By Messay Kebede

In sharing my reflections and comments on Seye’s article, posted on to the website Ethiomedia, my main purpose is to open up a debate on the course of action that opposition forces need to take in the face of the increasingly repressive methods of the {www:Woyanne} regime. The glaring evidence that the regime is nowhere near to accepting the verdict of elections any time soon is pushing a growing number of people toward the conviction that Ethiopians and Ethiopia have no other choice than to overthrow the regime by means of armed struggle. Since the political setback following the 2005 rigged election, many people are now saying that the resolution of the Woyanne regime to stay in power by all means, even if the cost is a generalized war between ethnic groups, has made irrelevant the reasons that previously led them to oppose armed struggle. The stubborn and immensely shortsighted resolution by Woyanne to cling to power by all means has shifted the political struggle from the quest for a democratic future to the mere necessity of self-defense and national survival.

Seye’s article originates from the clear perception of the impending danger and suggests ideas as to the best way to avert the danger and map out a better future. The danger of national disintegration with its inevitable ethnic clashes clearly shows that national survival is the common good, which survival should, therefore, become the overriding concern of opposition parties. And the only way to ward off the threat is to unite to defeat those who put the country in danger by their stubbornness to remain the sole ruling body. Seye proposes various means and ideas liable to give a firm and lasting unity to opposition forces, convinced as he is that the continuous failure to unite in a lasting manner is what allows the Woyanne regime to stay in power.

His explanation of why the opposition fails to unite puts the blame on the practice of creating unity before an understanding is reached on major policy issues related to the ethnic question, the constitution, and economic policy. Because opposition forces attempt to unite only to get rid of the EPRDF, the lack of agreement on what should be the post-Woyanne society feeds on mistrusts and divisions.

Since neither democracy nor economic prosperity is possible without national existence, the first principle of unity should be the defense of national integrity. Once agreement is reached on this primordial issue, then a series of measures must be adopted to cement the unity. (1) Opposition forces must create mutual confidence, and they do so if, going against the prevailing culture of polarization, they respect each other’s views and adopt a policy of rapprochement. (2) They must come together around common and agreed goals instead of highlighting their differences. (3) They must learn to see their differences as complementary rather than as causes for hostility, a good example being the conflict over the primacy of group or individual rights when in reality the two are complementary. (4) They must avoid extreme positions so as to target the center, thereby creating a win-win situation to the detriment of exclusion and one-sided victory. (5) They must acquire the quality of farsightedness so as to be able to resolve the numerous and deep problems of Ethiopia. (6) They must drop the habit of creating parties around personalities, just as they must avoid personalizing issues, obvious as it is that the primacy giving to personalities ends up fueling divisive positions.

I want to express my admiration for the sincerity of Seye’s conversion from a war hero to an advocate of democracy and peaceful form of struggle. No less admirable is his denunciation of Woyanne policy after having been one of the top promoters and executors of that policy. However, my purpose is not to examine the reasons for his conversion as they are immaterial to the issue at hand. What matters is the genuineness and feasibility of his proposal to unite the opposition forces. His proposal contains valuable and practical suggestions and reveals the temperament of a man destined for a position of leadership.

What particularly attracted me in his article was his attempt to explain the origin of the culture of confrontation characteristic of Ethiopia’s modernized elites. With total confidence, he traces the culture of confrontation back to the 60s. According to him, our present inability to solve peacefully and democratically our differences emanates from the cultural habits and ideological beliefs developed during the 60s. Indeed, the Cold War has taught us to conceive of politics in terms of polarization and confrontation. What is more, the Marxist-Leninist idea of class struggle has taught us to think of social life in terms of irreconcilable interests leading to violent confrontations that must end with the total defeat of opponents, not to mention the adoption of undemocratic principles of organization, such as democratic centralism and the one-party system.

I fully concur with Seye’s analysis, all the more so as I recently wrote a whole book (Radicalism and Cultural Dislocation in Ethiopia, 1960-1974) depicting the harmful impacts of the events and characteristics of the 60s on the Ethiopian educated elite. One might question the use and validity of dwelling on the past when what we need is to solve our pressing problems of today. For Seye and myself, it is abundantly clear that opposition forces cannot achieve unity unless they get rid of the influence of past conceptions and forms of struggle. The liberation from the power of acquired habits and beliefs begins with awareness. So long as people ignore the hidden forces that condition them, they are unable to change. Just as Sigmund Freud shows that going back into childhood traumas explains misconducts in adult life, thereby offering the possibility of deliverance, so too in becoming aware of bad habits and beliefs developed in the past Ethiopian political elites initiate the healing process.

The process is arduous since it implies self-examination and criticism and, most of all, the courage to reject beliefs that were once cherished and hailed as false and detrimental. I measure the difficult in the very fact that Seye himself, despite his genuine effort, is not successful in liberating himself from the 60s. Take for instance what he says about the “national” question in Ethiopia. He considers the EPRDF’s recognition of the “national” question and the subsequent implementation of a form of political organization designed to assert the rights of nationalities as a positive contribution. Yet his article rejects the idea of class and class struggle inherited from Marxism-Leninism on the ground that it is a divisive and polarizing ideology.

The contradiction is but obvious: just as Seye has discarded class struggle as a divisive and wrong ideology, so too should he reject ethnicization as a fallout of that same mistaken ideology. Unfortunately, he does not; worse yet, he hides the contradiction to himself by engaging in a sophism defending the complementarity between group rights and individual rights, as though it were possible to create a nation out of disparate groups that owe their primary allegiance to sectarian identities.

If Seye had remained faithful to his primary methodological principle according to which our present impediments originate from wrong habits inherited in the 60s, he would have come to the conclusion that the so-called national question is another invention designed to create exclusive constituencies to competing elites in the face of the hegemony of Amhara ruling elite. While democratic and liberal means existed to knock down the Amhara hegemony, rising educated elites adopted the polarizing ideology of class struggle and national question.

Why did these rising elites prefer a divisive ideology to the path of consensus to promote their cause? We find the answer if we notice that, like the idea of class struggle, the national question enables the educated elite to emerge as liberators of oppressed groups and to speak in their name. Not only this messianic positioning crafts them as exclusive representatives of these groups, thereby excluding other competing elites, but it also grants them absolute control over their own constituents. In another word, the national question is none other than an expression of elite conflicts: it is not about oppressed people; it is about elites assembled around ethnic criteria fighting to create reserved and docile constituencies.

This does not mean that I reject ethnicity and sponsor the return to the structure and culture of imperial Ethiopia. The latter is gone for good and we have no reason to wish its resurrection. To try to revive it is to ignore the present reality and force on people an idea of national existence that they are not willing to accept, thereby driving the country into even greater conflicts. It is also to overlook that, like any other human concerns relating to identity, ethnicity craves to be recognized so that the lack of recognition turns into a fanatical attachment.

Let it be added that the path to a democratic and prosperous future is impracticable without the consent and participation of elites parading ethnic identities. I agree with Seye in saying that a consensus reconciling ethnic identity with Ethiopianness must be found. But one condition for reaching a consensus is the demystification of ethnicity: once its political purpose is revealed and accepted, it loses much of its primordialism. Its magnetism dissipates if we indeed show that it is a construct of elite rivalries rather than a natural determination.

In his attempt to explain the metamorphoses of the TPLF, Seyes gives a decisive importance to world events, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, which he says instituted the global hegemony of capitalism and its ideology of free market economy. These events have impacted on the TPLF, forcing it to drop its communist ideology and convert to liberalism and free market economy. However, since in Ethiopia and other third world countries neither liberal democracy nor the free market really prevails, Seye has no means to explain how a decisive factor failed to be decisive. It is inconsistent to say that the TPLF converted to liberalism even as it was dividing Ethiopia along ethnic lines. A sincere conversion to capitalist ideology would have divided Ethiopia on the basis of either economic or administrative feasibility, and not on ethnic criteria resulting in the formation of Bantustans.

The fake conversion of the TPLF to the free market economy and democratic ideals is a crucial issue that should shape the strategic choices of opposition forces in their struggle to remove the regime. Indeed, our major question should be the following: How can one expect the implementation of a genuine ethnic federalism and the respect of democratic electoral process and outcomes under an undemocratic regime? Unfortunately, Seye’s paper dodges the issue and assumes that a fair democratic process can be expected to be in place.

The puzzle here is that Seye is absolutely convinced that the present regime is both undemocratic and highly dangerous to national survival. He strongly underlines that it survives by means of generalized corruption and nepotism. But then, how can such an undemocratic and corrupt regime be expected to respect the rules of democracy? In light of the fake conversion of the TPLF, is it honest to maintain that a peaceful form of democratic struggle can bring about changes?

Seye’s inconsistencies result from the strategic choice of peaceful struggle that is forced to believe that victory is possible if the opposition is united enough. In other words, the EPRDF has no other option but to cave in if it faces a united opposition. I absolutely respect this view, but I hasten to add that the regime will not admit defeat so long as the struggle is confined to elections and winning votes. What really undermines dictatorships is not the lack of majority vote, but forms of struggle that make them unable to function.

The bare truth is that Seye has a limited notion of nonviolent struggle, since he reduces it to electioneering. He calls for the respect of the existing constitution and only supports forms of political actions that it sanctions. He thinks that there are only two choices: either one respects the constitution and struggle to change it through legal means or one has recourse to armed struggle to change it. Yet a nonviolent form of struggle offers a third choice, which is to force a government to change by means of noncooperation.

Noncooperation is a peaceful form of struggle in that it never confronts violently the government. Instead, it uses peaceful means, such as strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, etc, to force the government to make concessions or even to overthrow it. The purpose is to undermine the proper functioning of the established order through the withdrawal of cooperation and consent.

Seye’s main goal is to defeat the EPRDF electorally by forging a lasting and large unity of opposition forces. But he fails to explain how opposition forces, even so united, can be successful in view of the fact that, as he himself admits, the EPRDF is undermining its own constitution through undemocratic measures. In a word, his analysis does not propose a viable solution. Unity is necessary, but not enough: new forms of nonviolent struggles must be designed to put pressure on the government or even to topple it if necessary.

My contention is that it is high time that opposition leaders who advocate peaceful forms of struggle and the Ethiopian people come to the conclusion that the electoral game cannot provide the expected results unless other forms of peaceful struggle expressing withdrawal of cooperation are added to the repertoire. We must not constrain nonviolent movement by legality to the point of making it powerless when it is an active method of struggle whose goal is to bring about social change through noncooperation. And the longer opposition leaders cling to the hope of bringing change solely through electoral means, the less able they will be to prevail over those who advocate armed struggle as the only solution, with all the unpredictable and dire consequences that an armed conflict would entail in present day Ethiopia.

Wrongly or rightly, I have come to believe that Birtukan’s imprisonment as a result of her refusal to comply and her decision to go on hunger strike announces the need to upgrade the nonviolent movement in Ethiopia with new techniques of resistance. I am not sure whether other opposition leaders have come to the same conclusion. At any rate, Birtukan seems to say that the time has come to transcend electioneering and energize the peaceful struggle by the inclusion of non-cooperative forms of protest.

(Dr Messay Kebede can be reached at [email protected])