Governance and Human Rights: How to win elections in Ethiopia

Presented at Conference on Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, 9-11 April 2010

By Theodore M. Vestal

Governance in Ethiopia suffers from deficits of democracy and abuses of human rights. For eighteen years tyranny in its harshest form has persisted. The people endure under a despotic system marked by brutality, corruption, poverty, and suffering. What democratic freedoms the people might once have enjoyed are eroded, and basic human rights, including freedom of religion, conscience, speech, assembly, association, and press are badly abused. Specifically, there are limitations on citizens’ right to change their governments; official impunity; arbitrary arrest and detention; lengthy pretrial detention; difficult prison conditions; and interference with privacy rights. Human rights reports cast doubt on how effective the rule of law really is. Due process of law and equal protection of the law appear lost.

These shortcomings come together in “elections” held in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), since coming to power in 1991, has won all the elections held in Ethiopia. The party has literally written the book on how to win elections in Ethiopia. But the political processes are an integral part of the entire EPRDF gestalt. A “wholeness” that makes difficult the separating of any component parts of the Party’s organization and practices.

In analyzing the theory and practice of EPRDF’s “success” in governing and electioneering, the acronym POSDCORB of classical public administration is relevant.¹ The acronym which formulates the responsibility of a chief executive stands for the principles of Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting, and Budgeting. The EPRDF, from the beginning of its reign, has followed, perhaps willy-nilly, these principles of administration. My remarks will look at how and why the EPRDF has governed, abused human rights, and won all the elections by applying the principles of the acronym.

I. PLANNING, that is working out in broad outline the things that need to be done and the methods for doing them to accomplish the purpose set for the enterprise:

A. EPRDF’s “Our Revolutionary Democratic Goals and the Next Steps” (1993) distributed to party cadre but not made public. (Ethiopian Register 1996.²)

Clear statement of political and economic goals of the Front and the strategies and tactics to be used in attaining them. Revolutionary Democracy based on idea that Party leaders at the center of public life should direct all aspects of society on the basis of a superior knowledge of the nature of social development conferred on them by the party ideology. The reality is a classic totalitarian structure, an attitude of “We know what is best for you,” a wholeness of purpose generated from the roots of the Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray from which too much resort to reason and language is not welcome and supposedly is conducive to separation from the utopian society envisioned by the Party’s true believers.

1. Political Goal: materializing the peoples’ political and human rights completely vs. “oppressors,” those who oppose the EPRDF. If rights of oppressors or vacillators clash with rights of masses, the rights of the oppressors will have to be suppressed.
a. Constitution protects rights of masses. Institutions are established to protect the constitution and EPRDF-made laws. When oppressors obstruct the exercise of the rights of the masses, any relevant legal article can be cited to punish them. Enforced by police and army.
b. Political parties: the masses will have many parties and oppressors will have the opportunity to organize. If oppressors try to obstruct the masses from exercising their rights, the constitution and other laws will be used to punish them and bring under control their illegal activities.

2. Set up government to ensure all-round participation of the masses. Power structure to enable people to decide on local issues at Kebele, Woreda, zone, regional, and central level.

3. Ensuring peoples’ right to self-determination and building Ethiopia’s unity based on equality and free choice. EPRDF credo: nations, nationalities, and peoples’ right to secede.

B. Political Strategies: ensure permanent hegemony

1. “Only by winning the elections successively and holding power without letup can we securely establish the hegemony of Revolutionary democracy. If we lose in the elections even once, we will encounter a great danger. So, in order to permanently establish this hegemony, we should win the initial elections and then create a situation that will ensure the establishment of this hegemony. In the subsequent elections, too, we should be able to win without interruption.”

2. “Should the enemy and vacillators win elections and gain hegemony, the country will be hurled into an endless crisis and Ethiopia would not survive as a nation.”

II. ORGANIZING, that is the establishment of the formal structure of authority through which work subdivisions are arranged, defined and coordinated for the defined objective;

A. EPRDF’S Organizational Structure and Operation, 1995: to secure the highest unity between the thoughts and action of the Front and its members.³ Struggle for Revolutionary Democratic goals by extending control over political, economic, and social activities of the country. Works primarily through cadres, professional revolutionaries whose occupation is largely or entirely political activity. The work of cadres blurs the line between the state and the ruling party giving them a two-edged sword with which to cut down the opposition.

1. Organizational ladder descends from highest rungs of government to lowest steps of rural locality. “Democratic centralism:” offices of President, Prime Minister, Parliament, central government ministries and agencies, including public enterprises–all are part of Party network.

2. In states, EPRDF organizational units control activities in killil, zonal, woreda, sub-woreda, and kebele administrations and thus are able to intimidate individuals at a household level. Universities, high schools, hospital and non-government organizations, and profit-for-the-party companies are in the scheme.

3. Major responsibility of cadres is “monitoring” (spying on) the people in general and opposition forces in particular. Cadres infiltrate independent associations, such as trade unions, professional organizations, or any other civil associations, and attempt to take over positions of leadership. Any organization that is not controlled from the top by cadre is considered dangerous and is to be opposed vehemently.

4. The ethnic components of the Party, the TPLF, OPDO, ANDM, and SEPDF have their own parallel leadership structures but command of the ethnic fronts remains with the leadership of the EPRDF.

5. Encouraging membership in the EPRDF by making access to fertilizer, food assistance, health care and schools conditional on membership of the ruling party. Conversely, withholding such carrots is used to punish and ostracize those perceived as supporting the political opposition

B. Organization and propaganda mobilize the masses.

1. Mold the outlook of the rank and file members and the public at large by firmly indoctrinating them with the outlook of revolutionary democracy. Party control of mass media is vital to the effort.

2. Party dominates independent associations while maintaining their façade of autonomy. Where difficulties arise, create new organization. The aim of these organizations: to duplicate all existing professional associations and then to destroy the credibility of the older existing ones in the eyes of the general public.

III. STAFFING, that is the whole personnel function of bringing in and training the staff and maintaining favorable conditions of work.

a. Cadre and their training and discipline, omnipresent throughout system.

b. Pervasive bureaucracy staffed by Party. All provide protective mask for the inner, elite corps with their special tool–the secret police. In the center is the Party Leadership exercising total, arbitrary control and demanding instant, unquestioning obedience.

c. Non-independent judiciary to interpret laws in politically correct way.

d. EPRDF-controlled military to provide security for the regime and control of society. Police, under Party control, maintain internal security. Midnight raids of homes of political opponents to haul off suspects for unspecified crimes for unspecified periods of time—frequently to secret places of incarceration. If the suspects get released, they have to sign a pledge to abstain from political activities and have to frequently sign-in with the local kebele to make sure they are behaving. The EPRDF rules by having a monopoly of terror. Controls by inducing fear and repression—classic totalitarianism, according to Hannah Arendt.

IV. DIRECTING, that is the continuous task of making decisions and embodying them in specific and general orders and instructions and serving as the leader of the enterprise.

a. EPRDF maintains power by stifling political opposition and bridling dissent. The number of political prisoners in the country has been a not very secret disgrace since the EPRDF came to power. The most glaring example of that is, of course the imprisonment of opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa, whose pardon for alleged acts of treason was revoked as she was rearrested and given a life prison term for failing to deliver a public apology for acts committed during the post-2005 campaign. The recent murder of a political opponent in Tigray is but the latest in a continuing series of politically motivated killings, kidnappings, disappearances, torture, rapes, and beatings. There have also been insidious threats against leading activists, which have forced a number of them to flee the country. All of this is done with impunity for the perpetrators—official or otherwise.

b. Laws impose difficult requirements on opposition political parties and voluntary associations. Elections sideline the opposition before it gets organized.

c. Regulations purportedly guarantee responsible behavior of independent media in reality muzzle them. Journalists threatened or arrested. Blocking out broadcasts of the Voice of America or controlling content of the internet are flagrant abuses of the citizens’ rights to a free flow of information—without which democracy cannot exist.

d. Prior to the 2010 elections, legislation was introduced in parliament designed to stifle independent activity by civil society groups in Ethiopia, clamp down on election media coverage, and limit acts of political protest, all under the pretext of government concerns about fighting terrorism.

V. COORDINATING, that is the all-important duty of interrelating the various parts of the work.

1. EPRDF in all its guises, governmental and private sector, central government and state governments, ethnic groups—pervasive throughout society.

2. Layer upon layer, like the body of an onion: all but the deadly core operating as automatons in a monstrous, mindless and malevolent bureaucracy. All coordinated from the top party leadership.

VI. REPORTING, that is keeping those to whom the executive is responsible informed as to what is going on, which thus includes keeping himself and his subordinates informed through records, research and inspections.

VII. BUDGETING, with all that goes with budgeting in the form of fiscal planning, accounting and control.

a. TPLF controls the country’s leading corporations and, by extension, most of its trade.

b. EPRDF with crony capitalists occupies the “commanding heights of the economy.” They have done so since their days in the bush taking in humanitarian aid that ended up in other budgeting pockets.

c. The party has an array of anticompetitive weapons, and it has adroitly found ways to restrain trade, rig markets, and suppress competition.

d. According to international financial institutions, the EPRDF controls or owns most of the Ethiopian economy

That is the POSDCORB of the EPRDF. Life is tolerable for cadres and members who believe in the ideological goals and outcomes of the party. For others, especially those identified as enemies of the regime, life is “Hell with the lid off.”

How does Ethiopia escape from the dominance of an autocratic state and party? Past experience suggests that the EPRDF will never willingly share power widely nor will it allow meaningful political competition to thrive. So long as the EPRDF enjoys a monopoly of terror there will be no change in the Party’s domination. Continued repressions may well invite a return to civil war. The alternatives make a negotiated attempt at establishing a liberal democracy all the more attractive.⁴ I fail to see negotiation coming about without a major change in circumstances. Who or what can make such a change remains to be seen. Friends of Ethiopia can only hope it will come about sooner rather than later.

Notes

1. POSDCORB is an acronym created by Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick in their “Papers on the Science of Administration” (1937). [Gulick, Luther Halsey, and Lyndall F. Urwick, eds. 1937. Papers on the Science of Administration. New York: Institute of Public Administration.] Developed as a means to structure and analyze management activities, it set a new paradigm in Public Administration. Based on the theories of Henri Fayol’s 14 Principles of Management, Gulick and Urwick disputed the prevailing thinking that there was a dichotomy between politics and administration. Instead that it was impossible to separate the two. It has been called the “high noon of orthodoxy,” due to the assumption that it was the principles that were important and not where they were applied. [Nicholas Henry, “Paradigms of Public Administration,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 35, No. 4, (July – Aug., 1975) p.380.]

2. Vestal, Ethiopia: A Post-Cold War African State (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), chapter 7, “The Strategy of the EPRDF.”

3. Ibid., chapter 10, “Organizing Revolutionary Democracy.”

4. Ibid., chapter 18, Next Steps Towards Democracy.”