"To attribute the crisis to external, foreign conspiracy is
unjustifiable. Eritrea, still in an on/off state of war with Ethiopia,
and Egypt, deeply alarmed by the construction of a colossal dam on the
Nile, would undoubtedly welcome a weakening of Ethiopia. It may even
be that they are trying to fan the flames. But they do not have the
means to light the fire and keep it burning. And the ruling power’s
claim that they have been able to do so is itself an admission of
weakness: for them to succeed, the regime must already have been
resting on weak foundations"
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ren-lefort/ethiopian-spring-killing-is-not-answer-to-our-grievances
openDemocracy
The ‘Ethiopian Spring’: “Killing is not an answer to our grievances”
RENÉ LEFORT 9 September 2016
There is every sign that Ethiopia is plunging into a crisis whose
scale, intensity, and multiple and interdependent drivers are
unprecedented since the founding of the regime in 1991.
Ethiopian PM, Hailemariam Desalegn attends African Summit in Ethiopian
capital Addis Ababa January 2016. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene). All
rights reserved.The Ethiopian leadership remains in denial. The long
meetings of its ruling bodies have culminated in a report on 15 years
of national “rebirth”, in which it awards itself good marks, while
acknowledging the existence of a few problems here and there.
Nonetheless, the odd warning signal may be heard – though very seldom
– in counterpoint to the general complacency. Hailemariam Desalegn,
prime minister and chairman of what is essentially the single party,
has gone so far as to warn that the issues facing the regime are a
matter of “life or death”,[1]and that Ethiopia is “sliding towards
ethnic conflict similar to that in neighbouring countries”.[2]
Well, these neighbouring countries include Somalia, epitome of the
‘failed state’, and Sudan, which has split in two and where civil war
is raging in the new Southern State. In this, unusually, he is in
agreement with Merera Gudina, head of one of the main opposition
parties still permitted to operate, whospeaks of the probability of
“civil war […] if the government continues to repress”.[3] There is
every sign that Ethiopia is plunging into a crisis whose scale,
intensity, and multiple and interdependent drivers are unprecedented
since the founding of the regime in 1991, although the impossibility
of field research precludes any in-depth and conclusive assessment.
The first, very discreet signs of this crisis appeared in the spring
of 2014 in a part of the country where they were probably least
expected: in Tigray, where the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front
(TPLF), pillar of the quadri-ethnic party ruling coalition – the
Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) – seemed
both unopposed and unopposable.
Yet the Tigreans loudly and clearly accused “their” Front of
neglecting them by only looking after its own interests or, as
Hailemariam Desalegn expressed it, of using “public authority for
personal gain at all levels”.[4]
The crisis erupted into the open a few weeks later in Oromya, with
additional grievances. In the most populous of the nine states and two
municipalities that make up federal Ethiopia, a state that is also the
country’s economic powerhouse, students took to the streets to protest
against the Addis Ababa Master Plan. Their suspicion was that this
would inevitably lead to a transfer of sovereignty from the Oromo
region to central government and be accompanied by “land grabbing”,
the expulsion and dispossession of the local peasant farmers. Protests
resumed in November 2015 and continue today at a larger scale that now
includes the general population and almost the whole of Oromo State.
Turning up the heat
The heat was turned up a further notch in mid-July with the advent of
protests in the historic heart of Amhara State. Together, Amhara and
Oromo account for almost two-thirds of the country’s total population.
The diversity of the ways of life that characterizes Oromo – farmers
and pastoralists, of its religions – Orthodox Christian, Muslim,
Protestant, animist, together with its very loose traditional
structures, prompts Merera Gudina to emphasise “the chronic division
between Oromo political forces”.[5] By contrast, the homogeneity of
the Amhara population – in its vast majority small farmers and
Christian Orthodox – fosters unity, while its mobilisation is favoured
by its sense of hierarchy and discipline. Finally, the parallel
protests by Oromo and Amhara, with largely shared reasons and
objectives, breaks with their historical antagonism: the dispossession
and subsequent exploitation of the Oromo by an Amhara – and Tigrean –
elite from the late nineteenth century onwards, embedded their
relations in a system that the Oromo have described as colonial.
The toughest demonstrations that the regime had faced followed the
contested elections of 2005. They were essentially confined to Addis
Ababa, with the young unemployed playing a major role. In all, they
lasted only a few days, in two surges. They came in response to a call
from established political forces for a very clear outcome – respect
for the verdict of the ballot box. The regime reacted in unison with
violent repression – killing almost 200 and arresting tens of
thousands – immediately followed by a large-scale strategy of
political reconquest through the expansion of the quasi-single party
and a rallying of the elites. The protests very quickly died down, and
the opposition forces collapsed.
This time, the protests affect the country’s two main states. Despite
the repression – hundreds killed, thousands arrested – it has been
going on for nine months, with varying degrees of intensity. The
attempts at dissuasion through fear have not been enough[6] – at least
for the moment – to demobilize the protesters, as evidenced by new
forms of protest such as the recent “dead city” operations in the
Amhara region[7] and the just launched boycott campaign in Oromya.
This time, a whole generation of young people is in the forefront of
the protests – the 15-29 age group represents more than a quarter of
the population – starting with, but not confined to, all those who
have benefited from mass education, who have carried their elders with
them. This time, their anger derives from widespread discontent,
focusing on three areas.
First, they are fed up not just with the regime’s authoritarianism,
but more so with the way it is exercised: supervision and control that
are stifling, intrusive and infantilising, imposed everywhere, all the
time, on everyone, by a Party that has swallowed up the State. The
second focus is the implementation of a federalism that is in theory
equitable, but in reality profoundly unbalanced. Tigray, representing
6% of the population, was the epicentre of the rebellion, which threw
out Mengistu Haile Mariam’s military-socialist junta in 1991, the
Derg. It was headed by the Tigrean student elite that founded the
TPLF. This historical role justified its initial primacy.
Twenty-five years on, however, this elite remains vastly
overrepresented at the apex of political power, the army, the security
services. In addition, through public and para-public companies, it
controls two thirds of the modern economy, excluding traditional
agriculture.In the specific Ethiopian case… a tentacular and
increasingly voracious and arrogant oligarchy… has ultimately filtered
down to village level.
The third focus of discontent is the backlashes of the “developmental
state”. This system centralises revenues at the summit of power, which
supremely decides on its optimal use for development across the
country. This strategy has been decisive in the exceptional economic
growth of the last decade – probably around 6% to 7% per year – and in
the expansion of education and health services alike. However, the
centralisation it entails is evidently incompatible with authentic
federalism. Moreover, in the specific Ethiopian case, the fact that
the functions of political leadership, economic decision-making and
the management of public and para-public enterprises are concentrated
in the hands of the same people at the summit of the party-state, free
of any control and political counterweight, has led to the creation of
a tentacular and increasingly voracious and arrogant oligarchy, which
has ultimately filtered down to village level.
These flaws have had a cumulative and mutually reinforcing impact. In
Oromya in particular, the implementation of development projects
dictated from above and often controlled by nonindigenous oligarchs,
has frequently been marked by authoritarianism, spoliation and ethnic
favouritism. In the case of “land grabbing”, there are multiple
instances of land being brutally appropriated and embezzlement of the
compensation owed to evicted farmers. The triggering factor for the
protests in Amhara region was the authorities’ refusal to tackle the
dispute arising from the incorporation into Tigray of the Wolkait
region – a thin strip of land in the north that was part of the
imperial province of Amhara – imposed after 1991 without public
consultation of any kind, together with the transfer of western areas
to Sudan, a process conducted in total secrecy.
“Thief!”
The demonstrators’ slogans and targets speak for themselves. They have
attacked prisons to free the inmates. They have ransacked public
properties, not just offices, vehicles, etc., but also health centres,
unemployment offices and cooperatives, places they see as existing
more to control the population than to perform their purported
functions.They have ransacked public properties… they see as existing
more to control the population than to perform their purported
functions.
They have gone after local party bosses and their possessions – the
lowest layer of the oligarchy – targeting government representatives
as much as the despoilers. They have burned businesses owned by
national and foreign investors (farms, factories, hotels, etc.)
because they symbolise an external stranglehold over Oromya and the
Amhara region. “Oromya is not for sale” was one favourite slogan. In
short, the demonstrators are targeting both the persons and property
of those they see as having obtained position and/or wealth at their
expense, through the patronage of the ruling power. “Thief!” is one of
the most oft repeated slogans.
In Oromya, the conviction of having remained second-class citizens in
a system dominated by a “northist” minority, and in the Amhara region
of having become second-class and of feeling permanently “humiliated
and marginalized”[8] because a part of the Amhara elite was dominant
in the imperial era, is less and less tolerated. The assertion of
ethnic identity and the demand for the full rights associated with it
are at the heart of the demonstrations. “We want genuine self rule”,
cry the Oromo, “We are Amhara”, declare the crowds in the historical
capital Gondar, or in Bahir Dar, the new capital. However, these
claims are also taking a very worrying turn. In Oromo, demonstrators
have gone after Amhara and Tigreans, as well as their properties.
Tigreans have been targeted in the Amhara region. However, distortions
of every kind in the propaganda war make the reality difficult to
grasp. In particular, were the rioters targeting arrivistes more than
Tigreans, or vice versa? Anyway, Tigreans are even beginning to leave
certain areas, notably in a “mass exodus” from Gondar.[9] Some go so
far as to speak of “ethnic cleansing”.
There are pressing calls for these practices to cease, both on social
media and from the legal opposition. But as Beyene Petros, one of its
leaders, explains:“we’re just watching… people are coming out
spontaneously… political parties are bypassed”.[10] By contrast with
2005, this popular protest is largely independent of the legal
opposition, and even the illegal opposition groups, such as the Oromo
Liberation Front, the oldest and most radical of the Oromo
“nationalist movements”, and Ginbot 7, heir to one of the big
opposition parties of 2005 and considered a pan-Ethiopian
movement.There is no secret central command orchestrating events.
There is no secret central command orchestrating events, although
there is no doubt that informal clandestine networks, with links to
the diaspora, are contributing to basic coordination and the exchange
of information. “These protests are at the level of an intifada”,
claims Merera Gudina,[11] or rather at the level of what could be
called an “Ethiopian Spring” reminiscent of the “Arab Springs”.
‘Arab plot’
In addressing this situation, the ruling power clings stubbornly to a
binary, reductive and simplistic analysis. True, it quickly shelved
the Master Plan, an entirely unprecedented turnaround. It also
reaffirmed the self-critique that emerged from the congresses of
summer 2015: beyond the immense benefits that it has brought – peace
and development – its action has been marred by failures and
deficiencies, notably with regard to corruption, bad governance,
unaccountability and youth unemployment. The narrative is that these
are the only failings that the “public” condemns, which makes them
“legitimate”. It has undertaken to correct them and “to discuss with
the people” in order to tackle them more effectively.
So the legitimacy of these “public” claims is accepted. But those who
demand more are supposedly driven by a “destructive agenda”
manipulated by “destructive”, “anti-peace”, “anti-development
elements”, “bandits”, or even “evil forces” and “terrorist groups”,
“extremist Diaspora members who have negotiated their country’s chaos
for money”, which are puppets of “foreign actors” or “invaders”,
starting with Eritrea. It is they who are “hijacking” peaceful
demonstrations and turning them into illegal and violent protests.
Websites close to the TPLF, among the few accessible in Ethiopia, are
more explicit: according to them, the wave of protest is simply the
outcome of an Arab plot, led by Egypt, in which Asmara, the OLF and
Ginbot 7 are mere “foot soldiers”. Their real purpose? “To
destabilise” Ethiopia, repeats the government, “the total
disintegration of Ethiopia as a country”, according to these
websites.[12]
To attribute the crisis to external, foreign conspiracy is
unjustifiable. Eritrea, still in an on/off state of war with Ethiopia,
and Egypt, deeply alarmed by the construction of a colossal dam on the
Nile, would undoubtedly welcome a weakening of Ethiopia. It may even
be that they are trying to fan the flames. But they do not have the
means to light the fire and keep it burning. And the ruling power’s
claim that they have been able to do so is itself an admission of
weakness: for them to succeed, the regime must already have been
resting on weak foundations.
This externalisation also exempts the government from having to
consider the grievances at the heart of the protests, going far beyond
a few personal failings and deficiencies in implementation.
Externalisation is also used to justify repression as the only
possible response: there can be no compromise with the enemies of the
motherland. It would therefore be pointless to move beyond the use of
force and engage in the political sphere, as it did in 2005. Above
all, however, the government rejects this option because a political
response to the protesters’ demands would require it to question its
whole political structure and policy.
‘Intellocracy’
The TPLF is a child of the student movement of the end of Haile
Selassie’s reign, radically Marxist and above all Leninist. From its
creation, it adopted the movement’s analysis of Ethiopian society. The
peasantry – still 80% of the population today – backward and
illiterate, the working class tiny and in any case ‘trade-unionist’,
the ‘national’ bourgeoisie equally small and anyway indecisive,
assigned an irreplaceable role to “revolutionary intellectuals”, as
Lenin defined them. They are the only ones able to develop the path
that would bring Ethiopia progress and well-being, and therefore the
only ones with the legitimacy to impose it on Ethiopians, willingly or
by force if necessary.[13]
This conviction remains. Just a few years ago, Hailemariam Desalegn
explained: “due to poor education and illiteracy, the Ethiopian public
is too underdeveloped to make a well reasoned, informed decision”; so
the “enlightened leaders” have “to lead the people”.[14] At the other
extreme, every local official is convinced that his position places
him within the circle of “enlightened leaders” and that he has the
right and duty to assume all the authority associated with that role.
This messianic vision creates an unbridgeable divide between a handful
of ‘knowers’, an ‘intellocracy’, which alone has the legitimacy and
the capacity to exercise power, and all the others, the ‘ignorant’, in
other words the people, reified and bound to obey in its own
interests, whatever it may think. It justifies a totalising ascendancy
in every sphere, exercised through an age-old hierarchy on which the
Leninist formula “democratic centralism” confers a modern and
revolutionary dimension. Or, in this particular case, “revolutionary
elitism” or “elitist centralism”.[15] Of course, the outcome has been
exactly the same: centralising excess and denial of democracy,
culminating with the installation of a “strong man” at the apex of a
pyramid of power. Meles Zenawi, the prime minister until his death in
2012, would become the acknowledged fulfiller of this role, drawing on
immense rhetorical skills backed by an exceptional intelligence.
In this binary vision, the political spectrum is inevitably polarised
at two extremes. The ruling power is the sole promoter of peace and
development. Those who oppose or merely question it are assigned to
the “anti-peace”, “anti-development”, “anti-federalist” camp, as
“chauvinists” or “narrow nationalists”, threatening the Ethiopian
state and the integrity of the country. Although masked in the early
days of the TPLF by the collective operation of the leadership, this
conception of ruling, monopolistic and exclusive to the point of
extreme sectarianism, is in essence undemocratic. It legitimises the
use of force whenever those in power deem it appropriate.
A new middle class
However, a growing section of the population is no longer prepared to
be stifled, undervalued and marginalised. A new middle class has
emerged, essentially in the public sector, in services and – largely
unrecognised – in the countryside, where a rump of recently enriched
farmers has emerged. 700,000 young people are in university, 500,000
have obtained degrees in the last five years.[16] In a country of
close to 100 million inhabitants, the number of mobile phone customers
has reached 46 million, internet users 13.6 million,[17] compared
respectively with fewer than a million and 30,000 ten years ago.
Satellite dishes have sprouted on the roofs wherever electricity is
present, breaking the public television monopoly. It is estimated that
4 million Ethiopians live abroad, but still maintain close relations
with their native country. Millions of Ethiopians are suddenly
connected to the world. More globally, the demands society now places
on the regime are commensurate with the upheavals brought about by the
development it has driven. In this sense, the regime’s very successes
have come back to bite it.
Ethnic faultlines are also imprinted in the regime’s DNA. From the
mid-1980s onwards, the TPLF carried its combat against the Derg from
the regional to the national level. At least within the country’s two
major “nations”, Oromo and Amhara, it thus had to find ethnic
political movements to join it. But rather than forming partnerships,
which would have entailed power-sharing, it imposed its grip on them.
That is the original sin of federalism ‘Ethiopian style’.
Rather than reaching agreement with the spearhead of anti-Derg
struggle in Oromya, the OLF, it created the Oromo People’s Democratic
Organisation (OPDO), drawn from among its Oromo or simply
Oromifa-speaking prisoners. This structure would be confined to the
rank of ‘junior partner’, even more than the Amhara National
Democratic Movement (ANDM), the Amhara component of the EPRDF,
although its initial nucleus had been an autonomous group. The new
Oromo and Amhara elites that joined this structure did so more out of
opportunism than by conviction, and in general at least without
recognising their leaderships as legitimate representatives.
Federalism, which was supposed to achieve a harmonious balance in
inter-ethnic relations, has in fact as practised led ultimately to
their deterioration. It faced an insurmountable contradiction. On the
one hand, it promoted new ethnic elites to political, administrative
and economic functions; on the other, it continued to keep them
subordinate, while sharpening ethnic identities. Large parts of these
elites, and moreover large swathes of their nations, are no longer
prepared to tolerate this.
Deepening faultlines
Ultimately, the exclusiveness and top-down approach are having a
negative impact on the economy. In the first phase, the party’s
control over the State and the modern sector encouraged the
mobilisation and effective use of resources. At this time, the
‘developmental state’ proved its worth by delivering remarkable
economic growth. It has to continue if the regime wishes to tout it as
a pillar of its legitimacy.
However, this model is on the wane. The developmental state has gone
off the rails, diverted by the oligarchical dynamic. The onus is on
private investors, in particular foreign investors, to take over from
public investment to drive structural transformation towards a
globalised market economy. However, the governing power’s obsession
with maintaining control is stifling those investors.
Finally, the party political discipline imposed on the technocracy
smothers its professional capacities and its confidence. This is one
of the primary sources of frustration. It also hampers the effective
use of the resources essential for growth in an increasingly complex
economy. Yet even at its current rate, that growth is unable to absorb
the two to two and a half million young people entering the labour
market each year, including new graduates, contributing to the anger
that is now exploding in the streets.
In light of these contradictions, the fault lines are deepening. The
discontent of the Tigreans has triggered the emergence of a
‘reforming’, pragmatic and politicised current inside the TPLF, which
wants to rally them by making the Front work for them again. It
advocates breaking with the “rule of force”, an immemorial feature of
Ethiopian history.
It underlines that the only way to achieve long-term stability,
beginning with peaceful changes of government, is through the
step-by-step introduction of the “rule of law” by full and integral
application of the constitution, notably the separation of powers, the
exercise of fundamental liberties and an authentic federalism.[18] It
would have to be “consociationalist”. The chief nations would be
equally represented, with decisions taken by consensus, so each would
possess an effective right of veto. The second “traditionalist” or
“conservative” current rejects significant change and argues for
continuity. Essentially, it takes the view that Ethiopia is not yet
mature enough for democratic move, and still needs to kept under iron
control. A website close to the TPLF argues:“the people are not ready
yet in every aspect and meaning of the word (democracy). Any attempt
to accelerate that process other than its natural course… can only
lead to darker places”.[19]
Reflecting the intensity of this division, these websites are full of
heated debate between those who show real understanding of the
protests and those who utterly condemn them, between those arguing for
immediate political openness and those calling first and foremost for
the crushing of the unrest. However, they agree on one point: an
unprecedentedly virulent condemnation of the leadership of the Front,
which is deemed inept and incapable of handling the situation.
This political division has also reached the ranks of the ANDM and
OPDO, but here the focus is on federalism. The “ethno-nationalists”
reject the asymmetries of the current federal system and are keen to
assert their party’s autonomy from the TPLF. Their adversaries are
considered too weak to fend for themselves and vitally in need of the
TPLF’s support. So, the OPDO base has literally disintegrated. At its
summit, there is overt opposition between Abadula Gemeda, who
expresses understanding for the claims of protesters and is the only
leader who enjoys real popularity, and Muktar Kedir, who is perceived
as an insubstantial apparatchik imposed by the TPLF. The same applies
to the problematic destiny of Gedu Andergatchew, President of the
Amhara region, number two in the ANDM and the Movement’s real
heavyweight in terms of popularity, and the official number one,
Demeke Mekonnen, a much criticised figure who is nevertheless
supported by the TPLF.
This ethnicisation of the political landscape is also apparent in the
deterioration of relations between TPLF, ANDM and OPDO. Discussions
with their rank and file members and a reading of their websites give
an insight into their mutual mistrust.
In the TPLF, there is an iron belief that the “rotten chauvinists” and
“revanchist”Amhara, controlled remotely by Ginbot 7, have “hijacked”
the ANDM, are intent of restoring their former hegemony by “overtaking
the position of TPLF in the Ethiopian politics” and are even once
again forcing Tigreans “to defend our existence from extinction”.[20]
In the ANDM, there is a conviction that the TPLF wants to continue to
make Amhara pay for the former dominance of some of their elite, to
marginalize them and to dispossess them of ancestral lands.[21] For
the ordinary OPDO party official, nothing has changed since the
nineteenth century conquests: exploitation, oppression,
marginalisation, or even quite baldly “genocide”. Hackneyed as it
clearly is, the word is widely used, symptomatic of a paranoia that
casts doubt on what remains of the unity at least at the base of the
EPRDF.
These fractures were born since the initial formation of the ruling
power. Meles Zenawi widened them, but succeeded in masking them by
maintaining an iron grip over the tensions that they engendered. The
present wave of protests has exacerbated them. They are splitting,
not to say cracking, the party, from its summit to its 7 million
member base, which is torn between loyalty and discipline, the
material advantages of membership, and the ever-growing swell of
popular aspirations within it.
In Oromya, part of the OPDO pushed behind the scenes for overt
opposition to the Master Plan. The regional police were unable to cope
or adopt a prudent ‘wait and see’ strategy. Today, they are virtually
out of the game, and the federal police and army have had to
intervene. The OPDO has essentially been relieved of the government of
Oromya, which is under military administration via a “Command Post”
based in Addis Ababa and headed by Hailemariam Dessalegn.[22] In the
Amhara region, at least the big initial demonstrations were held with
the support or tacit approval of part of the ANDM, although officially
forbidden. Out of their depth, the Amhara State authorities had to
request army intervention. The region has been placed under military
command.[23]
The growing number of leaks of documents and recordings of discussions
at the highest level of government and the State-Party are testament
to the fact that frontline leaders now have one foot in the government
camp and one in the protesters’ camp. Villages and entire local areas
are taking advantage of the dilution or even disappearance of public
authority to set up embryonic forms of self-government. In places, the
State-Party’s local structures have placed their organisations at the
service of the protesters. Armed men, who can only be village
militiamen in principle strictly under local government control, have
fired in the air alongside demonstrators. They are necessarily
involved in fatal ambushes on soldiers and attacks on military depots.
Desertions and overt acts of insubordination are taking place.
Losing authority
By contrast with 2005, when neither the federal nor regional
governments lost control, today – at least at certain times and in
certain places – they have lost authority over their own agents and
even their monopoly on the use of force. Hailemariam Desalegn had to
concede: “chaos” has broken out “in parts of Oromia and Amhara
states”..[24] There has been a shift from demonstrations to riots, and
then from riots to pockets of insurrection. Militiamen and farmers
hold hundreds of thousands of weapons. The transition from unrest
towards a scattered armed peasant revolt (a “jacquerie”), is a
possibility.
The crisis is not only about a change of government, or even regime
change. It is systemic, because it is rooted in the form in which
contemporary power has been exercised since its bases were laid down
in the middle of the nineteenth century. This has been theocratic,
authoritarian, centralised, hierarchical, ethnically biased,
monopolising the country’s resources.
“Intellocracy” has replaced theocratic feudalism, but other main
traits have been more or less transposed in an updated form. The
ruling power faces more or less the same demands as those it addressed
to Haile Selassie’s regime forty years ago: rule of law; fair use of
assets, beginning with land (“land to the tiller”, went the slogan;
denunciation of “land grabbing’” now); the “national question”, in
other words a balanced relationship between Ethiopia’s 80 “nations,
nationalities and peoples”; and, at the crossroads of the land issue
and the “national question”, the border conflicts between the
states.“They want to rule in the old way, and people are refusing to
be ruled in the old way”
“They want to rule in the old way, and people are refusing to be ruled
in the old way”, is Merera Gudina’s concise summing up.[25] What the
protesters – and indeed the “reformists” – are demanding is huge: the
shift from an imposed, exclusive and closed system, to an accepted,
inclusive and open system. This would require a total reconstruction,
an outcome that the successors of Haile Selassie, then of Mengistu,
failed to bring about.
For the moment at least, this goal is well beyond the EPRDF’s
capacities. Firstly, it is paralysed by its divisions. These range
from personal conflicts to business rivalries, from old ethnic
tensions to new political disagreements. Secondly, the Front would
risk disintegration if the “reformists” tried to force through their
views. Whatever side they are on, its leaders know that a split would
be fatal to everyone. They are obliged to maintain unity, with the
result that they seem for now condemned to immobility.
Opening up
The majority of the Front perceives opening up as a leap in the dark
and a fatal threat to its positions and its interests.
Opening up to the opponents of the Front would have to go hand-in-hand
with an internal opening up. It would inevitably threaten numerous
unfairly acquired positions.
Until now, the rule of winner-takes-all has reigned. In the general
perception, or at least ‘Abyssinian’ perception, authority is either
absolute or moribund: if it accepts concessions, it implicitly
acknowledges that its end is imminent. To open up would therefore
trigger a sharing of power, which could culminate in total loss of
power.
Opening up would also mean a historic shift. For centuries, power has
been “northern”, Abyssinian. A fair representation of the different
ethnic components is inconceivable without the Oromo, the largest
ethnicity, playing a central role, a role moreover that they are
demanding.
That would be an even more hazardous leap for the TPLF, abandoning its
domination and betting that a genuinely democratic federalism would
emerge. In other words, that nations or a coalition of nations much
more populous than the Tigreans would not impose majority rule,
threatening the preservation of what for the Front is non- negotiable:
Tigreans remaining in charge of Tigray.Finally, power and enrichment
go together.
Finally, power and enrichment go together. From the summit of the
state-party to its most modest ranks, official positions and
oligarchical rents are mutually reinforcing. This material dimension
is an overwhelming reason to preserve the status quo. In particular,
the vast majority of the Front’s members think that it is right that
their commitment and obedience should be rewarded with direct or
indirect favours.
To open up, but to whom, in what domain, and to what point? Everyone
agrees that the protest movement has neither a recognised leadership
nor a clear programme, which is its major weakness. Would it consider
itself authentically represented by the legal opposition, enfeebled
through repression and its own divisions, or by the more radical
illegal opposition, whose real representativeness is impossible to
assess? Would these very diverse forces agree on a sort of shared
programme of demands?
Up to now they have always stumbled over two crucial points: whether
to maintain public ownership of land – far and away the primary asset
– or to privatise it; and whether to accentuate or to temper
federalism. For the moment, the voices making themselves heard cover a
very wide spectrum of demands, from the launch of a national dialogue
through to the total and immediate overthrow of the EPRDF. And history
tells us that in such circumstances the extremists quickly prevail
over the moderates.But the word compromise has no direct translation
in Amharic…
Yet short of plunging the country into chaos, there exists no credible
alternative to the existing authority, except in the long term.
Supposing the EPRDF were to decide “to rule in a new way”, it would
only do so on condition that it remained in control of a very gradual
and therefore very long process of change. Which of its adversaries
would accept this? On one side or the other, all-or-nothing politics
have so far been the rule. But an inclusive and open system cannot be
created unless all the stakeholders, without exception, are ready for
compromise, in other words ready to make reciprocal concessions in
order to reach an agreement. But the word compromise has no direct
translation in Amharic…
Worst case scenario
So every scenario remains possible, including the worst-case. The
regime may decide to continue on the same trajectory, relying on
repression and the acceleration of its recovery plan for the
state-party. It could be that the machinery of repression will stifle
the protest movement. This machinery is extensive and experienced. It
is even possible that the army could decide to take matters into its
own hands, if it thought that the political leadership was failing.
Its effective head, Samora Yunus, has always said that “the army is
always vigilant to safeguard the constitutional order”.[26]
But will it be able to, especially if protest intensifies, and in
particular if it takes root in the rural areas? From a leaked record
of a meeting of army chiefs, it seems that some are uncertain about
the physical capacity of the troops to hold firm on multiple fronts,
and above all about the risks of insubordination, or even mutiny,
resulting from the ethnic divisions in their ranks.[27]“Killing is not
an answer to our grievances”
Even supposing that simple repression works, the probability is high
that it would only offer the regime a period of respite before, sooner
or later, a new – even more devastating – surge of unrest. To prevent
this, it has just decided to put on the table the question of Wolkait
and the relations between Addis Ababa and the Oromo lands around it,
and above all to “sack and reshuffle party and government officials
including Ministers” in the coming month, all through wide-ranging
discussions “with the people”.[28]
But even the legal opposition judges these reforms to be
“cosmetic”.[29] Up to now, these discussions have always consisted in
a massive process of self-justification, with no genuine consultation
of the people, which is unable – or does not dare – to make itself
heard. Moreover, this promise is an old chestnut. The struggle against
the dark triad of corruption, bad governance and unaccountability, on
the agenda since the early 2000s, has had no impact. The campaign to
“purify” the state-party of its black sheep, launched with much
fanfare in the autumn of 2015, has been a damp squib. It touched only
minor officials, while none of the senior figures – some are notorious
for their corrupt practices – was affected, leading the population to
conclude that the campaign was nothing but a smokescreen.
This triad of failings extends from top to bottom of the EPRDF. It is
hard to see how the Party could put an end to them in response to what
it sees as the main demand emanating from the people, without putting
itself at high risk.
“Killing is not an answer to our grievances”, cry the demonstrators.
For the moment, however, no other genuine answers are to be heard or
seen, unless basic common sense, not to mention democratic
aspirations, were to prevail in the ruling power.
________________________________
[1] Walta, August 30, 2015
[2] BBC, August 3, 2016
[3] Thomson Reuters Foundation, August 11, 2016
[4] Ethiopian Herald, September 2, 2016
[5] OPride, August 3, 2016
[6] AFP, August 15, 2016, Le Monde, 15 août 2016, New York Times, June 16, 2016,
[7] Daniel Berhane, August 17, 2016
[8] ECADF, September 2016
[9] Daniel Berhane, August 13, 2016
[10] AFP, August 17, 2016,
http://www.ethiomedia.com/1016notes/6057.html
[11] Washington Post, August 9, 2016,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/a-year-after-obamas-visit-ethiopia-is-in-turmoil/2016/08/09/d7390290-5e39-11e6-8e45-477372e89d78_story.html
[12] See, for example, Walta, August 31 2016, The Ethiopian Herald,
August 20, 2016; Tigray On Line, August 13, 2016; Walta, August 11,
2016.
[13] See for example Messay Kebede, From Marxism-Leninism to
Ethnicity: the Sideslips of Ethiopian Elitism, University of Dayton,
2001.
[14] Cable from the US Embassy in Ethiopia, April 28, 2008
[15] Gebru Tareke, The Ethiopian Revolution. War in The Horn of
Africa, New Haven/London, Yale University Press, 2011, p. 89.
[16] Ministry of Education, Education National Abstract 2013-2014,
Addis Abeba, June 2015.
[17] Walta, July 13, 2016
[18] The most notorious expression of this position has just been
provided by General Tsadkan, a military hero of the TPLF and then of
the Ethiopia-Eritrea war, since excluded from the Front but still
profoundly respected within it.
[19] Aiga Forum, August 25, 2016
[20] See also Aiga Forum, August 7, 2016
[21] Messay Kebede, a well know intellectual, underlines “the TPLF’s
systematic policy of humiliating and marginalizing” the Amhara, which
led to “the psychological frustration of humiliation at being both
degraded and demeaned”; Ethiopian Review, September 2, 2016
[22] Addis Standard, June 25, 2016
[23] Addis Standard, September 1, 2016
[24] Walta, August 13, 2016
[25] Washington Post, August 9, 2016,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/a-year-after-obamas-visit-ethiopia-is-in-turmoil/2016/08/09/d7390290-5e39-11e6-8e45-477372e89d78_story.html
[26] The Ethiopian Herald, September 3, 2016
[27] ESAT Daily News Amsterdam, August 12, 2016
[28] Daniel Berhane, September 1, 2016
[29] Ethiomedia Forum, August 31, 2016
Received on Fri Sep 09 2016 - 20:57:47 EDT