical_Sociology"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">Journal of Classical Sociology</span></a>, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory,_Culture_%26_Society"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">Theory Culture and Society</span></a>. For his expertise as an Ethiopianist he served as consultant to public and governmental organizations, include the U.S. Department of State, the United States Senate, and the Peace Corps. </div>
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Levine received a Doctor of Letters honoris causa in 2004 from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addis_Ababa_University"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(6, 69, 173); color: #0645ad;">Addis Ababa University</span></a>, where President Andreas Eshete lauded him in a citation speech as: "Ethiopianist, sociological theorist, educator: you have succeeded in all three vocations. Your pioneering work, Wax and Gold, has become an Ethiopian classic. As manifested in its title, yours is an exceptionally imaginative quest to reach an understanding of Amhara society from the internal point of view. The very concept of "Wax and Gold" has taken a life of its own: it figures at once in our understanding of Ethiopia's pre-modern culture and in our coming to grips with Ethiopia's reception of modernity. Greater Ethiopia draws attention to the deep fact that Ethiopian life is rooted in multicultural identities, and it also demonstrates the salient bonds that hold them together.”</div>
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Levine is a towering figure in Chicago sociology and social thought in the same league as Robert Park, George Mead, Albion Small and John Dewey, Edward Shils, and Arnaldo Momigliano. </div>
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Mr. Levine is survived by his wife Ruth, daughter Rachel, and sons Ted and Bill. His memorial service will be held on Thursday, April 9, 1 pm, at KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation, 1100 E Hyde Park Blvd, Chicago, IL 60615.<br />
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Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-810452186092604492015-03-24T18:03:00.000-04:002015-04-05T19:56:30.015-04:00Analyzing Unconfirmed Reports of Ethiopian Bombing of Eritrea<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Alemayehu Weldemariam </br>
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24 March 2015
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The first question that crosses one’s mind while reading reports about the bombing of Eritrea by the Ethiopia Air Force on the night of 20 March 2015 is why Asmara or Nevsun, the Canadian mining company that owns and runs Bisha mining, one of the targets of the bombing, wouldn't confirm or deny the reports?
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Because it doesn't make economic and political sense to both of them to admit. For Nevsun, it's not only the stocks that are affected, but also the insurance premium. It seems to me the company has an insurance policy that contains a war exclusion clause or it has a distinct war risk insurance policy with a deductible and the damage it sustained is not substantial . In either case, publicity adversely affects its interests: it raises insurance premium while affecting the stocks in the market. So much for the legal implications. What's more, PFDJ wouldn't let it make the attack public before it makes it and it won't unless it plans to launch counter-attacks, which is tantamount to a declaration of war. Eritrea would rather keep quiet to avoid humiliation. So this I think is why Nevsun prefers to use "an act of vandalism" instead of "an act of war" as a legal euphemism.
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Some question the veracity of the reports saying that whistle blowers would bring the matter to the attention the investors. But the problem is no whistle blower of importance seems to have interest in the matter unless such a whistle-blower is an investor. And it seems that investors don’t have the incentive to do that, because the corporate interest in this particular case overlaps with the investors' interest. If the company is lying, it's doing so to maintain the company's interests, its long-run business relationship with Asmara, and its business as a going concern.
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What I am saying is, and I have not denied the increased risks to the investment, the company chose to hide such facts, and it did, because both states chose to keep quiet, neither to affirm nor to deny. So it is very likely that the air strikes took place, and apparently the company issued a statement claiming vandalism, while the states kept silent, which is indicative enough that the company is lying. Why lie? Because, it serves its interests and it coincidentally happened to be legitimate, precisely because Eritrea has not made any accusations against Ethiopia of any strikes in the first instance. Nor did Ethiopia claim to have done so. Therefore, under International Law, the air strike is a non-issue for all intents and purposes.
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Martin Plaut muses in a tweet: “If the bombing of Eritrea by Ethiopia is confirmed it raises this question: would Addis have acted without informing Washington in advance?” I don’t want to indulge in that kind of unnecessary speculation. However, one thing seems to be increasing certain that, with or without Washington’s blessing, Ethiopia has carried out successful air strikes against selected Eritrean targets in retaliation for its failure to return the MI35 helicopter it hosted after an Ethiopian pilot decided to land it in Eritrea after hijacking.
Mesfin Tekle, Canada-based financial analyst, says, “It’s not always about the price, check the volume. The stock price is not a big mover in any case, but the volume tells a story.” In fact, the volume of stocks offered for sale a day before the rumored strike was 371,448 before it jumped to 773,970 on the same day as the strike, reached 778,362, two days after the strike and is 798,109 at the moment. It can reasonably be expected to hit the record high of 800,000 at closing today. Mesfin explains, “the stock has a market cap of less than $1B so I doubt there're a lot of institutional investors who own it. The news seems to have an effect on the volume. Half a million share trades in less than 3hrs may indicate some exiting the stock early but the price has not made an appreciable move yet.”</div>
Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-43575599693315080622015-03-22T13:47:00.000-04:002018-05-02T13:50:35.404-04:00Ephraim Isaac - A Reflective Conflict Resolution Practitioner<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Born, in a small village in Nedjo, Ethiopia, to a Yemenite-Jewish father and an Ethiopian-Oromo mother, Professor Ephraim Isaac is a true polymath and a cosmopolitan. He is a scholar of ancient Semitic languages and civilization, African languages, and Religion. He speaks seventeen languages. Professor Isaac received a B.A. degree in Philosophy, Chemistry and Music from Concordia College, Master of Divinity in 1963 and Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies in 1969, both from Harvard University where he went on to become the founding professor of the African and Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard University after graduation. He has won several awards and recognitions for his scholarship and work in conflict resolution, including the 2003 Tanenbaum Peacemaker in Action Award from the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding in New York, where he has also been featured in its publication titled “Peacemakers in Action: Profiles of Religion in Conflict Resolution” (2007) and honorary doctorates from the City University of New York and Addis Ababa University. He has been admitted to the Swedish Royal Order of the Polar Star in 2013 in a ceremony held at the Swedish House in Washington DC in the presence of the Swedish Ambassador, H.E. Bjorn Lyrvall. Currently, Dr. Isaac heads the Institute of Semitic Studies, based in Princeton, N.J. and the Peace and Development Center, based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he is also known as “the Father of Peace”, a well-deserved title he earned for his active engagement in peacemaking in the Horn of Africa region. </div>
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Since 1989, through what has now become the Peace and Development, Professor Isaac has been actively engaged in sustained efforts to resolve conflicts involving his native country of Ethiopia. His experience in peacemaking ranges from intrastate conflict among warring religious and ethnic groups in Ethiopia to international conflicts such as the Ethiopian-Eritrean War of 1998-2000. He has successfully mediated the release of numerous political leaders from jail following the bitterly contested national elections in 2005. He has also played a key role in securing the signing of a truce between the Ogaden National Liberation Front and the Ethiopian government in 2010.</div>
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In this interview, I will talk to him about what it takes to be a peacemaker, how he intervenes in conflicts, what guides his action, and what it means to be a reflective practitioner .</div>
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The love of peace and the fear of God. You have to be a peace-loving and God-fearing person to be able to seek and make peace when sought for. I took my inspiration from my father, who was a silversmith, a very devout religious person, and also a Rabbi. He had learnt to read the entire Torah by heart in the manner of the old Yemenite Jewish tradition. He would always read and chant in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening from the Songs of David by heart. And from him, I learnt two important things: to work very hard and to be respectful to others and be patient. He showed me what spiritual eldership itself means: to be selfless, generous, patient, humble, sensitive, prudent, and mature. <span class="" style="font-size: 11px;">Another source of inspiration is Prophetic Judaism. I love the Hebraic prophets, esp. Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, and Micah. According to the prophetic tradition the world is founded on truth, justice, and peace. Judaic prophetic tradition encourages truth-seeking, peace-making, and resistance against injustice. Yet another source of inspiration is the community in which I was born and raised. There is a custom of immense respect for elders. When elders offer peacemaking, parties to a conflict cannot decline. Even better, they submit themselves to the peacemaking services of the community elders. Today, conflict resolution has become part of the university curriculum, educational program. So it has become professionalized and I have a huge respect for it. </span></div>
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2. How did you intervene in the conflict resolution processes you were involved in? Once you have intervened in a conflict, how do you manage the process? What is most challenging and exciting about a peace process?</div>
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Usually, I don’t like to talk about the work we do, partly because it is very sensitive and partly because we do not do it to get publicity. Instead of answering your question directly, let me try to put it this way: we, Ethiopians, have a tradition of eldership. A tradition I am very proud of. Now what does eldership mean? Eldership means that you have to be very old. With age comes wisdom. There’s what we call the wisdom of ages. In the Ethiopian countryside, conflicts are resolved are normally resolved by elders. </div>
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Sometime in 1989, as famine and fighting continued to ravage the population, I gathered a group of distinguished former civil servants to reflect upon the condition in Ethiopia and we almost literally made a covenant to approach all the conflicting parties. And the following day, we drafted a letter that in effect said that we, your brothers and sisters, are very saddened by what happened in our country, the bloodshed, the famine. We, as your mentors, friends, and family would very much like to see all the conflicting parties to come together to discuss how to resolve the conflict, possibly form a transitional government. This letter was sent to all the political parties, including the government. And the first person to respond positively to our call was the then rebel leader, the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. As I have come to know him for the past 22 years, he was a man deeply committed to peace and reconciliation. We had a an economist in our group who explained that peace and development are inextricably intertwined, that you cannot have one without the other. But the Prime Minister, in fact, seemed to have already known this. He accepted enthusiastically our offer to organize a peace conference in Switzerland, but as we all were gearing up for that, the US Department of State came up with the idea of the London Peace Talks, led by Herman Cohen. And though ours was put off indefinitely, but we reached an agreement to fund the Peace and Development Conference that took place in Addis Ababa in 1991. </div>
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As far as our intervention in the crisis following the 2005 elections is concerned, I initiated communication with PM Zenawi, who was a very humble person. His humility helped a lot. As they say here, “it takes two to a Tango.” For example, when I appealed to him to release Ms. Birtukan Midekssa from prison, I wrote him out the conviction that he is an open-minded person who listens to counsel. And I kept on writing him for a few weeks. At one stage, one night I got a message at about 3 o’clock, because I told him about what I am personally going through and that I could not sleep thinking of the condition in which the lady, her little daughter, and her aging mother are left. Then the following day, I received a letter from him saying “Dear Professor, how are you doing today? I am writing to ask your apology for your suffering. For the actions the government has taken, I feel badly about it. Please forgive me.” You see, this speaks volumes as to the humility of the man who happened to be the prime minister. No prime minister is supposed to write such a letter to ordinary individuals. He had as much respect for individuals as for the Ethiopian tradition of eldership. </div>
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So the solution to the post-2005 elections political deadlock was based on traditional eldership. So we tapped into long-standing cultural traditions of using elders to mediate between the government and opposition groups. In the Ethiopian tradition of shimagele-jarsa, the mediating elder exercises sympathetic listening, respect for each side, patience, broadmindedness, impartiality and advocacy for serious dialogue. As a result, we secured not only the release of the 35 imprisoned leaders of the opposition party, but also of about 30,000 prisoners throughout the country. At one point I jokingly told Meles that “now we can turn the prisons into schools and clinics” at which he laughed. </div>
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I was not only writing to him. I also used to call him on his phone, calls he never failed to answer. For example, I remember to have spoken to him on the phone several times during the Ethiopian-Eritrean war. But I don’t do that to a point being a nuisance.</div>
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3. What values and principles guide your action as a practitioner of conflict resolution and peacemaking? You have an interesting mélange of personal and professional experiences in your background. To mention just a few of them, you are a religious person, a scholar who taught at Harvard for several years, and a community elder (Shemagele). What have you brought to bear on conflict resolution and how did your diverse background help you in accomplishing what you set out to do?</div>
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Spiritual eldership is our guiding principle and in any conflict resolution process that we are involved we do our best to uphold the trinitarian values of truth, justice, and peace that underly prophetic Judaism. Our elders display an extraordinary degree of strength in character in being moral, upright, humble, patient, truthful, loving, and god-fearing. As a scholar of ancient religious literature, I know that peace itself is a religious concept, messages about peace abound, being practically universal in religion. Religion is and can be a powerful, positive agent of peacemaking and reconciliation. Even if warring cannot be totally eliminated, religion can be a force to reduce it. The work of the Peace and Development Center with which I am involved is a prototype of peacemaking based on that principle.</div>
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My most favorite prophet is Isaiah who says “beat your swords into ploughshares”, who says “lions will lie with cows some day”, who says, “who cares about your fasting? The fasting I want is free the prisoners, take yolk from people’s shoulders, and cloth the naked.” </div>
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What distinguishes us as a group of peacemakers is a first-hand experience of fighting and blood that nurtures what I call “the virtues of the heart” -- humility, empathy, kindness, generosity, respect and sacrifice for others -- a part of the big package I call “wisdom”, and that wisdom has to be communicated in a special language of the heart. That is the making of a true elder.</div>
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4. What does it mean to you to be a reflective practitioner of conflict resolution and peacemaking?</div>
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The reason why we succeeded in our peacemaking efforts where others have failed is in part because we were reflective conflict resolution practitioners. As I said earlier, conflict resolution has become a profession and universities around the world offer courses and confer diplomas in the field.We were not the kind of people who were trained in that field. Being a professional has its own pluses and minuses. The reason why we succeeded where the international community failed is because the expatriates were professional mediators, who approached the conflict from a rational, technical point-of-view. But conflicts, maybe, sometimes ensue from our brains, but in most cases, they emanate from our emotions. The international community could have helped if they took a different approach. They would have resolved it, had they tapped into the rich resources and capacities for peace that were available at the local level. </div>
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Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-5420882435540404062013-05-15T18:18:00.002-04:002013-05-15T18:18:31.964-04:00Kerry's Ethiopia OpportunityBy Martin Schibbye and Patrick Griffith
This month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to attend the 21st African Union (AU) summit. The message he brings will speak volumes about the future of American engagement on the continent.
In announcing the visit during a U.S. Senate hearing last month, Mr. Kerry expressed concern about the potentially negative impact of China's and Iran's increased presence in Africa. He noted that graft and poor development choices could undermine the stability of some African governments, and he acknowledged the need for more U.S. engagement.
Further American cooperation on development and security would be good news for Africa. But the U.S. must continue to focus on another potentially destabilizing factor in the continent: ongoing violations of basic human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Since their inception, the AU and its precursor, the Organization of African Unity, have embraced the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The African Charter on Human and People's Rights expressly protects a raft of basic human rights, including freedom of association, free expression and political participation. But despite these affirmations, the protection of such rights remains inconsistent across AU nations. Some governments continue to ignore certain provisions entirely.
If he needs an example, Mr. Kerry need only look out his window in Addis Ababa. This month the Ethiopian Supreme Court upheld an 18-year prison sentence against independent journalist Eskinder Nega.
Though the Ethiopian government is often touted as a close U.S. partner on security and poverty-reduction efforts, it has a dreadful record on rights. After parliamentary elections in 2005, the government jailed opposition leaders such as former judge Birtukan Mideksa and independent journalists who reported on the post-election unrest.
Mr. Nega and his wife Serkalem Fasil, herself a prominent publisher, were among those arrested. They spent 17 months in a detention center on trumped-up charges of treason and genocide before they were finally released. Pregnant at the time of her arrest, Ms. Fasil was denied prenatal care for seven months and gave birth to their son Nafkot while in custody.
In the spring of 2011, as popular uprisings gathered momentum across North Africa and the Middle East, Mr. Nega wrote extensively about their possible impact on Ethiopia. Despite warnings that he was going too far, Mr. Nega continued to write and speak publicly, often criticizing the government and calling for democratic reforms, while emphasizing the importance of nonviolence. But like fellow journalists Reeyot Alemu and Woubshet Taye, and opposition activists such as Andualem Aragie, Mr. Nega was charged in September 2011 under Ethiopia's widely criticized 2009 Antiterrorism Proclamation. He now faces 18 years in prison.
The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights has expressed grave alarm at Ethiopia's persecution of journalists and peaceful activists. In April the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also weighed in, declaring Mr. Nega's detention illegal under international law and calling for his immediate release. But these admonitions have so far not convinced Ethiopian authorities to change course.
When U.S. President Barack Obama laid out his administration's agenda for sub-Saharan Africa last summer, he emphasized strong democratic institutions and respect for the rule of law, noting that these promote both prosperity and stability. But as long as journalists and political activists are imprisoned for speaking their truth to power, such principles will remain illusory.
Mr. Kerry has an important opportunity this month to convey that very message to his counterparts in Addis Ababa. Mr. Nega and his colleagues deserve nothing less.
Mr. Schibbye is a Swedish journalist who was detained in Ethiopia for 14 months under the country's antiterror laws and held at Kaliti Prison with Eskinder Nega. Mr. Griffith is an attorney with Freedom Now, a legal advocacy organization that works to free prisoners of conscience, including Mr. Nega.
Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-83599255486649485392013-05-03T12:34:00.000-04:002013-05-03T12:35:10.783-04:00Media Release: Ruling by Ethiopia's Supreme Court in Eskinder Nega Case Another Missed Opportunity
Today, Freedom Now, Amnesty International, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, the Committee to Free Eskinder Nega, the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, English PEN, the International Press Institute, the International Women’s Media Foundation, Media Legal Defence Initiative, the National Press Club, PEN American Center, PEN Canada, and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, condemned the decision by the Ethiopian Supreme Court upholding the 18-year sentence imposed against independent journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega. "By upholding the sentence, the Ethiopian government has missed yet another opportunity to respect its freely undertaken obligations under international law,” the groups said. “This failure is particularly striking in light of today’s World Press Freedom Day celebrations."
"By misusing anti-terror legislation to stifle the peaceful work of journalists like Mr. Nega and his colleagues Reeyot Alemu and Woubshet Taye, the government has, unfortunately, demonstrated that it is willing to disregard the legitimate rights of the Ethiopian people and undermine the credibility of international efforts to address real security threats in the region, all in an attempt to silence critical voices in the country. It is time for the international community to make it clear to the government in Addis Ababa that such violations will no longer be tolerated."
The decision upholding the verdict came yesterday after the Supreme Court postponed the appeal proceedings on seven separate occasions. Mr. Nega, who has been detained by the government eight times because of his journalism, was arrested on September 14, 2011 after he authored a series of articles and spoke publicly about the possible implications of the Middle East and North African-style popular uprising spreading to Ethiopia. Authorities held Mr. Nega without access to family for nearly one month and without access to an attorney for nearly two months. At trial, Mr. Nega admitted criticizing the government but affirmed that his writings only called for peaceful democratic reform in the country. He was convicted on June 27, 2012 and sentenced to 18 years in prison on July 13, 2012.
After his sentencing, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that the continued imprisonment of Mr. Nega violates Ethiopia's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which it is a party, and called for his immediate release.
Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-37353415558644288762013-04-01T12:25:00.001-04:002013-04-01T12:25:44.511-04:00UN FINDS IMPRISONMENT OF ETHIOPIAN JOURNALIST ESKINDER NEGA ARBITRARY UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW AND CALLS FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEApril 1, 2013
Washington, D.C.: In an opinion released today by Freedom Now, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found the Government of Ethiopia’s continued detention of independent Ethiopian journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega a violation of international law. The panel of five independent experts from four continents held that the government violated Mr. Nega’s rights to free expression and due process. The UN Working Group called for his immediate release.
Mr. Nega is serving an 18-year prison sentence on terror and treason charges in response to his online articles and public speeches about the Arab Spring and the possible impact of such movements on the political situation in Ethiopia. Arrested in September 2011, Mr. Nega was held without charge or access to an attorney for nearly two months before authorities charged him under Ethiopia’s widely criticized anti-terror laws. This is the eighth time during his 20-year career as an independent journalist and publisher that the Ethiopian government has detained Mr. Nega. His appeal has been repeatedly postponed, most recently on March 27, 2013.
In the attached opinion, released in conjunction with an op-ed by the renowned Ethiopian opposition leader and former prisoner of conscience Birtukan Mideksa, the UN Working Group found that the application of overly broad anti-terror laws against Mr. Nega constituted an “unjustified restriction” on his right to freedom of expression. The UN Working Group’s opinion also recognized “several breaches of Mr. Nega’s fair trial rights,” further rendering his continued detention arbitrary under international law.
“The Ethiopian government cannot continue to use anti-terrorism legislation to muzzle the work of independent journalists, even when it does not like what is being reported,” said Freedom Now Executive Director Maran Turner. “The targeting of journalists by resorting to overly broad anti-terror laws, just like the use of anti-state charges in the pre-9/11 era, is a violation of the internationally protected right to free expression and undermines international efforts to address real security threats.”
Freedom Now represents Mr. Nega as his international pro bono counsel.Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-70958681722289033992013-03-31T19:19:00.001-04:002013-03-31T19:19:55.547-04:00Book Review: WENDY LAURA BELCHER. Abyssinia’s Samuel Johnson.
Wendy Laura Belcher. Abyssinia’s Samuel Johnson. Pp. ix–286. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Cloth, £45.
In 2008, I debuted my edition of Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas (Broadview) by presenting to a group of Johnson scholars at the annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. After I described my edition’s emphasis on Johnson’s indebtedness to the oriental tale, an eminent Johnsonian demurred, declaring that Johnson ‘would have been disgusted’ by The Arabian Nights. Wendy Laura Belcher’s new book, Abyssinia’s Samuel Johnson, definitively argues that Johnson, far from being disgusted by all things oriental, was in Belcher’s ingenious phrase ‘discursively possessed’ by Abyssinia from the very advent of his literary career and throughout his life. Belcher’s account radically reframes Johnson’s thought while also offering a new model—‘discursive possession’—for theorizing the relationship between European and non-European cultures that should have wide-ranging resonance beyond Johnsonian and eighteenth-century studies. Scholars need to take seriously Belcher’s claim that ‘The Western literary canon is a vast graveyard haunted by self-representing others, whose voices become the uncanny language of the very text that participates in constituting the other as an object of knowledge. The legible sign of the invisible other appears through the text that displaces heterogeneity even while being transformed by it’ (p. 18).
Belcher’s animating paradigm of ‘discursive possession’ shows ‘how African discourse can animate European texts,’ locating ‘agency outside of the European traveler, author, intellectual’ (pp. 6, 7). As Belcher explains, discursive possession is more profound than intertextuality or influence studies because it accounts for the agency of a non-dominant discourse to shape the discourse of a dominant culture. Belcher critiques the ‘dominant models’ of post-colonial theory for ‘a failure to recognize that Africans produce discourse’ that powerfully affects Europeans (p. 7). To explain discursive possession, Belcher draws on African concepts of spirit possession and also shows how Johnson himself defines ‘possession’ as a lack of agency inherent to the creative process (pp. 48–9). The products of discursive possession are ‘energumens,’ texts ‘through which other texts and voices speak’ (p. 8).
Belcher makes her case first by outlining the powerful discourse produced by the Habesha, the people of the Ethiopian highlands, an ancient discourse of cultural exceptionalism that had penetrated Europe as early as the Middle Ages via the Habesha’s own self-representing texts and ambassadors, tantalizing Europeans with accounts of the Habesha’s pure Christianity. Belcher shows that Europeans did not discover the Habesha, but were, one might say, discovered by them and were thus the recipients of their self-representations from the start of their cultural contact. In this way she offers a direct rejoinder to Edward Said and other post-colonial theorists of orientalism who believe (in Belcher’s summary) that ‘non-Western discourse … had little opportunity to shape the Western world’ (p. 98). It is important to note that Belcher’s emphasis remains on discourse. She is not suggesting that we find ‘real’ Abyssinians in Western texts; rather she is interested in ‘whether typical Habesha discourse – from Habesha texts and traditions – appears in the European text’ (p. 102).
The Habesha discourse of cultural exceptionalism drew Europeans to Abyssinia, whether to attempt to reunite the Habesha with the Roman Catholic Church (as in the case of sixteenth-century Portuguese Jesuits), or to celebrate the Habesha as proto-Protestant models of a non-decadent Christianity (as did the seventeenth-century German scholar Hiob Ludolph). Belcher argues, Habesha discourse possessed the young Samuel Johnson at Oxford as he read deeply in scholarship on the ‘primitive’ church in his own spiritual awakening. In this way Belcher convinces the reader of the centrality for Johnson’s thought of his first published work, A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Jerome Lobo (1735), a loose translation of a French translation/adaptation of a Portuguese manuscript about the Habesha, a work Johnson scholars have long dismissed as hackwork and that only a handful examined. Belcher points out that we must account for the fact that Johnson begins his illustrious literary career not with a Latin classic or with Shakespeare, ‘but with a text about a famous African people – an African people who have long been imbricated in European debates and thought’ (p. 45). Belcher believes Habesha discourse offered the young, questioning Johnson a model of religious practice that resonated with his desire for a pure Christianity that was ancient, like Catholicism, but was not the ‘aggressive political and colonial institution’ of Rome. The Habesha church ‘offered a way of separating the spiritual doctrines from the earthly power’ (p. 70). Belcher’s compelling reading of the significance of Habesha Christianity for Johnson’s thought offers a wonderful solution to the long-standing debate over the nature of Johnson’s ‘slightly peculiar,’ seemingly crypto-Catholic Anglicanism (p. 70).
From her detailed reading of A Voyage to Abyssinia, spanning three of the book’s eight chapters, to her fresh interpretation of Johnson’s early play Irene, to her analysis of Habesha discourse in Johnson’s oriental tales published in the Rambler and the Idler, Belcher sheds definitive light on works that have received little scholarly attention, particularly in the past 40 years. Again and again she shows how Habesha discourse shaped Johnson’s writing. Her analysis of the complex palimpsest that is A Voyage to Abyssinia does a signal service to Johnsonian scholarship. She shows that ‘his translation’s effect, regardless of its motivations, is to recuperate the Africans and mortify the Europeans, much as the Habesha themselves might have wished’ when he ‘recasts the Portuguese as colonial aggressors, not devoted servants of God’ or when he ‘dramatically mistranslates in the Habesha’s favor, working against the negative presentation of the Habesha that Lobo and Le Grand are trying to communicate’ (pp. 91, 94, 95). Some of this has been pointed out piecemeal by previous scholars, but never before in the service of a larger argument about the agency of African discourse.
Perhaps the most surprising chapter in the book is Belcher’s reading of Irene in which Habesha discourse appears in Johnson’s representations of ‘the oriental other as a complicated, rhetorically gifted Christian’ (p. 140). Belcher’s excavation of Habesha discourse—along with her careful attention to the variations between Johnson’s text in its final stage version—in this play convincingly explains some of Johnson’s seemingly odd dramatic choices in the play as well as its stage failure.
Belcher concludes with two chapters on Johnson’s Abyssinian masterpiece, Rasselas, that argue against recent scholars’ readings of it as ‘the paradigmatic orientalist text, deploying the Middle East to explore unmistakably Western obsessions’ (p. 191). Instead, Belcher shows that Rasselas is ‘a text with deep links to non-Western thought and partially co-constituted by the Habesha’ (p. 193). Belcher takes the 50-year-old scholarship of Johnsonians such as Gwin J. Kolb and Donald M. Lockhart on Rasselas’s Abyssinian sources and gives it the theoretical sophistication of her ‘discursive possession’ model, elegantly melding what might seem like very different scholarly traditions. Her interpretation of the tale itself, especially an extended reading of the astronomer’s possession by age-old Habesha rhetoric of power over their land, is ingenious and original.
The last pages of Abyssinia’s Samuel Johnson gesture towards broader contexts in which the ‘discursive possession’ model can be useful. As Belcher notes, artists have long described the creative process as one of possession. Scholars need to take this seriously, to chart, as Belcher has done so compellingly, how ‘non-European thought, through such discursive possession, animates some texts of the European canon’ (p. 247).
© The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press 2013; all rights reservedAlemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-84561272092722632882013-03-01T13:21:00.000-05:002013-03-01T13:21:02.038-05:00Ethiopia makes help difficult for world donors advocating civil society, rightsBy William Davison, Correspondent / February 28, 2013
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA
Of the many outreach programs run here by Germany’s Heinrich Böll Foundation, one caused special alarm for an official new Ethiopian agency that is starting to block and restrict the promotion of civil society ideas.
The Böll program, “SurVivArt: Art for the Right to a Good Life,” dealt with notions of healthy, intelligent, and successful living, and illustrated differing concepts of home, food, and choice consumer goods – all done through sculpture and video arts.
To a Western-oriented eye, it seemed harmless.
But officials at the “Charities and Societies Agency” fairly flipped when they saw a word implying “rights” in the program title.
"'Why has this got right in it?' they asked," remembers Patrick Berg, the foundation's former Ethiopia director, who just returned to Germany after deciding that the agency and its zealous application of a restrictive new law made meaningful work impossible.
Read the full story <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2013/0228/Ethiopia-makes-help-difficult-for-world-donors-advocating-civil-society-rights?nav=87-frontpage-entryNineItem">here</a>.Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-37153747908590288252013-02-28T20:45:00.000-05:002013-02-28T20:45:14.601-05:00Obama: Failing the African Spring? Helen Epstein
America’s new drone base in the West African city of Niamey, Niger, announced by the White House on Friday, further expands our counter-terrorism activity in Africa. It’s also consistent with the militaristic emphasis of the Obama administration’s engagement with the continent. This may help contain the spread of jihadist violence in specific cases, but by failing to address persistent abuses of human rights by our African military allies, America is also undermining its own development investments that are intended to lift millions of people out of poverty and ensure the continent’s peace, stability, and economic growth.
The administration’s neglect of human rights in Africa is a great disappointment, since the president began his first term by laying out ambitious new goals for the continent. In July 2009, when his presidency was only six months old, Barack Obama delivered a powerful speech at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, the point from which millions of African slaves were shipped across the Atlantic. He called on African countries to end the tyranny of corruption that affects so many of their populations, and to build strong institutions that serve the people and hold leaders accountable. The speech seemed to extend the message of his much-discussed Cairo address a month earlier, in which he called for a new beginning for Muslim relations with the West, based on non-violence and mutual respect. Many thought that the policies of the new president, himself of Kenyan descent, would depart from those of the Bush administration, which provided a great deal of development aid to Africa, but paid scant attention to human rights.
After more than four years in office, however, Obama has done little to advance the idealistic goals of his Ghana speech. The US finally suspended military aid to Rwanda last year, after it was forced to accept evidence of Rwandan support for the brutal Congolese rebel group M23, but has otherwise ignored the highly problematic human rights situation in that country. In Uganda, the US looked on for years as President Yoweri Museveni’s cabinet ministers gorged themselves on American and other foreign aid intended for impoverished farmers, war victims, roads, and health care. US diplomats have recently begun expressing support for Uganda’s many oppressed civil society groups, but one wonders what took them so long. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Uganda is a vital US military ally in Somalia, where Ugandan troops helped oust the Islamic militant group al-Shabbab from Mogadishu last year.
Meanwhile, Kenya, another important US ally in Somalia that is soon to be receiving drones from the Pentagon, is preparing for national elections on March 4. But some observers say the country is more violent now than it was in 2007, when post-election ethnic clashes left 1000 people dead and caused economic chaos across East Africa. Presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta and his running mate William Ruto have both been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes connected with those events. It’s not clear what the US will do if Kenyatta wins, but it often seems as if Obama will work with any African leader who furthers America’s military aims, regardless of how that leader treats his own people.
And then there is Ethiopia. Today, Western nations give $3.5 billion a year in aid to Ethiopia, most of it for health care projects, food aid, and other development programs. Of this, the US alone provides roughly $700 million—an amount that has quintupled in the past decade, even as the nation’s human rights record has deteriorated to the point that Freedom House now designates it one of the least free countries in the world. The Ethiopian government has rigged elections, taken control of the economy, and outlawed virtually all independent media and human rights activity in the country—including work related to women and children’s rights, good governance, and conflict resolution. Thousands of political prisoners languish behind bars and dozens of editors, journalists, judges, lawyers, and academics have been forced into exile.
But when Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi died last summer, then-US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice praised him as a personal friend and a “talented and vital leader.” When she remarked that “he had little patience for fools, or ‘idiots,’ as he liked to call them,” some in the opposition believed she was referring to them—and approving Meles’s sentiments. Rice’s support for authoritarian leaders in Africa was highlighted by critics who opposed—and ultimately derailed—her nomination to be secretary of state.
To read the entire article on NYR, click <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/feb/25/obama-failing-african-spring/">here</a>.
Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-88459113819333999402013-02-28T15:14:00.003-05:002013-02-28T15:14:39.394-05:00Ethiopia and Kenya: Doing it my waySpecial report: Emerging Africa
March 2nd 2013
The Economist
ETHIOPIAN BORDER GUARDS at the arrivals terminal in Metema check every passport against a handwritten list of undesirables to be kept out. This a country in which the state knows best. That may be tiresome for visitors, but it has made Ethiopia one of Africa’s development stars. A newly built road leading away from the border is surrounded by intensively farmed fields of sesame, Ethiopia’s second-biggest export after coffee. Golden bundles of harvested stalks sit on fields flanked by streams. It is a long time since famine-struck 1984, when Bob Geldof sang about the country “where nothing ever grows / No rain or rivers flow / Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?”
Now it is Christmas time in Ethiopia, up to a point. The country has a state-backed policy of boosting the economy and alleviating poverty, carried out by officials with near-dictatorial powers. Markets and foreign investors are allowed but mistrusted. The model borrows from China and is conceived as a rejection of Western free-for-all capitalism. It claims to nurture local employers and protect them from Wall Street predators. The government talks vaguely about moving to a liberal democracy in the future, but that is a long way off. The economy comes first. Meles Zenawi, the country’s late prime minister, developed a vision for the country of 85m that focuses mainly on improving its agriculture, which accounts for 46% of GDP and employs 79% of the workforce.
To read the article in its entirety, click <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21572379-ideological-competition-between-two-diametrically-opposed-economic-models-doing-it-my">here</a>.
Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-12574534656670683652013-02-28T15:09:00.000-05:002013-02-28T15:09:00.023-05:00Ethiopia Elects New Leader for Orthodox Church
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia February 28, 2013 (AP)
Ethiopia's orthodox church has elected a new leader of the influential body in the predominantly Christian nation.
Abune Matias, 71, was Thursday named the 6th Patriarch of the church officially known as the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
Abune Matias, currently serving as Archbishop of the church in Jerusalem, accepted the appointment.
The election comes amid disputes surrounding the leadership of the powerful church, which boasts of some 40 million adherents, and a long history of conflict with the central government.
The Ethiopian church was under the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. In 1959 it broke away to be independent and started appointing its leaders.
Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-51441964745041243912013-02-07T10:52:00.001-05:002013-02-07T10:54:22.433-05:00Ethiopia: The Case Against Trial By Public Media – OpEd<a href="http://www.eurasiareview.com/07022013-ethiopia-the-case-against-trial-by-public-media-oped/">Eurasia Review</a>
February 7, 2013
By Alemayehu Fentaw Weldemariam
An authoritarian regime is bad, no matter what its ideological dressing may be. Terrorism is also bad, whether it is Islamic, secular, or so-called state terrorism. While this may be a truism, the EPRDF would argue that neither could nor should be forced on it.
Yesterday, ETV aired on prime time television a documentary prepared by the Information Network Security Agency (INSA) and the Federal Police Anti-Terror Joint Task-Force titled “Jihadawi Harekat” and subtitled “Boko Haram in Ethiopia”, despite an injunction issued by the Federal High Court prohibiting the dissemination of the film. The broadcast took place while the trials of 29 peaceful Muslim protesters, who are accused of terrorism, are pending.
The footage features few facts supported by evidence, except for the confessions of the accused, which, according to their defense attorney, were compelled by force. The central problem with the broadcast is that the defendants, already disadvantaged by coerced confessions, will now face the added hazard of prejudiced public opinion.
It is plainly evident that the defendants will not have a fair trial and that adverse publicity has gutted the principle of the presumption of innocence of the accused. This raises the additional grave concern – the right to a fair trial with presumption of innocence does not exist in Ethiopia! This is a classic hallmark of an authoritarian regime.
Read the entire article <a href="http://www.eurasiareview.com/07022013-ethiopia-the-case-against-trial-by-public-media-oped/">here</a>.Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-5244240558384249802013-01-25T12:00:00.003-05:002013-01-25T12:00:24.147-05:00 Eritrea Mutiny Shows Growing Military Discontent With IsaiasBy William Davison & Bealfan T. Hayle - Jan 25, 2013
A day-long mutiny by Eritrean soldiers this week signals growing discontent with President Isaias Afwerki’s two-decade grip on power and economic hardship, said analysts including Dan Connell at Simmons College.
The rare show of dissent against what Human Rights Watch describes as one of the world’s most repressive regimes also fuels speculation that Isaias, 66, may be ailing, according to Stratfor, the Austin, Texas-based intelligence group. The former rebel leader has ruled the Horn of Africa nation since 1991, when a 30-year war for independence from neighboring Ethiopiaended. Eritrea is a one-party state.
“Dissatisfaction inside the military is widespread, especially at the middle and lower levels,” Connell, the author of seven books on the country, said in an e-mailed response to questions yesterday. “I expect more of this in the coming months, particularly if the regime cracks down heavily.”
Eritrea is among the most difficult places in the world to do business and is ninth from bottom in a ranking of the poorest countries, according to the World Bank. Private industry is constrained by “haphazard” regulations, foreign-currency restrictions and the “high risk” of assets being expropriated, the African Development Bank said on its website.
The country relies on gold and other metals produced by Nevsun Resources Ltd.’s (NSU) Bisha mine and remittances from a tax it imposes on Eritreans living abroad to generate most of its foreign exchange. About a quarter of Eritrea’s 5.4 million population lives overseas and are threatened with having their entry rights withdrawn, their properties seized or families harassed if they don’t pay, according to the United Nations.
Building Stormed
As many as 200 soldiers stormed the Ministry of Information building that houses state television in the capital, Asmara, on Jan. 21 and took its occupants hostage, according to Stratfor. A newsreader then read a list of demands including calls for the release of political prisoner and the implementation of a 1997 constitution, it said on its website.
The occupation ended after troops loyal to Isaias surrounded the building, the mutineers released their hostages and agreed to return to their base, Stratfor said.
The mutiny was “probably a show of force by more senior elements of the military, in an effort to nudge along political and economic reform,” Michael Woldemariam, professor of International Relations and an expert on African politics at Boston University, said in an e-mailed response to questions.
Illness
The rebellion may have been led by General Saleh Osman, a veteran of Eritrea’s independence war who previously engaged in talks for democratization with the president’s office, according to Stratfor. General Filipos Woldeyohannes, a former confidant of Isaias who “fell from grace,” may also have been involved, it said.
“While these troops did not receive the support from other military commanders that they were apparently hoping for, they were able to cast doubt on the ability of the regime to protect itself,” Stratfor said.
Isaias may be suffering from a liver ailment and has sought medical treatment in Qatar, according to a Feb. 16, 2011, report by Awate.com, a California-based opposition website. The government in April denied what it said was an “intensive campaign of rumor” that the president is terminally ill.
“There is no second-in-command and no single general who could take Isaias’s place, so the only viable option to avoid a major rupture for those in power for a transition is a committee of some sort that brings together representatives of the main power centers,” Connell said.
President Targeted
The dissidents may have been targeting a faction within the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, or PFDJ, and military officials who back the president, Michael said.
Isaias and loyalists have been arresting senior military and political figures since Jan. 23 in response to the rebellion, said Abel Abate Demissie, a researcher at the Ethiopian government-linked Ethiopian International Institute for Peace and Development, citing unidentified Eritrean sources.
“Isaias knows there are prominent people in a power struggle who are conspiring and he’s started to react,” he said in a telephone interview from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. “I am sure fractures will broaden in the coming days and months. The writing is on the wall.”
The government hasn’t officially acknowledged the Jan. 21 incident. Phone calls and text messages seeking comment to the mobile-phone of Eritrea’s Ambassador to the African Union Girma Asmerom haven’t been answered since Jan. 21.
Read the entire article <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-25/eritrean-mutiny-signals-growing-military-discontent-with-isaias.html">here</a>Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-23321546744083798702013-01-24T12:34:00.000-05:002013-01-24T12:34:22.961-05:00Saudis Turn to Ethiopian Maids After Asian Backlash
By William Davison & Simon Clark - Jan 24, 2013
Zeini Kadir escaped at dawn, when the gates of the house in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, were open for morning prayers.
Barefoot, she ended up at an agency catering to Ethiopian workers like her. After flying to Addis Ababa, she rode two buses and walked three hours to the mud-walled home where she grew up. She’d lasted just three months, cooking and cleaning seven days a week in the 18-room house where she said she was beaten with a stick. Still, she said she would have stayed in Saudi Arabia if she could have found another job.
“It’s different from house to house,” Zeini, 19, said, smiling. “Not all employers are bad.” Anyway, “what jobs are there here?”
So few that her father, Kadir Biftu, borrowed 6,000 birr ($327) to send her in August to the Persian Gulf port city, where she could earn enough to pay the debt in months -- something he couldn’t do in a year as a farmer. “We’ll be very happy if she goes back to Saudi Arabia,” said Zelika Kusay, Zeini’s mother, after a snack of maize browned over a fire.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, has imported female servants for decades. The Indonesian government stemmed the flow after the beheading of an Indonesian maid convicted of killing her employer in June 2011. Maids from the Philippines had also stopped arriving, after Filipino lawmakers wrote a report on alleged abuses, including rapes and beatings.
So the Saudis turned to Ethiopia, across the Red Sea, where most people live on less than $2 a day. “Saudi Arabia will choose the most compliant country,” said Walden Bello, chairman of the Overseas Workers Affairs Committee in the Philippine House of Representatives.
Read the entire article <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-24/saudis-turn-to-ethiopian-maids-after-beheading-limits-supplies.html">here</a>Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-85285936738208949862012-12-18T07:22:00.001-05:002012-12-18T07:22:51.914-05:0016 MEMBERS OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT CALL FOR THE RELEASE OF
IMPRISONED ETHIOPIAN JOURNALIST ESKINDER NEGADecember 18, 2012<br />
<br />
Washington, D.C.: Today, 16 members of the European Parliament issued a public letter to Ethiopian Prime Minster Hailemariam Desalegn expressing their grave concern regarding the continued detention of imprisoned journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega. <br />
<br />
Arrested in 2011 and detained without access to an attorney for nearly two months, Mr. Nega was sentenced to 18 years in prison under the country’s broad 2009 Anti-Terrorism Proclamation on July 13, 2012. Mr. Nega’s arrest and prosecution came after he wrote online articles and spoke publicly about the possibility of an Arab Spring-like movement taking place in Ethiopia. After his sentencing, the government initiated proceedings to seize his assets, including the home still used by his wife and young son. An appeal hearing in the case is scheduled for Wednesday, December 19th.<br />
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The letter notes that the Ethiopian government has an obligation to uphold the right to free expression and reminds the newly appointed Prime Minister that he has “the unique opportunity to lead Ethiopia forward on human rights and bring the country fully within the community of nations.” The letter closes by urging the Prime Minister to take all measures within his power “to facilitate the immediate and unconditional release of Mr. Nega.” <br />
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“This is an important recognition by members of the European Parliament from across the political spectrum that the right to free expression is universal and must be respected by the Ethiopian government,” said Freedom Now Executive Director Maran Turner. “Mr. Nega has been wrongfully detained in Ethiopia in violation of his right to freedom of expression, and he must be released.”<br />
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The text of the letter is copied below and a PDF of the letter can be found here. Freedom Now, a legal advocacy organization that represents prisoners of conscience around the world, serves as international pro bono counsel to Mr. Nega.<br />
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Dear Prime Minister Desalegn,<br />
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We write to express our grave concern regarding the continued detention of independent Ethiopian journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega and urge you to facilitate his immediate release.<br />
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Mr. Nega, a longtime publisher and journalist, was arrested in 2011 and charged under the country’s 2009 Anti-Terror Proclamation after he wrote and spoke publicly about the Arab-Spring movements then unfolding across the Middle East and North Africa. Although clearly sympathetic, Mr. Nega consistently emphasized that any similar movements in Ethiopia must remain peaceful. Despite this, the government of your predecessor Prime Minister Meles Zenawi arrested Mr. Nega, held him without access to family for nearly one month and without access to an attorney for nearly two months, and ultimately sentenced him to 18 years in prison. Even now, reports indicate that proceedings are underway to seize Mr. Nega’s home, where his wife and young son continue to live.<br />
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Unfortunately, Mr. Nega is not alone—journalists Woubshet Taye and Reyot Alemu have also received long prison sentences on terror charges. In response to your government’s use of the 2009 Anti-Terror Proclamation against journalists and opposition leaders, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and five United Nations Special Rapporteurs—including the Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights—have all expressed alarm at this worrying trend. As some have noted, the use of vague anti-terror legislation to silence legitimate expression threatens to seriously undermine the credibility of efforts to address real security threats to the region.<br />
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It is our understanding that appeal proceedings in Mr. Nega’s case are ongoing and we respect your need to allow the judicial process to continue. However, it is also your government’s obligation to respect the right to freedom of expression as established under customary international law and codified in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Ethiopia is a party.<br />
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You now have the unique opportunity to lead Ethiopia forward on human rights and bring the country fully within the community of nations. As such, we urge you to take all measures within your power to facilitate the immediate and unconditional release of Mr. Nega.<br />
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Sincerely,<br />
<br />
Alexander Graf Lambsdorff<br />
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Ana Gomes<br />
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Charles Tannock<br />
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Eduard Kukan<br />
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Eija-Riitta Korhola<br />
<br />
Emilio Menendez del Valle<br />
<br />
Fiona Hall<br />
<br />
Frank Engel<br />
<br />
Kinga Gál<br />
<br />
Laima Liucija Andrikienė<br />
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Maria Da Graça Carvalho<br />
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Mariya Gabriel<br />
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Michael Gahler<br />
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Norbert Neuser<br />
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Olle Schmidt<br />
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David Martin<br />
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Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-45090727342548255482012-12-10T16:00:00.001-05:002012-12-10T16:00:18.164-05:00U.N. Ambassador Questioned on U.S. Role in Congo Violence<span xmlns=''><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:7pt'><strong>By <a title='More Articles by HELENE COOPER' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/helene_cooper/index.html'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'>HELENE COOPER</span></a><br /> </strong></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:7pt'><strong>NYT, News Analysis, December 9, 2012 <br /></strong></span></p><p>WASHINGTON — Almost two decades after the Clinton administration failed to intervene in the <a title='More articles about the Rwandan genocide.' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/rwanda/genocide/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier'>genocide</a> in <a title='More news and information about Rwanda.' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/rwanda/index.html?inline=nyt-geo'>Rwanda</a>, the United States is coming under harsh criticism for not moving forcefully in another African crisis marked by atrocities and brutal killings, this time in Rwanda's neighbor, the <a title='More news and information about Congo.' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/congothedemocraticrepublicof/index.html?inline=nyt-geo'>Democratic Republic of Congo</a>.<br /></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>While <a title='More articles about Barack Obama' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'>President Obama</span></a> and Secretary of State <a title='More articles about Hillary Rodham Clinton.' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/hillary_rodham_clinton/index.html?inline=nyt-per'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'>Hillary Rodham Clinton</span></a> have taken some of the blame, critics of the Obama administration's Africa policy have focused on the role of <a title='More articles about Susan E Rice.' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/susan_e_rice/index.html?inline=nyt-per'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'>Susan E. Rice</span></a>, the United States ambassador to the <a title='More articles about the United Nations.' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'>United Nations</span></a> and a leading contender to succeed Mrs. Clinton, in the administration's failure to take action against the country they see as a major cause of the Congolese crisis, Rwanda. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Specifically, these critics — who include officials of human rights organizations and United Nations diplomats — say the administration has not put enough pressure on Rwanda's president, <a title='More articles about Paul Kagame.' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/paul_kagame/index.html?inline=nyt-per'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'>Paul Kagame</span></a>, to end his support for the rebel movement whose recent capture of the strategic city of Goma in Congo set off a national crisis in a country that has already lost more than three million people in more than a decade of fighting. Rwanda's support is seen as vital to the rebel group, known as M23. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Support for Mr. Kagame and the Rwandan government has been a matter of American foreign policy since he led the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front to victory over the incumbent government in July 1994, effectively ending the Rwandan genocide. But according to rights organizations and diplomats at the United Nations, Ms. Rice has been at the forefront of trying to shield the Rwandan government, and Mr. Kagame in particular, from international censure, even as several United Nations reports have laid the blame for the violence in Congo at Mr. Kagame's door. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>A senior administration official said Saturday that Ms. Rice was not freelancing, and that the American policy toward Rwanda and Congo was to work with all the countries in the area for a negotiated settlement to the conflict. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Aides to Ms. Rice acknowledge that she is close to Mr. Kagame and that Mr. Kagame's government was her client when she worked at Intellibridge, a strategic analysis firm in Washington. Ms. Rice, who served as the State Department's top African affairs expert in the Clinton administration, worked at the firm with several other former Clinton administration officials, including David J. Rothkopf, who was an acting under secretary in the Commerce Department; Anthony Lake, Mr. Clinton's national security adviser; and John M. Deutch, who was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Payton Knopf, a spokesman for Ms. Rice, initially declined to comment on whether her work with Rwanda at Intellibridge affected her dealings with the country in her present job as an ambassador. But on Monday, Mr. Knopf said: "Ambassador Rice's brief consultancy at Intellibridge has had no impact on her work at the United Nations. She implements the agreed policy of the United States at the U.N." <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Two months ago, at a meeting with her French and British counterparts at the French Mission to the United Nations, according to a Western diplomat with knowledge of the meeting, Ms. Rice objected strongly to a call by the French envoy, Gerard Araud, for explicitly "naming and shaming" Mr. Kagame and the Rwandan government for its support of M23, and to his proposal to consider sanctions to pressure Rwanda to abandon the rebel group. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>"Listen Gerard," she said, according to the diplomat. "This is the D.R.C. If it weren't the M23 doing this, it would be some other group." The exchange was reported in Foreign Policy magazine last week. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>A few weeks later, Ms. Rice again stepped in to protect Mr. Kagame. After delaying for weeks the publication of a United Nations report denouncing Rwanda's support for the M23 and opposing any direct references to Rwanda in United Nations statements and resolutions on the crisis, Ms. Rice intervened to water down a Security Council resolution that strongly condemned the M23 for widespread rape, summary executions and recruitment of child soldiers. The resolution expressed "deep concern" about external actors supporting the M23. But Ms. Rice prevailed in preventing the resolution from explicitly naming Rwanda when it was passed on Nov. 20. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Mr. Knopf, the spokesman for Ms. Rice, said the view of the United States was that delicate diplomatic negotiations under way among Rwanda, Congo and Uganda could have been adversely affected if the Security Council resolution explicitly named Rwanda. "Working with our colleagues in the Security Council, the United States helped craft a strong resolution to reinforce the delicate diplomatic effort then getting under way in Kampala," Mr. Knopf said. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>The negotiations subsequently fell apart, and the M23 continued to make gains in eastern Congo. Last week, the M23 withdrew from Goma but left behind agents and remain in range of the city. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Mr. Knopf declined to confirm or deny the account offered by the United Nations diplomat about the conversation between Ms. Rice and the French ambassador. But he said that "Ambassador Rice has frequently and publicly condemned the heinous abuses perpetrated by the M23 in eastern Congo," adding that the United States was "leading efforts to end the rebellion, including by leveling U.S. and U.N. sanctions against M23 leaders and commanders." <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Ms. Rice's critics say that is the crux of the problem with the American response to the crisis in Congo: it ignores, for the most part, the role played by Mr. Kagame in backing the M23, and, as it happens, risks repeating the mistakes of the genocide by not erring on the side of aggressive action. "I fear that our collective regret about not stopping the Rwandan genocide, felt by all of us who worked for the Clinton administration, led to policies that overlooked more waves of atrocities in the Congo, which we should equally regret," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, who has worked closely with Ms. Rice both in the Clinton administration and after. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>"For almost 20 years now, the premise of U.S. policy has been that quiet persuasion is the best way to restrain Rwanda from supporting war criminals in the Congo," Mr. Malinowski said. "It might have made sense once, but after years of Rwanda doing what the U.S. has urged it not to do, contributing to massive civilian deaths, and ripping up U.N. resolutions that the U.S. sponsored, the time to speak plainly and impose penalties has come." <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>When Mrs. Clinton appeared before reporters on Nov. 28 to talk about the M23's seizure of Goma, she sprinkled her talking points with a demand that the rebel group withdraw, calling the humanitarian impact "devastating," with 285,000 people forced to flee their homes, health workers abducted and killed, and civil workers under threat of death. But she made no mention of Rwanda's role backing the rebel group, limiting her inclusion of Rwanda to a mention of negotiations with Rwanda, Uganda and the Congo to try to get a cease-fire. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>"The M23 would probably no longer exist today without Rwandan support," said Jason K. Stearns, author of "Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of Congo and the Great War of Africa." "It stepped in to prevent the movement from collapsing and has been providing critical military support for every major offensive." <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, noted that the United States cut a portion of its military financing for Rwanda — around $250,000. But the Rwandan military continues to receive substantial American training, equipment and financial help. In an interview, he said, "There is not an ounce of difference between myself and Ambassador Rice on this issue," adding that quiet diplomacy was better than publicly calling out Mr. Kagame. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Ms. Rice, who has been at the eye of a political storm over her portrayal of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya, declined to be interviewed for this article. But in recent days, she seems to have tried to publicly distance herself from the M23 — although still not from Mr. Kagame. On Dec. 3, she posted on her Facebook page: "The U.S. condemns in the strongest terms horrific M23 violence. Any and all external support has to stop," in a reference to action in the Senate. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Her posting drew immediate responses. "Condemn the rape but don't name the rapist?" one of them said. "What kind of Justice is that?" <br /></span></p><p><br /> </p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:7pt'><strong><br /> </strong></span> </p></span>Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-21407793691486557172012-12-10T15:56:00.001-05:002012-12-10T15:56:41.497-05:00Susan Rice and Africa’s Despots<span xmlns=''><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:7pt'><strong>By SALEM SOLOMON<br /></strong></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:7pt'><strong>NYT Op-Ed, December 9, 2012<br /></strong></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman'><span style='font-size:7pt'><strong><br /> </strong></span><span style='font-size:12pt'>ON Sept. 2, Ambassador <a title='More articles about Susan E Rice.' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/susan_e_rice/index.html?inline=nyt-per'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'>Susan E. Rice</span></a> delivered a eulogy for a man she called "a true friend to me." Before thousands of mourners and more than 20 African heads of state in Addis Ababa, <a title='More news and information about Ethiopia.' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/ethiopia/index.html?inline=nyt-geo'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'>Ethiopia</span></a>, Ms. Rice, the United States' representative to the United Nations, lauded the country's late prime minister, <a title='More articles about Meles Zenawi.' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/z/meles_zenawi/index.html?inline=nyt-per'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'>Meles Zenawi</span></a>. She called him "brilliant" — "a son of Ethiopia and a father to its rebirth." <br /></span></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Few eulogies give a nuanced account of the decedent's life, but the speech was part of a disturbing pattern for an official who could become President Obama's next secretary of state. During her career, she has shown a surprising and unsettling sympathy for Africa's despots. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>This record dates from Ms. Rice's service as assistant secretary of state for African affairs under President Bill Clinton, who in 1998 celebrated a "new generation" of African leaders, many of whom were ex-rebel commanders; among these leaders were Mr. Meles, Isaias Afewerki of <a title='More news and information about Eritrea.' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/eritrea/index.html?inline=nyt-geo'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'>Eritrea</span></a>, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Jerry J. Rawlings of Ghana, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Yoweri K. Museveni of Uganda. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>"One hundred years from now your grandchildren and mine will look back and say this was the beginning of an African renaissance," Mr. Clinton said in Accra, Ghana, in March 1998. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>In remarks to a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that year, Ms. Rice was equally breathless about the continent's future. "There is a new interest in individual freedom and a movement away from repressive, one-party systems," she said. "It is with this new generation of Africans that we seek a dynamic, long-term partnership for the 21st century." <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Her optimism was misplaced. In the 14 years since, many of these leaders have tried on the strongman's cloak and found that it fit nicely. Mr. Meles dismantled the rule of law, silenced political opponents and forged a single-party state. Mr. Isaias, Mr. Kagame and Mr. Museveni cling to their autocratic power. Only Mr. Rawlings and Mr. Mbeki left office willingly. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Ms. Rice's enthusiasm for these leaders might have blinded her to some of their more questionable activities. Critics, including Howard W. French, a former correspondent for The New York Times, say that in the late 1990s, Ms. Rice tacitly approved of an invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo that was orchestrated by Mr. Kagame of Rwanda and supported by Mr. Museveni of Uganda. In The New York Review of Books in 2009, Mr. French reported that witnesses had heard Ms. Rice describe the two men as the best insurance against genocide in the region. "They know how to deal with that," he reported her as having said. "The only thing we have to do is look the other way." Ms. Rice has denied supporting the invasion. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>More recently, according to Jason K. Stearns, a scholar of the region, Ms. Rice temporarily blocked a United Nations report documenting Rwanda's support for the M23 rebel group now operating in eastern Congo, and later moved to delete language critical of Rwanda and Uganda from a Security Council resolution. "According to former colleagues, she feels that more can be achieved by constructive engagement, not public censure," Mr. Stearns wrote recently on Foreign Policy's Web site. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Ms. Rice's relationship with Mr. Meles — which dates from 1998, when she was a mediator in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to prevent war between Eritrea and Ethiopia — also calls her judgment into question. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>In fairness, in her eulogy, Ms. Rice said she differed with Mr. Meles on questions like democracy and human rights. But if so, the message did not get through; under Mr. Meles during the past 15 years, democracy and the rule of law in Ethiopia steadily deteriorated. Ethiopia imprisoned dissidents and journalists, used <a title='More articles about food aid.' href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/food_aid/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'>food aid</span></a> as a political tool, appropriated vast sections of land from its citizens and prevented the United Nations from demarcating its border with Eritrea. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Meanwhile, across multiple administrations, the United States has favored Ethiopia as an ally and a perceived bulwark against extremism in the region. In 2012 the nation received $580 million in American foreign aid. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Eritrea is no innocent. It has closed itself off, stifled dissent and forced its young people to choose between endless military service at home and seeking asylum abroad. But I believe that the Security Council, with Ms. Rice's support, went too far in imposing sanctions on Eritrea in 2009 for supporting extremists. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>President Obama has visited sub-Saharan Africa just once in his first term — a brief stop in Ghana. One signal that he plans to focus more on Africa — and on human rights and democracy, not only economic development and geopolitics — in his next term would be to nominate someone other than Susan Rice as America's top diplomat. <br /></span></p><p><a href='http://salemsolomon.wordpress.com/author/salemsolomon/'><span style='color:blue; font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'>Salem Solomon</span></a><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'> is an Eritrean-American journalist who runs Africa Talks, a news and opinion Web site covering Africa and the global African diaspora.<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:7pt'><strong><br /> </strong></span> </p></span>Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-42395581431917604572012-12-10T15:54:00.001-05:002012-12-10T15:54:26.969-05:00THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MELES ZENAWI<span xmlns=''><p><strong>African Development: Dead Ends and New Beginnings</strong>, by Meles Zenawi. Unpublished Masters Dissertation: Erasmus University, Rotterdam, no date.<br /></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Alex de Waal*<br /></span></p><p><em>African Affairs, London, December 5,</em><br /> <em>2012</em><span style='color:blue; font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'><br /> </span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>In the months following his death on 20 August, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has been eulogized and demonized in equal measure. But his policies, and the transformational paradigm on which they were based, have rarely been elucidated. While alive, Meles was equally indifferent to praise and blame. To those who acclaimed Ethiopia's remarkable economic growth, he would ask, do they understand that his policies completely contradicted the neo-liberal Washington Consensus? To those who condemned his measures against the political opposition and civil society organizations, he demanded to know how they would define democracy and seek a feasible path to it, in a political economy dominated by patronage and rent seeking? <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Meles did not hide his views, but neither did he ever fully present his theory of the 'democratic developmental state' to an international audience. Over nearly 25 years, I was fortunate to be able to discuss political economy with him regularly, including critiquing his incomplete and unpublished master's dissertation. During this time, his thinking evolved, but his basic principles and sensibilities remained constant. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>World leaders have lauded Meles' economic achievements without acknowledging their theoretical basis. Human rights organizations have decried his political record as though he were a routine despot with no agenda other than hanging on to power. Reviewing his writings on the developmental state, this essay shows the unity of his theory and practice. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Meles had the quiet certitude of someone who had been tested – and seen his people tested – to the limit. Along with his comrades in arms in the leadership of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), he had looked into the abyss of collective destruction, and his career was coloured by the knowledge that Ethiopia could still go over that precipice. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Many times during sixteen years of armed struggle in the mountains of northern Ethiopia against the then-military regime led by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, Meles had close personal brushes with death. In 1988, he and other central committee members avoided a likely-fatal aerial bombing by just twenty minutes after their hideout was betrayed by a spy and Ethiopian fighter-bombers targeted it. Later that year, he was taken gravely ill with malaria and was evacuated to hospital in Khartoum – one of the very few times he left the field during the entire armed struggle. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>As Meles crossed the border back into Ethiopia, I met him for the first time, and we began the first of our seminars on political economy. As dusk fell, still recuperating in his pyjamas, Comrade Meles climbed aboard a creaky Soviet Zil truck, captured from the Ethiopian army. All travel was at night, to avoid the MiGs, and we bumped our way along rocky tracks, first through the forested lowlands, camping out during daylight hours under trees next to a dry riverbed. Such was the itinerant life of the TPLF leadership. The next night our truck rumbled up a road cut through the mountainside by the guerrillas, with hairpins so tight that our truck had to make three-point turns. We spent the next day in caves at the TPLF's temporary headquarters in a mountain called Dejena, and the next nightfall I watched as an apparently uninhabited hillside gave forth a battalion of men, a dozen trucks and a tank, all of them completely obscured by camouflage until that moment. The TPLF had turned concealment into science. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>The discomfort of the journey was less memorable than the travelling discussion group of Comrade Meles, Comrade Seyoum (head of TPLF foreign relations and later Ethiopia's longest-serving Foreign Minister), a dozen fighters, a representative from a European agricultural assistance agency, and myself. I learned quickly that the most necessary attribute of a guerrilla fighter is functioning without sleep. Meles was a voracious consumer of information and analysis, and a tireless questioner. We discussed perestroika in the USSR, theories of people's liberation warfare, the imperfections of grain markets, and, above all, peasant survival strategies during drought. At one point we met a hunter on the track and Meles spent an hour discussing with him the importance of conserving endangered species. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Meles was a convinced Marxist-Leninist, pragmatic but certain that the way of life of the Ethiopian peasants had to change or die. Having just completed my doctoral dissertation on famine survival strategies in Sudan, I tried to convince him that rural people were best served by diversified livelihoods, and that pastoral nomadism was an effective adaptation to the vagaries of life in a drought-prone ecosystem. He did his best to convince me that traditional livelihoods were doomed to stagnation and that Ethiopian peasants had to specialize in farming, trade, or livestock rearing. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>The abiding impression left by Meles and the TPLF leadership was that their theory and practice were deeply rooted in the realities of Ethiopia, and that they would succeed or fail on their terms and no others. The TPLF had convinced the people, and that was all that mattered. They did not measure their record or their policies against external standards; on the contrary, they evaluated outside precepts against their own experience and logic. It was a refreshing, even inspiring, dose of intellectual self-reliance. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Meles was unflinchingly optimistic about the prospects for the armed struggle and assured me that the Tigrayan guerrillas, until a few months previously confined to the hills and the borderlands with Sudan, would penetrate as far south as Shewa, the Amhara heartland just a hundred miles from the capital Addis Ababa, within a year. I did not take his promise seriously (neither did any other non-Ethiopian). But he was correct, and within two and a half years, the TPLF – now a member of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition – achieved the remarkable feat of capturing the capital city. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>The EPRDF took Addis Ababa on 28 May 1991, amid international predictions that Ethiopia would go the way of Somalia, where guerrillas had overrun Mogadishu just four months earlier. On 31 May, government salaries and pensions were due. They were paid on time. Police were back on the street within days. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>During the next 21 years, Meles often looked as though he was camping out in the palace. He moved into his predecessor's semi-subterranean bunker home in the sprawling grounds of the old palace of the Emperor Menelik, and took over Mengistu's spacious but damp modernist executive office. The artwork scarcely changed over the next two decades, the carpets just once. Meles was not interested in the trappings of power, only in what could be done with it. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>From the outset, what needed to be done was to conquer poverty. From his early days in the field through to his last years as an international statesman, Meles was absolutely consistent in this aim. Ethiopia's overriding national challenge was to end poverty, and in turn this needed a comprehensive, theoretically rigorous practice of development. Marxism-Leninism was, for him, not a dogma but a rigorous method for assembling evidence and argument, to be bent to the realities of armed struggle and development. When the TPLF first administered 'liberated' territories in the 1970s, it took a conventional leftist line, tried to regulate trade and moneylending, and failed. The Front responded by adjusting its policies to encourage the local petit bourgeoisie in the villages and small towns it controlled. When the great famine of 1984–5 struck, the TPLF took the strategic decision to make feeding the peasantry its priority, even at the expense of losing ground to the enemy. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Meles was primus inter pares in the EPRDF's collective leadership and chief economic theoretician. In an episode made famous by Joseph Stiglitz,<a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'><sup>1</sup></span></a> Meles objected to the IMF position that international assistance was too unpredictable to be incorporated into national budget planning purposes, with the absurd consequence that national spending on infrastructure, health, and education could not be increased in line with foreign aid flows. Meles produced arguments and data and forced the Bretton Woods Institutions to rethink. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Meles inverted Kissinger's dictum that holding office consumes intellectual capital rather than creating it. He was always learning, reading, debating, and writing, and while he never abandoned the fundamental principles forged in the field, his views evolved greatly. After 1991, he studied for a degree in Business Administration at the Open University (graduating first in his class) and subsequently a Masters in Economics at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, under the supervision of the former Minister of Development Cooperation, Jan Pronk. He never finished his thesis due to the outbreak of war with Eritrea in 1998, but the draft manuscript, 'African Development: Dead Ends and New Beginnings', was the justification and blueprint for a 'democratic developmental state'. Excerpts are available online with the intriguing disclaimer: 'The author is the Prime Minister of Ethiopia. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Government.'<a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'><sup>2</sup></span></a> Some of his analysis is also contained in a chapter in a recent collection edited by Akbar Noman and others.<a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'><sup>3</sup></span></a><br /> </span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>The war with Eritrea not only interrupted Meles' studies but provoked the most bitter dissension within the EPRDF. Meles was accused of having been soft on Eritrea and blind to Eritrean preparations for war, and subsequently for stopping the war once Ethiopia had expelled the invader from occupied territory. The internal party debate then took an ideological turn that seems to outsiders to be oddly anachronistic, replete with references to Bonapartism and the 'Kulak line'. Meles clearly stated that there should be no confusion that the EPRDF's mission was to build a capitalist state. He further stated that rent seeking and patronage within the ruling party posed the key dangers to this objective, and they needed to be thoroughly stamped out. Meles' adversaries accused him of selling his revolutionary soul to imperialism and serving Eritrea at the expense of Ethiopia. Meles won by the skin of his teeth – just two votes in the Central Committee of the TPLF. His rivals then walked out and Meles seized the moment to consolidate his power. The next decade was to be his chance both to hone and to implement his theory of 'democratic developmentalism'. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>One may disagree with Meles' thesis or argue that he failed to implement it properly. But without question it represents a serious attempt to develop, and apply, an authentically African philosophy of the goals and strategies of development. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>He explained the background to me. 'For the first ten years after we took over,' he said, 'we were bewildered by the changes. The New World Order was very visible and especially so in this part of the world. The prospect of an independent line appeared very bleak. So we fought a rearguard action not to privatize too much.'<a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'><sup>4</sup></span></a><br /> </span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Meles was doubly constrained: internally the EPRDF was regressing, rehearsing its rhetoric but practising what Meles came to dub pervasive 'socially wasteful rent seeking.'<a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'><sup>5</sup></span></a> But after emerging from the fractious debates of 2000–1, Meles had the upper hand, at the same time as international thinking shifted away from the neo-liberal demand for a non-interventionist 'night-watchman' state towards recognizing the need for a capable state to lead development. Meles agreed with the neo-liberals that the 'predatory state' of Africa's first post-colonial decades was one dead end, but argued that allowing the market to rule was a second dead end. 'You cannot change a rent-seeking political economy just by reducing the size and role of the state. The neo-liberal paradigm does not allow for technological capacity accumulation, which lies at the heart of development. For that, an activist state is needed, that will allocate state rents in a productive manner.'<a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'><sup>6</sup></span></a><br /> </span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>South Korea and Taiwan were Meles' favourite examples of developmental states that succeeded by subverting neo-liberal dogma. China's rise provided something else: by challenging American dominance it made space for alternatives. In his thesis he wrote, 'there has to be more political space for experimentation in development policy than has been the case so far in Africa … The international community has a role in creating such a space by tolerating development paradigms that are different from the orthodoxy preached by it. Africans have to demand and create such a space' (p. 39). <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Meles' starting point was that Ethiopia (and indeed Africa as a whole) lacked comparative advantage in any productive field. He laid out his case in one discussion we held.<a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'><sup>7</sup></span></a> 'African workers produce textiles at nine times the price of the Chinese.' Similarly, African foodstuffs could not compete in international markets. 'In these circumstances, the best way to make money is through rent: natural resource rent, aid rent, policy rent. So the private sector will be rent-seeking not value creating, it will go for the easy way and make money through rent.'<a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'><sup>8</sup></span></a> In reaction to this, Ethiopia postponed private land ownership and kept state control of the financial sector and telecoms. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>The argument continued, 'If the state guides the private sector, there is a possibility of shifting to value creation – it needs state action to lead the private sector from its preference (rent seeking) to its long-term interest (value creation). So the state needs autonomy.'<a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'><sup>9</sup></span></a> The government should choose when and how to partner with the private sector (an example was developing Ethiopia's leather industry) and should invest in education and research. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Meles clearly identified the challenge of development as primarily a political one: it is necessary to master the technicalities of economics, but essential not to let them become a dogma that masters you. It is the politics of the state that unlocks development. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>The 'developmental state' should, he argued, be obsessed with value creation, making accelerated and broad-based growth a matter of national survival. If Ethiopia could sustain its growth levels – which have been running at close to 10 percent per annum for most of the last decade – it could achieve middle-income status and escape from its trap. To succeed in this, a third element was needed, namely the hegemony of developmental discourse, in the Gramscian sense that it is an internalized set of assumptions, not an imposed order. Meles liked to give the example of corrupt customs officials in Taiwan, who exacted bribes worth 12 percent of the value of imports of consumer goods, while not demanding bribes on imported capital goods, illustrating how value creation had been internalized in this way – so that even the thieves followed the norm. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>African countries might have the trappings of human rights and democracy, but, he said, 'there is no sustainable democracy in a society characterized by pervasive rent seeking. We need value creation to be dominant for there to be a foundation of democracy, for politics to be more than a zero sum game, a competition to control state rents.' Worse, he added, 'I am convinced that we will cease to exist as a nation unless we grow fast and share our growth.'<a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'><sup>10</sup></span></a><br /> </span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Thus far, I found Meles' case compelling, though I questioned if it were possible to create a common mindset of value creation in a country as vast and diverse as Ethiopia, in such a short period. Was there not a danger that a theory, however sophisticated, would degenerate into a set of dogmas parroted by party cadres who scarcely understood the meaning of 'pervasive rent seeking' but who knew the rewards of loyally following the party line? Meles' response was that the EPRDF had indeed neglected political education and party organization for years, which explained the 2000–1 internal crisis and the poor performance in the 2005 elections, including being wiped out in the major cities. But, he argued, a new generation of leaders was emerging, he was renewing the party at all levels, and, above all, his policies were delivering results. Ethiopians had never, ever, experienced anything like the recent economic growth and the spectacular expansion in infrastructure and services – and this, he said, would transform the country in the next fifteen years. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Included in Meles' paradigm was a theory of democracy. He writes, 'Even if a developmental state was to be solely concerned about accelerating growth, it would have to build the high social capital that is vital for its endeavours. It would have to stamp out patronage and rent seeking. These are the very same things that create the basis for democratic politics that is relatively free from patronage' (p. 10). <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Meles condemned liberal formulae as 'trickle-up democracy' and said that, in a poor developing nation, political parties and NGOs would easily become patronage mechanisms, rather than the basis for a true associational political culture and sustainable development. He feared a 'no-choice democracy' in which factions contested for which one could best loot the state. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Developmental states could come in several forms, Meles argued, provided that they maintained the hegemony of value creation, were autonomous from the private sector, stamped out rent seeking and patronage, and maintained policy continuity for sufficiently long to succeed. A developmental state could be authoritarian, but in Africa's ethnically diverse societies, democratic legitimacy was a <em>sine qua non</em>. Ethiopia's ethnic federalism and decentralization reflected this. Meles said his preference was to have two competing parties, each of which stood for developmental values, but in their absence the option would be a stable dominant party or dominant coalition, such as Japan or Sweden enjoyed in post-war decades. In the Ethiopian case, he wrote, 'the peasant is the bedrock of a stable developmental coalition'. His critics said this denied them the chance of voting for real alternatives. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Hence, Meles' approach to democracy and human rights was all of a piece with his overall theory. He said, 'when [the developmental state] has done its job it will undermine its own social base, to be replaced by a social democratic or liberal democratic coalition'. Meanwhile, he argued, what meaning did liberal civil and political rights have in a context of abject poverty or political chaos? Development and a strong state were prerequisites for human rights, and Ethiopia needed to establish these first. Justifiable or not, this is a serious argument that deserves serious assessment. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>In early 2011, I asked Meles why he had been so reticent about his theory. He replied that he should not jeopardize Ethiopia's interests by pursuing a personal intellectual agenda that would be sure to draw fire from his numerous critics and detractors. However, he added that his ideas, which had been heretical just a few years earlier, were becoming common currency, and that as the time approached for him to leave office at the 2015 elections, he planned to update his dissertation and publish it.<a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'><sup>11</sup></span></a><br /> </span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>Almost 25 years ago, Meles was indifferent to opinion and argument that failed to match his own standards, and was quietly confident that Ethiopians would shape their own history, and that history would prove him right. Recently, when I asked Meles what he would consider his legacy, he was uninterested in those who hailed his government as triumph or disaster, and addressed only the question of whether developmentalism was becoming hegemonic in Ethiopia.<a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'><sup>12</sup></span></a> It would be another decade, he said, before that question could be answered. Meles also said that the intellectual work of articulating the theoretical grounding of his politics, and extending that analysis to what he called the 'archetypal' African state, characterized by a vigorous political marketplace, was just beginning. Enough of Meles' writings are in the public sphere to demonstrate that Meles was a truly original thinker. Let us hope that his unpublished papers provide sufficient material to fill out the other, less explored, areas of his intellectual inquiries. <br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:18pt'><strong>Footnotes<br /></strong></span></p><ul><li><a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; font-family:Cambria Math; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'>↵</span></a><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>1. Joseph Stiglitz, <em>Globalization and Its Discontents</em> (Norton, New York, NY, 2002), pp. 27–30. <br /></span></li><li><a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; font-family:Cambria Math; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'>↵</span></a><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>2. <<a href='http://cgt.columbia.edu/files/conferences/Zenawi_Dead_Ends_and_New_Beginnings.pdf'><span style='color:blue; text-decoration:underline'>http://cgt.columbia.edu/files/conferences/Zenawi_Dead_Ends_and_New_Beginnings.pdf</span></a>>(23 October 2012). <br /></span></li><li><a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; font-family:Cambria Math; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'>↵</span></a><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>3. Meles Zenawi, 'State and markets: neoliberal limitations and the case for a developmental state' in Akbar Noman, Kwesi Botchwey, Howard Stein, and Joseph Stiglitz (eds), <em>Good Growth and Governance in Africa: Rethinking development strategies</em> (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012). <br /></span></li><li><a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; font-family:Cambria Math; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'>↵</span></a><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>4. Discussion, Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister's Office, Addis Ababa, 16 October 2010. <br /></span></li><li><a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; font-family:Cambria Math; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'>↵</span></a><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>5. Zenawi, 'States and markets,' p. 169. <br /></span></li><li><a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; font-family:Cambria Math; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'>↵</span></a><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>6. Discussion, Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister's Office, Addis Ababa, 26 February 2011. <br /></span></li><li><a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; font-family:Cambria Math; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'>↵</span></a><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>7. Discussion, Zenawi, 16 October 2010. <br /></span></li><li><a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; font-family:Cambria Math; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'>↵</span></a><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>8. <em>Ibid.</em><br /> </span></li><li><a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; font-family:Cambria Math; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'>↵</span></a><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>9. <em>Ibid.</em><br /> </span></li><li><a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; font-family:Cambria Math; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'>↵</span></a><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>10. Discussion, Meles Zenawi, Prime Ministers Office, Addis Ababa, 17 October 2008. <br /></span></li><li><a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; font-family:Cambria Math; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'>↵</span></a><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>11. Discussion, Zenawi, 26 February 2011. <br /></span></li><li><a href='http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/04/afraf.ads081.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=NBplmdUjEpY2AIv'><span style='color:blue; font-family:Cambria Math; font-size:12pt; text-decoration:underline'>↵</span></a><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'>12. <em>Ibid</em>. <br /></span></li></ul><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p>*Alex de Waal (<a href='mailto:Alex.DeWaal@tufts.edu'>Alex.DeWaal@tufts.edu</a>) is Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School, Tufts University.<br /></p></span>Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-82468110789560449622012-12-05T15:41:00.001-05:002012-12-05T15:41:25.243-05:00A Conversation with Alemayehu Fentaw on Latest Developments in Ethiopian Politics<span xmlns=''><p><br /> </p><p style='margin-left: 36pt'><br /> </p><p style='margin-left: 36pt'><strong>Jawar Mohammed: The constitutionality of the creation of three Deputy Prime Ministers has been questioned. Is there a constitutional violation at all, if so whats violated?<br/><span style='font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt'><br /> </span></strong></p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>The Constitution doesn't envision multiple Deputy Prime Ministers. Rather, the Constitution provides for a single, undivided, post of the Deputy Prime Minister in the same way as it does in respect of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister can't, on his own, create ministerial posts or executive offices. He's invested with the power of filling executive offices by appointment as long as the nominees are endorsed by parliament, but he can't create executive offices. This is evident even from a cursory perusal of Articles 75 and 74(2) of the Constitution. My reading of the letter and spirit of the Constitution is that the post of the Deputy Prime Minister is as undivided and singular as that of the Prime Minister. The present appointments are clearly unconstitutional. However, In Ethiopia, if the needs of the Executive come into conflict with the Constitution, too bad for the Constitution.<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>Art. 77(2) stipulates that "It shall decide on the organizational structure of ministries and other organs of government responsible to it; it shall coordinate their activities and provide leadership."<br/><br/>As can be gathered from this provision, this is what the Council of Ministers can do, not the PM alone. Besides, what the CoM can do is to pass a "decision", not to enact a proclamation, as to the organizational structure of ministries." Even to "decide on the organizational structure of ministries" does not mean to create additional ministerial offices or posts only by a fiat decision of the CoM.<br/><br/>That such powers are invested not with the CoM, but with the HoPR should be clear from Art.76(3), which stipulates that "In all its decisions, the Council of Ministers is responsible to the House of Peoples' Representatives." It only states that the Executive has the power to "decide" on the issue under consideration. This does only mean that it has to submit its decision on the organization of the structure of the ministries to the House for approval. It becomes evident this article is about the power to change the internal structure of existing ministries, but not about creating additional ministerial posts. To reiterate, this can only be done first by amending the part of the Constitution that provides, in no ambiguous words, for a singular and undivided office of the deputy prime minister. Besides, even when approved by the HoF, it has to be issued in the form of a proclamation, not even a regulation, to amend the existing proclamation for the establishment and definition of powers of the Executive. Even such proclamations cannot amend the Constitution. This is called "hierarchy of laws." I guess this is the part they missed in their training at Civil Service College.<br/><br/><br/>The alternative contention that the two additional appointees are not deputy prime ministers, even if they hold such a rank also flies in the face of the reality on the ground. If not deputy prime ministers, then what are they? I am sure you won't say "coordinators," "managers," or "advisors"<br/><br/>This poses a very serious problem to accountability. You know, accountability is a cardinal constitutional principle and it saddens me to see that defenders of the current appointments missed out on its salience. Now the question is: Who are they accountable to, as distinct from Demeke Mekonnen, who is accountable to the PM? In other words, if there's only one Deputy Prime Minister in the person of Demeke Mekonnen, then who are the additional two deputy prime ministers accountable to? You won't tell us that they are accountable to Demeke Mekonnen as he is only the first among equals (primus inter pares).<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>Another, but related issue has to do with succession. As Eng. Mekonnen Kassa put it, "God forbid, if the current PM Hailemariam were to pass, who would be in line to become Acting/Interim PM?" In other words, would they promote all three of them on a fast-track to premiership? The impression that the present appointments and the whole unfolding political drama gives me is that this body politic called Ethiopia is being run as if it were in a state of emergency. So sad. I wished it to be rooted in a solid ground, unshakable, stably anchored in a constitution and constitutionalism. This is lamentable!<br/><br/></span><br/><br/><br/><strong>Jawar Mohammed: If there is a need for three deputy Prime Ministers, what process should be followed and who is constitutionally empowered to do so?</strong><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>The procedure of constitutional amendment set out in the Constitution itself must be strictly followed. First a proposal for amendment has to be initiated. According to Article 104 of the Constitution, "Any proposal for constitutional amendment, if supported by two-thirds majority vote in the House of Peoples' Representatives, or by a two-thirds majority vote in the House of the Federation or when one-third of the State Councils of the member States of the Federation, by a majority vote in each Council have supported it, shall be submitted for discussion and decision to the general public and to those whom the amendment of the Constitution concerns." Second, the proposed amendment must be approved by a two-thirds majority vote of the House of Peoples' Representatives and the House of the Federation, in a joint session, and when two-thirds of the State Councils approve the proposed amendment by majority votes. (Art. 105(2))<br/><br/></span><strong>Jawar Mohammed: One explanation from the government' side is that ' there are no three deputies but one. The other two are just ministers with the Rank of Deputy PM"? Does that help the government go around the constitutional dilemma?</strong><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>No, you can't get away with such kind of poorly-reasoned-out arguments. That started out with Bereket Simon scoffing at rumors about such possibilities. Now, some people are quick at recycling what they were fed by the state media. They tell you that these are only "coordinators" of sorts with the rank of deputy prime minister for reasons best known to themselves. Others, out of ignorance or ill-education, tell you that the Prime Minister can legitimately create ministerial offices or posts acting through the Council of Ministers. A typical reasoning of a Civil Service College pedigree was offered by Sisay Mengistie, who contends "The PM using Council of Ministers can create offices (See Art. 77(2)) and to me still there is no more than one Deputy Prime Minister rather with rank of Deputy Prime Minister." <br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>I've tried to show at great length that the latest moves fail the test of constitutionality above. But, to reiterate, simply, appointing more ministers than is required by the constitution is unconstitutional. Neither more nor less.<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> <br/><br/><strong>Jawar Mohammed: Following Meles' death military officers were promoted without a seating PM, confirmation of the new PM was delayed for a month and now three deputies are created--each of these action have raised constitutional questions. What does the action taken by the party tell us about the state of the constitution in the contemporary Ethiopian politics?</strong><br/><br/><span style='font-size:12pt'>I'd call that a silent coup d'état. The question of succession was decided then and there by the body that endorsed the promotions, even where there was no one to assume the responsibility of the Commander-in-Chief. That was by far the most decisive appointment ever made during the period of succession. The addition of </span>37 Generals, most of whom from the TPLF, to the top brass radically transforms the nature of the defense forces. The party within the EPRDF coalition that overwhelms the chain of command of the defense forces decides Ethiopia's fate. <br /></p><p style='text-align: justify'>Recall that the promotions were sort of rushed, given that a prime minister, who, ex officio is also the commander-in-chief of the defense forces, had not yet been sworn in. Besides, it was not clear whether Hailemariam Desalegn was the acting Prime Minister, because he was still the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. He couldn't be all at once. You can say there's collective leadership, but that is not the sort of leadership we want to see in Ethiopia. Collective leadership is a relic of communism. Moreover, the process in which the promotions were made lacks in transparency. As you know, accountability and transparency are two much talked about principles of governance in Ethiopia, which, however, are missing in action.<br /></p><p style='text-align: justify'>It is common knowledge that EPRDF launched a program of generational change(aka Metekakat) within the ranks of its leadership in 2009. A point I believe was pioneered by none other than Tefera Walwa, but parroted by the late Meles Zenawi. That program extended its reach to the Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF) in 2010 with a view to replacing 561 high-ranking officers. Leaving the current promotions aside, until 2011, 13 Generals and 303 Colonels had been replaced. The launch of this program also aimed at promoting the equitable representation of the country's diverse ethnic groups in the ENDF's top brass. This point was emphasized by Siraj Fegessa, the Defense Minister, who said that an affirmative action will be put in place to enhance the ethnic composition of the army. <br/><br/>How is changing the ethnic composition of the top brass of the defense forces at such a critical stage as in during the extended absence of a Prime Minister, in the history of a country where ethnicity is politically not only salient, but decisive, different from a coup? It's an outright reversal of the "metekakat" program, if not a coup?<span style='font-size:12pt'><br /> </span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>This coupled with the current appointments of Debretsion Gebremichael (PhD) and Tewodros Adhanom (PhD), both of them from TPLF, to the posts of Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister respectively, sealed the succession chapter in favor of TPLF at least until 2015, if we can hope against hope. <br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>What the whole history of Ethiopia's constitutional development since its adoption in 1994 tells us is just one thing. If constitutions are meant to guarantee checks on political power and ensure the rights of citizens, Ethiopia's is a spectacularly unconstitutional constitution. It's a long story and it's even too stupid to try to explain that.<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><strong>Jawar Mohammed: Before winding up our conversation, a general observation you want to make regarding homeland politics:<br /></strong></p><p>The EPRDFites succumb to self-delusion in entertaining the idea that economic development is all that matters whilst the oppositionists suffer from self-deception in engaging in reluctance to give credit to improvements under EPRDF.<br/><br/>The oppositionists engage in self-delusion in thinking that EPRDF is entirely unpatriotic whereas EPRDF engages in self-deception in characterizing the pan-Ethiopian oppositionists as chauvinist Amhara nationalists and the Oromos as narrow ethnicists.</p></span>Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-783858531338181733.post-18929857374745406042012-12-05T15:27:00.001-05:002012-12-05T15:27:11.958-05:00A refreshed cabinet!<span xmlns=''><p>By Kirubel Tadesse, Capital<br /></p><p>Tuesday, 04 December 2012<br /></p><p><br /> </p><p><strong><em><span style='font-family:Arial; font-size:12pt'>Three Deputy Prime Ministers New top diplomat </span>Embattled and fired minister<br /></em></strong></p><p><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn on Thursday promoted two more ministers to double as Deputy Prime Ministers while swapping and firing others, a move that drastically reshaped the country's top executive branch.<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>Named both the ruling party chair and Prime Minister following the sudden death of Meles Zenawi in August, Hailemariam for months worked with the cabinet he inherited from his successor, until the reshuffle earlier this week. Three deputies, three sectors A first for the country, Thursday's parliamentery session approved the request of PM Hailemariam to have three Deputies.<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>In a move seen by analysts as made to give the cabinet an ethnic balance, Muktar Kedir from Oromia, and Debretsion Gebremichael (PhD) from Tigray are now both Deputy Prime Ministers. The two share the post with Education Minister Demeke Mekonnen, who was appointed back in September representing the ruling party's Amhara wing.<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>Some legal experts are questioning the constitutionality of having more than one deputy prime minister. The Constitution doesn't envision multiple Deputy Prime Ministers. Rather, the Constitution provides for a single, undivided, post of the Deputy Prime Minister in the same way it does in respect to the Prime Minister," says Alemayehu Fentaw, Horn of Africa specialist at the University of Texas. Alemayehu, who has taught law in Ethiopia, argues that the latest appointments have breached the Constitution.<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>PM Hailemariam, who did not face such critics during Thursday's session, said each of his three deputies will have distinct responsibilities, leading different sectors. He told lawmakers the move would improve leadership in the federal government. It also allows the Prime Minister to focus on development projects and defense, say senior ruling party officials. While some ministries would remain under the direct oversight of the Prime Minister's office, others will be grouped in clusters to be headed by the deputies.<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>Demeke is expected to spearhead the social sector and relevant ministries. Debretsion and Muktar are heading the finance and economic and good-governance reform clusters respectively. Debretsion will also remain as Minister of Communication and Information Technology, a position he has held since 2010.<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>Muktar was serving as head of the PM's Office and Cabinet Affairs Minister, a position expected to be filled in the coming weeks.<br /></span></p><p><br /> </p><p><span style='font-family:Arial Unicode MS; font-size:12pt'><strong>Embattled and now fired<br /></strong></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>The new Deputy Prime Minister Muktar Kedir also replaced the embattled Junedin Sado, as the Civil Service Minister. Junedin held a number of cabinet positions over the years, including Transport and Communication and Science and Technology ministerial posts. He has always been favored by Meles in the past for similar appointments and reshuffles. His apparent demotion comes amid terrorism charges against his wife. Federal prosecutors say the Minister's wife, Habiba Mohammed, has been coordinating finance for a group they say was trying to establish an Islamic State and undermine the country's secular constitution. Police said Habiba was 'caught red handed' leaving the Saudi Arabian embassy in Addis Ababa with 50,000 birr intended to fund the alleged plot. Habiba strongly denied the charges. Junedin, in a letter he sent to local papers, came to her defense, stating that the money was going to support a mosque their family is building. Police have rejected the Minister's claims and the case is currently before a federal high court. Junedin was similarly demoted from the party's top leadership before being removed from the cabinet. He has also been removed from chairing the board of directors of Addis Ababa University. Federation House Speaker Kassa Teklebirhan has replaced him as the AAU's new board chairperson.<br /></span></p><p><br /> </p><p><span style='font-family:Arial Unicode MS; font-size:12pt'><strong>A new top diplomat<br /></strong></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>In another reshuffle, Health Minister Tedros Adhanom (PhD), was moved from his post to become a Foreign Affairs Minister. The position has remained vacant since August when Hailemariam became PM.<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>While many expected State Minister Berhane Gebrekirstos to rise in the ranks and become a full Minister, Hailemaraim surprised pundits by appointing Tedros to lead the country's diplomacy. Over the past seven years when he served as Health Minister, Tedros was a celebrated public servant even among ruling party critics. He was hailed for boosting health care services across the country which significantly reduced HIV/AIDS and Malaria related deaths. His educational background is also in the health sector. He holds a doctorate in Community Health from the University of Nottingham as well as a Masters in Immunology of Infectious Diseases from the University of London. He completed his undergraduate studies in Biology at Asmara University in 1986.<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>The decision to remove him from his successful stint in the health sector not only came as a surprise but was not favored by many who saw it as a mere political deal among contesting ruling party elites. <br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>Tedros' deputy Dr. Kesetebirhan Admassu has been promoted to become Health Minister. <br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>Kebede Chane is officially the Trade Minister, a position he held for months without the approval of the house after his predecessor was fired by Meles.<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p style='text-align: justify'><span style='font-size:12pt'>All of the five appointees were sworn in by Tegene Getaneh, President of the Federal Supreme Court after the house voted in approval.<br /></span></p><p style='text-align: justify'><br /> </p><p><span style='font-size:12pt'>The PM's office, which needs a new head itself, is expected to appoint new state ministers for Trade and Health.</span></p></span>Alemayehu F. Weldemariamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07318106452676636864noreply@blogger.com0