From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Tue Mar 09 2010 - 10:11:30 EST
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=5239 Choosing Stability
Over Democracy in Ethiopia Lauren Gelfand | Bio | 09 Mar 2010
World Politics Review
NAIROBI, Kenya -- It's easy to confuse the interior of Nairobi's Habesha
restaurant with a lost corner of Ethiopia. The smell of frankincense and
thick, dark coffee waft through the air as the latest tunes by Teddy Afro
vie to be heard over the Amharic-language patter of denizens from Addis
Ababa, Lalibela, Mekele and Gonder. There's a good reason for the
resemblance: Many of Habesha's clients are in exile for speaking out against
the government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
And if the 2005 elections as well as this year's campaign season are any
indication, it might be even harder to find a table at Habesha come May's
parliamentary polls.
On the surface, Ethiopia is a stable, prospering nation, cultivating strong
relationships with the international donors who have for more than a
generation funded food, health and infrastructure projects for the country's
85 million people. The United States has called Ethiopia a key ally in the
Horn of Africa <http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=1162><http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=1162>,
representing a bulwark against increasingly isolated and sanctioned Eritrea
and a comparative oasis of calm compared to perennially chaotic Somalia.
But according to human rights advocates, free speech campaigners and
opposition politicians, beneath the surface is a regime that wields power
with impunity, repressing dissent, opposition and difference of opinion.
The aftermath of the 2005 elections -- which saw the defeat of the
opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy -- sent hundreds to the morgue,
thousands to jail and countless others into exile. Meles subsequently
tightened restrictions on charities and civil society groups, implemented an
anti-terror law and forced through the passage of a media law that has
silenced virtually all of the country's independent press.
International media operations have also been restricted: Voice of America
has reported<http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/africa/VOA-Amharic-Broadcasts-Jammed-in-Ethiopia-86339587.html><http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/africa/VOA-Amharic-Broadcasts-Jammed-in-Ethiopia-86339587.html>that
since Feb. 22, static has clouded its daily Amharic-language shortwave
broadcasts. A government spokesman has denied any impropriety on the part of
Meles' administration, instead accusing VOA of capitulating to a "smear
campaign" by "opposition Web sites in the diaspora" ahead of the polls.
Violence has also clouded the electoral campaign. On March 2, two opposition
politicians were brutally beaten -- one of them fatally -- in Meles' home
turf, the Tigray region in the north, on the border with Eritrea.
Despite representing a fraction of the population, the Tigrayans have made
up a substantial portion of the political and military elite since Meles
became prime minister in 1995. They also control the country's leading
corporations and, by extension, most of its trade. The vast majority are
loyalists of the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, the guerrilla movement
cum political powerhouse that seized power in a 1991 coup.
But in the aftermath of the violent and still-unresolved conflict with
Eritrea that ran from May 1998 until June 2000, Meles' one-time Tigrayan
allies have become nemeses, among them the former Defense Minister Seye
Abraha. This splinter movement, amalgamated into a coalition of opposition
parties, has emerged as a significant threat to Meles' monopoly on power,
presenting the only viable challenge he has seen from his own ethnic group
since he took office.
The coalition -- known as Medrek (the Forum) -- groups together ethnic and
non-sectarian parties, both new and old, into an emboldened opposition
movement <http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=3024><http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=3024>that
has confronted Meles and his ruling coalition on a number of fronts,
with varying degrees of success. That success has come at a cost, however,
with the fatal beating of parliamentary candidate Aregawi Gebreyohannes
being a grim example.
But Meles is facing difficulties as well, with the recent emergence of
evidence suggesting that food aid was once again being politicized by the
ruling party. In a country where one in five people faces chronic food
shortages, millions of dollars in international assistance in the form of
grain, cooking oil and even cash, were allegedly being diverted to
ruling-party politicians to buy the loyalty of the citizenry. It was, Abraha
said in a widely circulated article in January, "the weapon of choice to
squeeze [Ethiopians] into following the one-party system lockstep."
The revelation was all-the-more damaging in the context of a new BBC
investigation <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8535189.stm><http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8535189.stm>into
TPLF machinations in the 1980s, at the height of the Ethiopian famine,
through which millions of dollars in food aid was diverted to buy weapons.
The food aid revelations have coincided with a newfound coordination of
donor government policy toward Ethiopia, suggesting a shift from the
previous emphasis on stability at the expense of democracy and republican
values.
In the past, U.S. and European policy toward Ethiopia often worked at cross
purposes, with a hard line from one meaning a soft touch from the other, and
vice versa. The differing responses to 2009's Anti-Terror law illustrated
the contrast in sharp relief: While condemned by the U.S., the law's passage
was followed by a European assistance package worth some €250 million,
according to Human Rights Watch. More recently, opposition parties have
excoriated the Obama administration for its perceived failure to address
human rights abuses by the Meles government, though they were heartened by
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's decision to leave the country off of
her first Africa tour.
Now, however, support for the opposition -- both overt and tacit -- seems to
be coalescing, with donors ascribing a legitimacy to the upstart coalition
that none of its predecessors ever enjoyed.
This is not, however, likely to translate into a stunning upset at the
polls. Meles' ruling coalition is too entrenched, too powerful and too
committed to its own survival to compromise its position, and the risk of
violence continues to overshadow poll preparations. None of the four major
election observer groups from the United States is planning to monitor the
voting, while the European Union is so far only "considering" whether to
dispatch its own team.
Nor is it going to impel the release of five independent journalists
languishing in prison on trumped-up charges of treason and malfeasance.
"The West thinks stability in Ethiopia is more important than democracy,"
one rueful exile at Habesha says, sipping coffee that smells like home.
"Destabilization is the only way to change."
Lauren Gelfand is a freelance journalist and analyst now based in Nairobi,
Kenya, with an interest in security and defense issues. After beginning her
career as a wire service correspondent, working on three continents for
Agence France-Presse, she currently serves as Middle East and Africa editor
for Jane's Defence Weekly magazine. She writes in French and in English for
a variety of publications.
Photo: Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, 2002 (Defense Department photo
by Helene C. Stikkel).
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