Neil Cavuto blasts President Obama for attacking Scott Brown’s truck. Republican Scott Brown had been running ads in Massachusetts where he is out driving around in his 2005 GMC Canyon pickup truck while campaigning for US Senator.
Scott Brown’s Fair Game; His Truck Isn’t
By Neil Cavuto
OK, so two things.
One: President Obama doesn’t flip over Scott Brown. That I knew.
Two: He doesn’t flip over Scott Brown’s truck. That I didn’t know.
You’d think that the auto “rescue in chief” would be careful not to bad-mouth any truck.
Especially an American truck. Especially a General Motors truck. Especially an American-rescued General Motors truck. Especially a 2005 GMC Canyon truck — that’s a pretty hardcore American truck — made by a company with problems to its core American truck-maker GM.
Brown’s fair game; his truck isn’t. And for this president with an incredible tin ear, this very line of attack tells you all you need to know about a leader who can’t even distinguish between the two.
I frankly think it’s his arugula thing all over again. Remember that one during the campaign? He’s talking to a bunch of union folks about the soaring price of everything, says he feels their pain at what’s been happening at the grocery store. And just when I think he’s going to start bemoaning paying more cash for corn flakes, he goes on about forking over more green for arugula — off the charts. And I’m thinking to myself: “Self, this guy’s off his rocker.”
Never mind I’ve since come to discover that arugula is an important veggie staple. It stapled an image in my mind: This guy’s mind is somewhere else.
Arugula matters. GM trucks do not. Bad form, big guy.
It doesn’t prove Scott’s out of touch. It only confirmed you are.
Amnesty International has called for arms transfers to the Somali government to be suspended until there are adequate safeguards to prevent weapons from being used to commit war crimes and human rights abuses.
In its latest briefing paper on the country, Amnesty International details US shipments of arms, including mortars, ammunition and cash for the purchase of weapons to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
These transfers were made despite substantial risks that such types of weapons could be used in indiscriminate attacks by TFG forces, or diverted to armed groups opposed to the TFG, who also commit gross and widespread abuses.
“International concern for the future of the Somali government has not been matched by an equal concern for the human rights of civilians,” said Michelle Kagari, Amnesty International Deputy Director for Africa.
“Mortar attacks continue to claim lives – it is time for international donors to apply tighter controls to their support for the government”
Amnesty International’s briefing also details growing international programmes of military and police training for TFG forces, despite a lack of adequate oversight procedures.
The training is delivered in Somalia itself and in Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and Uganda. The European Union, France, Germany and Italy are involved, or have pledged funding for it.
Amnesty International calls for all states providing, financing or planning military and police training for the TFG to provide training in international humanitarian law and on arms management. They should also press for the establishment of oversight procedures for TFG forces.
A UN arms embargo on Somalia has been in place since 1992 but states can apply to the UN Sanctions Committee for exemptions to supply security assistance to the Somali government.
Amnesty International is urging the committee to apply criteria for assessing the risk that exemptions to the arms embargo will contribute to war crimes and human rights abuses, and to deny authorisations on this basis.
To be effectively implemented, Amnesty International argues that such criteria need to be enshrined in international law and universally applied to all arms transfers. The organisation calls on states to establish such common standards in an international Arms Trade Treaty.
Somalia has been mired in armed conflict since the collapse of the Siad Barre government in 1991. Conflict intensified and unlawful killings of civilians increased after Ethiopian troops entered Somalia at the end of 2006 to help the TFG fight against several armed opposition groups from whom it has been seeking to regain territorial control.
Despite a peace agreement between the TFG and one armed group, the appointment of a President issued from the former armed opposition and the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia, armed opposition groups have continued attacks against the TFG. In May 2009, they launched a major offensive against the TFG, which currently only controls a small part of the capital Mogadishu.
In 2009, indiscriminate attacks by all parties to the armed conflict have resulted in thousands of civilians killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. The number of people internally displaced within Somalia is now 1.5 million and some 3.7 million are dependent on humanitarian assistance for their survival.
Google is at war with the Peoples Republic of China. Google is a worthy adversary. If I was a betting person I will put all my money on Google. There is no question Google will win. The Peoples Republic is playing the old game of bullying. Too bad for the Chinese those days are gone. It is a new age, a new game and winning comes from using your smarts not your brute force.
Google choose ‘Don’t be evil’ as the company motto. It looks like Google measured the company’s venture in China and the scale tipped towards evil. Google decided evil is not the way forward.
Google is an Internet search company located a few miles from where I live. It has been named as the best place to work in Fortune magazines survey. It is a forward-looking progressive company mindful of its social responsibility. There are plenty of smart Ethiopians working for Google. In fact my friend Tesh might join Google the next few days. We are all happy and proud.
Google entered the Chinese market in 2006. Google.cn agreed to purge its search results of banned topics such as Tiananmen, Tibet and other issues deemed sensitive by the communist government. Most civil right activists were not happy. Google felt having some access was better than no access. What Google CEO Eric Schmidt said was very memorable ‘we actually did an evil scale and decided not to serve at all was worse evil’ he opined.
As is the case with most incompatible marriages the Google –China union is showing cracks. Google is not happy with the sophisticated cyber attacks that are originating from China. The hackers are trying to penetrate computer security systems and steal corporate data and software source codes. Google is forced to revise its earlier decision to play dead and accommodate a repressive system.
According to David Drummond, chief legal officer of Google ‘we have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.
What lesson can we learn from Google’s encounter with an evil system and its response to stop such abuse? I believe Google is following the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Google is practicing the art of peaceful resistance to challenge a formidable looking but at the same time a weak opponent. A paper tiger; to borrow Mao’s phrase. Google can still serve its Chinese customers from outside. Software sophistication has come a long way. The average Chinese can use proxy servers and virtual networks to go around the ‘great Chinese firewall’. Google built its reputation by the quality of its superior search engine. Uncensored Google can beat any competition suffering under the yoke of state supervision. Thus Google felt evil cannot be accommodated. Google tried but found out compromise with dictatorship was a dead end street. Google choose not to participate in a rigged game.
We in Ethiopia are faced with the same situation. We have an opponent that is not willing to practice the art of give and take. Compromise is foreign to our TPLF bosses. Contempt to all others has become second nature to the tribal regime. Just as Google tried with China, the Ethiopian people have tried to accommodate the fears and worries of the minority based government. Time and time again the hand stretched palms up for peace and harmony have been chopped off. Peace is preferable to war, negotiation is superior to confrontation and compromise is more civilized than take it or leave attitude but all are a two way street. It takes the goodwill of both parties in a conflict to come to an understanding.
Google decided playing by the Communist party’s rule is more ruinous than not playing. We in Ethiopia should sit down and weigh the cost of further humiliation at the hands of a few delusional cadres as opposed to saying enough and charting a new path. The harm to our country and to ourselves is greater in the long run than the make believe peace we have conjured up in our head.
Google could have waited out the Chinese politburo. Google could have said ‘we will take this little compromise and hope for more.’ Google knew the longer its patience the more belligerent the demands get. Google said enough is enough. ጉግል በቃ አለ፣እርሶስ ምን ይላሉ?
There are some in Ethiopia that are trying to outlive evil. They talk about the high cost of confrontation. They preach about the virtue of patience. Then they try to raise alarm about the weakness of the opposition. They totally agree about the unfairness of the system but qualify their response by the impossibility of victory. It is true that no one goes to war to lose, but on the other hand when a war is declared by an enemy the only option is to do ones best to win. Rolling over dead is not a winning strategy.
The Chinese Government gave Google the license to operate. But it was a qualified license. Google tried its best to serve its customers with all the restrictions placed on it. It tried to make the best of a difficult situation. Facilitating the open exchange of information is Google’s business. The Chinese government was trying to muzzle that. Google found out you can’t serve two masters at the same time. It is either the Chinese people or the Chinese government.
It sounds like a familiar situation for us Ethiopians. The tribal regime allows formation of political party’s. It sets date and time for elections. Unfortunately there is a big but. You can register your party but you can’t campaign. You can stand for elections but your leaders will be jailed. You can sit and talk in a closed room but you cannot be quoted. It is ok to have election supervisors but they will be appointed by the regime. It is like entering a boxing ring with both hands tied behind your back and the referee is the mother of your opponent.
So Google is in the process of redefining its business contract with the Chinese government. It is willing to abandon working within the system and try its chances from outside China. It looks like Google made the change of course decision without looking at the other actors on the Chinese stage. Yahoo is still there. MSN is staying put. It really don’t matter. Google’s stand is based on its corporate principle of ‘Don’t do evil.’
We Ethiopians always fret about the opinion and stand of others. We shift responsibility and accountability unto others. We avoid answering to our conscience and try to find excuse for our deliberately vague outlook. The minority regime is beating the drums of elections. All the preparations for coronations are in place. The press has been muzzled, opposition leaders are put in jail, exiled, killed or co-opted, the law has been amended to TPLF’s specifications, the country is flooded with cadres bullying the population and the foreign Diplomats are stepping over each other preaching the wonderful art of compromise. The ducks are all lined up!
Be like Google and say no to unfair competition. Dare to say no to humiliation.
The poll conducted by Ethiopian Review during the past 7 days indicates that most Ethiopians would choose, by a wide margin, Dr Berhanu Nega of Ginbot 7 to be the next president of Ethiopia if a free and fair election is held in Ethiopia today and there is a presidential instead of the current fake parliamentary system of governance.
The 16 candidates in the poll were selected from over 180 suggestions that were made by readers. It is a not scientific poll, but the result is useful in analyzing the state of Ethiopian politics. It also helps to expose the illegitimate nature of the election that is scheduled to be held in Ethiopia next May. If a free election is held in Ethiopia, the outcome would be different. However, as things stand now, the outcome of the May 2010 elections is a forgone conclusion.
Participation in Ethiopian Review’s poll has been greater than we expected. Over 3,000 votes were cast in 3 days. That is almost half of the 7,000 unique visitors who accessed the page, which has been visited over 200,000 times. In about 30 days we will conduct another poll to see if there is any change.
As the front runner, Dr Berhanu Nega has a bigger burden of leadership. He needs to take some bold measures and get concrete results before the May 2010 elections in Ethiopia. Otherwise, his lead will evaporate over night. What we mean by result is clear: The removal of Woyanne. Any thing short of that, such as power sharing with Woyanne, will be considered betrayal or surrender.
Unlike Kinijit, this time we have two alternative forces. In case Ginbot 7 falters or betrays us, there is EPPF, which is emerging as a powerful organization. After Hailu Shawel, we should not completely trust any one. Those of us who wish to see Woyanne replaced by democratic and unity forces need to support both these organizations.
Aristotle wrote that “man is a political animal” to suggest that the defining characteristic of human beings is involvement in the civic life of their communities. Today, many Ethiopians across the board are strangely disengaged and alienated from Ethiopian politics. For the “alienated majority”, the disengagement is justified. They liken Ethiopian politics to a driverless bus, a pilotless plane or a freight train careening down a steep gorge without an engineer. People are starving. The economy is in shambles. Human rights violations are widespread. There is no rule of law. Corruption is endemic; and misery is a fact of daily life. Many have given up on politics believing that the country is in the iron clutches of “evil forces”, and pray for rescue through divine intervention. The average person in Ethiopia is a walking tale of woe and misery. A good segment of the civically active and potentially active community in exile is turned off by what they perceive to be the politics of endless recriminations, accusations, labeling, name-calling and finger-pointing. Ethiopian “Diaspora” politics is viewed by some as an exercise in self-indulgence at best, and not infrequently cannibalistic.
The discourse in contemporary Ethiopian politics undoubtedly has a sharp edge to it. It tends to be confrontational and adversarial, which serves its own purposes. It is also preoccupied by exertion of moral outrage over the general decline of the country. Rightly so, the moral bankruptcy, criminality, ineptitude, abuse of power, corruption and decadence of the current dictatorial regime has been laid out for the world to see. Much is written and said about the palace intrigues and behind-the-scenes maneuvers in the dictator’s lair. But the political discourse has yet to produce a clear, convincing and coherent alternative to the total and unmitigated mess created by the current dictatorship. In short, no one has stepped forward to articulate and define a brave new vision of a better future for the people of Ethiopia.
The current state of affairs in Ethiopia calls for the reinvention of politics in the democratic opposition by disconnecting from the self-destructive politics of the past and overwrought politics of the present, and connecting to a new politics of the future which transcends partisanship, ethnicity, ideology, language, region and so on. This reinvention requires several things: a paradigm shift in political thought and behavior, a radical change in perspective, a new approach and lexicon for political communication and a redefinition of the issues within a broader national agenda. It calls for politics that is “compassion-centered” and pragmatically oriented to creatively solving the entrenched problems of governance.
What is needed to begin the “reinvention” of Ethiopian politics? The “reinvention” is a multi-step process whose ultimate aim is to cultivate a true democratic civic culture shared by all Ethiopians. Step 1 begins with a clear understanding of the current situation so that we need not spend any more time trying to convert a one-man, one-party dictatorship into a genuine multiparty system, or even wasting time talking about it. As one can not change copper into gold, neither can one change dictators into democrats. What is it that we need to clearly understand about the current dictatorship before we begin the task of reinventing the Ethiopian politics of the future?
The answer is not complicated. The dictators of Ethiopia are trapped in a historical time warp. They have clutched the reigns of state for two decades and ostentatiously display the trappings of political power and wealth. But they have not been able to transform “bushcraft” into statecraft as recent scholarship by one of the original founders of the party-in-dictatorship today has shown. In their armed campaign against the Derg junta, decision-making was left in the hands of the few. The few leaders exercised raw, brute power over their followers and the communities they controlled. They silenced dissent and criticism ruthlessly, and leaders who disagreed were marginalized, labeled as traitors and removed. Everything was done in secrecy. Power was understood not as a public duty but as a means of self-enrichment, political patronage and intimidation. Leadership meant the cult of personality. The best they have been able to do is to transform the “politics of the bush” fighting the Derg into a one-man, one-party state, whose guiding motto is, “What is good for the TPLF/EPDRF is good for Ethiopia!”
The transition from “bushcraft” to statecraft requires tectonic transformations. Democratic statecraft requires an appreciation, understanding and application of basic democratic principles such as the rule of law, separation of powers, checks and balances and constitutionalism in the governance process. The dictators have little experience with or practical understanding of such principles. It is illogical for anyone to expect them to institutionalize accountability which they never had or experienced in their political lives. They never had free elections in the bush; and it is no wonder that they were totally surprised when they got thumped in the 2005 elections. Upholding the rule of law is absurd to them because they believe themselves to be THE LAW. The idea of an independent judiciary and impartial administration of justice is alien to them because they have no understanding or practical experience with due process. They scoff at civil liberties and civil rights as Western luxuries because they never lived in a system where the powers of government are constitutionally subordinated to the rights of the individual. In short, it is wishful thinking to expect from them the kind of statecraft necessary for democratic governance.
Reinventing politics means learning the lessons of the past and present and transforming the current political culture of oppression and corruption into a genuine future democratic civic culture. It means finding creative ways of replacing the climate of silence and fear with a culture of free expression, deliberation and debate and tolerance of dissent and divergent viewpoints.
There are many ways of reinventing Ethiopian politics. One approach is to adapt the model of the American civil rights movement. That movement was not aimed at seizing political power; rather it sought to organize, mobilize and channel basic popular disaffection on fundamental issues of civil and human rights. It was a movement guided by the idea of empowering ordinary people. From the outset, it was an inclusive movement. The maids, street cleaners, clergymen, doctors, lawyers and bankers participated equally in the movement and took ownership of their collective destiny. The religious institutions were the centers of “civic democracy” as they mobilized the community to be involved in the struggle for civil rights. Young people got involved in large numbers and became the vanguard of the movement. The NAACP led the legal battles in the courts.
There is a special burden on all Ethiopians, and particularly the exiled intellectual community to lend assistance in getting the process off the ground. It is to be acknowledged that there are the “old” and “new” generation of Ethiopian intellectuals in exile. Many in the “old” generation have bit their tongues in public. They have withdrawn from public debate turned off by what they perceive to be uncivil dialogue. There are also the “new” generation of intellectuals who circulate their brilliant scholarly papers, research studies and analysis on various facets of Ethiopian society for review but do not necessarily see the need to share it with the wider public in a manner accessible to those without a technical background. It is vital that both generations be involved and directly engage the public in envisioning the future of the future country. They must come out of self-imposed censorship and share their extraordinary knowledge and innovative ideas with the rest of us.
Without the involvement of progressive Ethiopian intellectuals, it would be difficult to nurture and cultivate a vigorous civic culture that will enable us to envision a dynamic, pluralistic and inclusive society of the future. Most importantly, they can be sources of creative and innovative ideas that will be needed to make the transition from ethnic-building to nation-building and help empower each Ethiopian to forego ethnic identity for a new national democratic identity based on a shared history of suffering oppression and a common conviction for a shared destiny. In the meantime, their participation is needed to inform and elevate the contemporary debate and in speaking truth to power.
In the final analysis, reinventing Ethiopian politics is about redefining the problem of politics not merely as competition for political power but as a process of developing a democratic civic culture and strengthening the moral fiber of ordinary citizens to take collective responsibility and perform their individual civic duties. None of these seem strange to the shameless idealist and audacious optimist who thinks everything is possible and nothing is impossible, and believes with every fiber in his body that Ethiopia can be a utopia!
[1]“The Future of the Future Country” is serialized set of special commentaries written by the author in honor of Ethiopia’s foremost political prisoner Birtukan Midekssa. Birtukan, the first woman leader of a political party in Ethiopia’s history, is an individual of extraordinary intelligence, integrity, courage and fortitude. Her favorite aphorism is, “Ethiopia is the country of the future.”
Alemayehu G. Mariam, is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. He writes a regular blog on The Huffington Post, and his commentaries appear regularly on Pambazuka News and New American Media.
I have read with great interest Jawar’s well thought and skillfully articulated piece on Tigrean nationalism. It has inspired me to present my own view, not so much to contradict Jawar as to present an alternative interpretation. I do not consider this article as a rebuttal because I agree with Jawar’s analysis on several points so that my interpretation can be considered as an invitation to broaden the approach. I no longer believe in the unity and struggle of opposites whereby the one pole triumphs by annihilating the other; instead, debates and differences of ideas mean the search for accommodating alternatives that trigger choices rather than the attempt to dominate.
One undeniable fact is that nothing is more crucial for people engaged in the fight to topple a regime than to know the true nature of the regime. In this regard, Jawar defines Meles’s regime as a “business oligarchy,” both to emphasize that the pursuit of individual interests rather than ethnic commitment is its driving force and to unravel its preferential treatment of one ethnic group as a politics designed to obtain support by instilling fear and insecurity.
Though I find Jawar’s definition clever and useful, I do not quite see why a business oligarchy will engage in or continue to pursue identity politics in a country like Ethiopia. Let me explain. If indeed Meles and his Tigrean associates make up a business oligarchy with no Tigrean bias except to deceitfully coerce Tigreans into supporting them, then Ethiopia is a country that offers them a better alternative to achieve their goal. Of course, I have in mind the undeniable existence of a civic nationalism, which we can define as Ethiopian nationalism. In effect, why would Meles and co. get involved in the muddle of ethnic politics when they could have governed in the name of Ethiopian nationalism and with the help of a de-ethnicized bureaucracy, as did the Derg, for instance?
Jawar’s answer is that Meles and co. need ethnic politics to rally Tigreans: by favoring them economically, they arouse the animosity of other ethnic groups, thereby forcing Tigreans to seek their protection. This reasoning makes sense only if one assumes that Meles and co. had no other option than ethnic politics to get some popular support. And Jawar can think so because for him Ethiopian nationalism has never existed. So that, no other way exists for an oligarchy to rule the country than to appeal to ethnic alignments even if business interests have diluted the ethnic commitment it once had.
But can anyone really believe that Meles and co. would have failed to find some legitimacy if they had espoused Ethiopian nationalism? The latter is still alive, as forcefully demonstrated by the 2005 electoral victory of Kinijit that Meles had to suppress by violent means. Is any of Meles’s decisions and frequent crackdowns intelligible without his resolution to prevent at all cost the rise of a strong pro-Ethiopian political party? Birtukan is in jail because she epitomizes the resurgence of Ethiopianism. It is because Meles is convinced of the resilience of Ethiopian nationalism that he is so persistently at war with whatever seems to reinforce it. Doubtless, then, if Meles had defended Ethiopian nationalism and made some regional concessions to ethnic concerns and expanded the already existing pan-Ethiopian bureaucracy and military apparatus, he would have acquired acceptance and created a solid base, which he would have rewarded with economic advancements.
On the other hand, Jawar reasons as though there is such a thing as “Tigrean nationalism.” He is surprised that the TPLF betrayed that nationalism by involving Tigreans in the untenable situation of new conquerors and oppressors. Thus, he is baffled that the freedom fighter that he once knew ransacked his village. Is not Jawar’s surprise easily explained by the bogus nature of the so-called Tigrean nationalism? The inspiring goal of the leaders of the TPLF has never been the alleged Tigrean nationalism, which they knew not to exist. In light of centuries of unity between Tigreans and Amhara, there is neither political nor cultural justification for arguing in favor of a separate Tigrean national identity. Incidentally, Jawar gives us the foundation of Ethiopian nationalism, and hence of the non-existence of Tigrean nationalism, when he interprets the appointment of a Tigrean as a patriarch of the Orthodox Church as another TPLF’s “intensified effort to make ethnicity more important than religious solidarity.” Is not the necessity of an intensified effort to break the old bonds tying Tigreans to the Amhara a confirmation of the inexistence of Tigrean nationalism?
What the TPLF baptized as “nationalism” is none other than the hatred against the Amhara ruling elite and Ethiopian nationalism. As Aregawi Berhe, one of the founders of the organization, openly admits in his new book (A Political History of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front), the inspiring motive of the rebellious Tigrean elite was “resentment” at the sight of Tigray’s economic and political marginalization by the Amhara ruling class. The split of Tigrean students from the pan-Ethiopian orientation of the Ethiopian student movement was the product of elite conflict for the control of state power that the TPLF disguised as Tigrean nationalism. Hostility, first against the Amhara ruling elite and then against the Derg––as a proponent of Amhara hegemony––was systematically disseminated to provide a popular support to the Tigrean educated elite in its competition for the control of state power. Giving this hegemonic goal, is it surprising if, once it seized power, the TPLF has proved to be an instrument of oppression?
Our surprise should decrease even more in light of ethnic discourse authorizing oppressive behavior. The clear message of ethnonationalist discourse in Ethiopia is that there is nothing common between Amhara, Oromo, Tigreans, and other groups. They are all different nations that the Amhara state held together by sheer force. Given this image of Ethiopia as a “prison-house of nations,” what can we expect from TPLF fighters when they land in Wollega, Gondar or Wolaita? Obviously, they come as conquerors and occupiers since no bonds exist between them and the indigenous people. In denying the existence of a country called Ethiopia, the TPLF fighter is thereby invited to behave as a foreigner occupying an alien land that he/she will ransack without the slightest hesitation. That is why, unlike Jawar, I am not shocked when such fighters plunder Ethiopian villages.
To downgrade the ethnic equation, Jawar analyses Meles and co. as cold calculators of their interests. He forgets the hatred they nourished for decades toward Ethiopia, a hatred such that it clouds their judgment and prevents them from seeing other options, for instance the alternative of Ethiopian nationalism. Where there is ethnic politics there is also emotional syndromes that are not accountable in terms of interests. Despite serious efforts, scholars have failed to reduce ethnic politics to rationality, that is, to the calculation of interests by elite groups. More often than not, alongside material interests primitive sentiments emerge, such as hatred, fear, mistrust, which elites use to mobilize people and from which violent confrontations often spring.
It seems to me that Meles and co. have become themselves victims of the hatred they generated against Ethiopian nationalism in their quest for power. I remember vividly one of Meles’s interviews to the Ethiopian Television soon after the occupation of Addis Ababa: to the concern that ethnic politics might destroy Ethiopia, he responded by saying that the failure of ethnic federalism would simply mean that Ethiopia was not meant to be. To be sure, the prediction of such ominous end by the head of state of the country did not emanate from a loving concern.
The combination of interests with hatred induces Meles and co. to hurt Ethiopia while exorbitantly taking advantage of its resources. This ambivalent politics explains why they engage in actions that are detrimental to Ethiopia, such as ceding lands to the Sudan or devising increasingly lethal means of division. The animosity they feel toward Ethiopia does not allow them to engage in a politics of sustained progress toward unity, democracy, and equal prosperity; they have to periodically antagonize and hurt so as to vent the enmity that is eating them from inside. Ethiopians would want Meles and co. to be rational calculators of interest, given that they would have easily perceived that their best interest lies in promoting the equal prosperity of all ethnic groups. Alas, deeply engrained emotional thirsts stand in the way of rational politics.
In this respect, nothing is more perilous than to treat Tigray and the Tigrean elite preferentially as the policy does no more than enrage the rest of Ethiopia, thereby turning the achieved prosperity into a precarious acquisition. But this is to forget that enraging Ethiopian nationalism is an integral part of the psychological makeup of Meles and co.: they cannot commit to rational politics owing to the rancor with which they have filled their mind since their student years. This is to say that I do not follow Jawar in his view that the TPLF leadership has but abandoned its ethnic references, which it uses only to scare Tigeans. On the contrary, the references are alive in the deep-seated need to damage Ethiopia. Of all people Ethiopians should never forget the destructive power of resentment: they saw it at work with Mengistu Haile Mariam whose stubborn narcissism brought about the demise of the Ethiopian army and state because some people had called him “baria” in his younger days.
Above all, the resolution to control power indefinitely pushes Meles and co. to continue the politics of divide and rule. Since the implementation of liberal democracy cannot but lead to their demise, what else is left but to force people to vote ethnically so that the resulting political dispersal is used to sustain the hegemony of the TPLF? Meles hangs on to ethnic politics for the simple reason that dispersion is the only way by which a minority can retain power. More than the need to spread fear among Tigreans through the instrumentality of envy caused by preferential treatment, ethnic politics provides an institutional mechanism that allows a minority to rule over the majority. As the workings of the EPRDF illustrate, the mechanism results from the combination of ethnic separation with centralization, which is otherwise known as democratic centralism. By making lower bodies accountable to higher bodies, the principle of democratic centralism counters the ethnic fragmentation by creating a pyramidal power structure that transfers the full control of the state to an ethnic minority elite, just as communist oligarchies ruled the Soviet empire for decades by using the same mechanism of control.
(The author, Prof. Messay Kebede, can be reached at [email protected])
