ActionAid UK

Anti-poverty campaigners Daniel Bekele and Netsanet Demissie are now the only defendants still striving to establish their innocence, out of 131 originally accused in a long-running treason trial in Ethiopia.

With their advocate, the two will begin presenting their defence evidence to the Federal High Court today.

They will be the only ones left on trial in this case. On Wednesday 25 July five defendants changed their pleas to guilty, and two others decided not to present any further evidence. Those convicted will be sentenced next week and it is understood they will immediately seek presidential pardons.

Last week 38 people already convicted in the trial, most of them opposition politicians, were sentenced and then pardoned. They had signed a document admitting using “unconstitutional means to change the constitutionally established government functions” following the 2005 elections.

Daniel Bekele, 40, policy manager of ActionAid Ethiopia, and Netsanet Demissie, 29, general manager of the Organisation for Social Justice in Ethiopia, decided not to sign, arguing that their activities in 2005 were entirely legal and served not to undermine but to protect and promote Ethiopia’s constitutional order. They wish to establish this in court and secure their acquittal.

The two were detained in November 2005 alongside opposition political leaders and charged in January 2006 with the crime of “outrage against the constitution and the constitutional order”.

Daniel and Netsanet have argued in court that their work in monitoring the 2005 parliamentary election and their involvement in the civil society initiative to resolve the post-electoral political impasse were both positive contributions performed in a peaceful and constitutional manner.

Amnesty International considers them to be prisoners of conscience and human rights defenders.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Feeling sorry for the customer who said his mom no longer had a place to live, gas station owner Zerit Haileslasie let the mother stay in a shed behind the store rent-free.

A few days later, the man entered the Shell service station in the 3100 block of Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway and fatally shot Haileslasi three times. Store surveillance cameras then caught the man and his mother stealing money from the cash register.

The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office said Thursday that the mother, 47-year-old Regina Roberts, has pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the December 2006 shooting and testified against her son.

The son, David Leeks, 26, was found guilty last week of malice murder. He was sentenced to life plus 25 years in prison. Roberts was given 20 years.

Haileslasie, known in the neighborhood as Simon, had moved to Atlanta from Toronto to help run the family business.

“He was saving money to become the next in the family of Ethiopian entrepreneurs to open a store,” said District Attorney spokeswoman Lyn Vaughn.

A Case from my Bag of Childhood Memories

By Maru Gubena

It is in fact not difficult to provide multiple examples of Ethiopian socio-cultural rules that contain negative connotations, and which have been partly or fully responsible for molding the unaccommodating and unproductive attitudes of the members of Ethiopian society. These socio-cultural rules are also obviously responsible for our dysfunctional behaviours, which continue to be a permanent impediment to the process of democratization and to a free flow of ideas and views among individuals. It is therefore my sincere hope that we, concerned Ethiopians, will be willing to do everything that is in our capacity to selectively and collectively fight against the bad side of our socio-cultural values and norms, to realize the required structural transformation.

Here, for the purpose of clarity, I have chosen to address just a single aspect among the many cultural patterns of Ethiopian’s socio-cultural norms: the negative use of the adjective “woregna.” I consider this to be an enemy for a great part of Ethiopian society – an impediment to the development of free mindsets. With the intention of producing a readable text, this true story drawn from the bag of my childhood memories will be employed to illustrate the central, complex issues – issues that have lacked the required attention. As is known, there are also enormous differences in the meaning of the term of “woregna.” The larger Ethiopian society tends to employ this word to describe individuals in a negative way: people who make trouble by stepping outside the social norms. The usage within a family household is quite different. When parents use the term “woregna,” it is intended to protect children and other family members from the judgments of outsiders by discouraging acting too talkative or curious; the usage may feed into the social norms, but it is not at all negative. It can even be an expression of joy and the love of a mother for her laughing, happy child who constantly calls to her, asking so many exciting and even tiring questions. The subsequent pages reflect real and affectionate mother-child relations.

As can possibly be agreed the way a particular society interprets behaviours described by terms like “curiosity” and “fascination” – and whether these are seen as positive or negative attributes for individuals to possess – depends largely on the socio-cultural values, norms and attitudes that have been framed, molded, shaped and reshaped within the members of that particular society. Being curious, or having a fervent desire to enthusiastically and creatively engage in observation and discussion, in an attempt to uncover and understand the world – and in this case the socio-cultural, and economic relations among people – is seen as an extraordinary talent in modern societies, especially those that are technologically developed; such societies may give people with this talent a special socio-economic status. The same applies to the enormous curiosity and enthusiasm shown by individuals who make vigorous efforts to clearly perceive and understand the processes and course of events in a given society, the socio-cultural influences on behaviors and interactions, the presence or absence of talents and capacities among individuals, and the huge gaps due to inequalities among the members of society.

Regrettably, Ethiopia is an example of a culture in which the most dynamic individuals – those who make every possible effort, as energetically and tirelessly as possible, and who employ every available tool in an effort to uncover are not seen in a positive light, even today. Individuals who are open minded and able to uncover, observe and understand the socio-economic relations, relative positions and interactions among individuals in our society are not only perceived negatively, but are actively discouraged from asking sensible, far-reaching questions: they are characterized as, even accused of, being “woregna,” as presented in the subsequent pages, “The True Story of the Rich Lady and the Mules of Fogera: Sharing my Childhood Memories.”

The True Story of the Rich Lady and the Mules of Fogera: Sharing my Childhood Memories

Although not in the same sense as in today’s modern politics, even as child in Fogera, where I was born, and since, I think, age six, I have always been fascinated by politics, human interactions, human behaviours and socio-economic inequalities among the people within Ethiopian society. In my recollection, even at an early age I was sometimes invited by elderly people to tell them “wores” – stories that are exciting, deep and meaningful. Other times, however, I was described as being a good “woregna,” a storyteller. Although my mother, Mazash Bykedagn – the mother of four girls and three boys, who was always happy and looking young and beautiful, with an elegant, sexy appearance and body structure despite being the mother of seven children – never liked it when I was called woregna by others, she herself used to say or even to shout at me “I have told you time and again not to be so woregna, and certainly not to talk everywhere and to everyone, even with people we don’t know, who are not related to us.” My father was hardly at home. He was always busy with his court cases and court sessions, mostly in Addis Zemen. It was probably due to the beauty of my mother that my paternal grandmother was never happy and comfortable whenever my mother spoke of or got ready to go alone to Woreta, or even to the nearest markets. In the early years of the 1960s, Woreta was a very small town where my mother and other people in our region did their business, especially on Saturday. My mother was not only beautiful, but she was also wise and most conciliatory with both family members and friends. She therefore made every possible effort to avoid anything that would hurt my grandmother, whose house was almost attached to ours. So as a compromise with my grandmother, and also because I was the last and favorite child of my parents, my mother almost always took me with her wherever she went, which was mostly to Woreta.

During these many and most memorable journeys, much to the irritation of my mother, I was always staring at the various people who were walking or riding on mules along with us on the road to Woreta. I mostly watched their behaviour and listened to their talk. In my recollection, the great majority of Fogeries – about 90 to 95 percent – made their journeys to Woreta on foot. Others traveled on mules or donkeys – a good number of them carrying guns. My mother and I used to go to Woreta on foot, with no or guns. It was not unusual for me in the middle of our journey to ask my mother as lovingly as possible to stop walking and listen to me – to my questions. “My Tati, I want you to stop for me. I want to ask you something!” As my relationship with my mother had always been very close and affectionate, her responses to my sometimes sensible but often nonsensical, childish and bothersome questions, was always carefully, wisely and lovingly crafted. While looking closely at me and smiling affectionately, as always, she would ask: “what is it Hode? What do you want to tell me, Hodeye? Okay, tell me. I am listing to you, Yeni Fiker – my love.” “Why do some people travel on mules or donkeys, and others on foot? And why are some men carrying guns?” My mother looked at me with surprise and irritation as well, and, holding my hand firmly, said: “is this the reason you asked me to stop my walk and listen to you, my woregna? Is this what you want to ask me, Hode? What is interesting about this, and why is it your concern? I really don’t want to hear any more of your nonsense questions” my mother would say, harshly, decisively and in the most uncompromising terms, holding my left hand in her right and dragging me forcefully to continue our journey.

During those memorable days and long, tiring journeys, there were even more remarkable events to be observed – events that I used to find enormously fascinating. Consequently, I quite often stood still, remaining far behind my mother, while looking at those men and women who rode on mules – to the point that my mother would get so mad at me that she would give me a smack, quite often on my buttocks and sometimes even my face. It was not just the men and women on the mules who were so fascinating to me, but rather, the two, three or sometime four poor guys – I am not sure whether they were a kind of slave, or servants or permanently employed bodyguards – of the individuals riding on mules. Each of them carried a gun and ran on foot to the left or right of the mules and at the same speed. Since I had no one to ask – asking my mother would certainly bring me another, even harsher smack – I was most often left alone to wonder, asking myself “how on earth can those poor guys go on foot, running for hours at the same speed as the mules, carrying guns all the while, until they reach their final destination?” In particular there was one lady, said to be a descendant of a warrior family in our region. She was extremely rich, with extensive lands in many parts of Fogera. This rich lady was also said to own an enormous number of cattle, five or more modern houses in Woreta, and to have many servants and bodyguards. Everyone was able to see this lady riding on her mule along our way to Woreta, guarded by her five servants or bodyguards, all of them carrying guns; but I was, I think, the only one who stared at her with particular interest and fascination. Since the entire body of the rich lady, except her face and feet, was usually entirely covered by her Ethiopian traditional clothes, no one could recognize her. Those who felt compelled by the traditional social code of laws, norms and values of Fogera to salute the rich lady could only have identified her by recognizing her mule and her five servants or bodyguards.

I had seen the face of the rich lady more than twice before; she was in fact beautiful, even though not as beautiful and elegant as my mother. Much to my embarrassment, once she saw me staring at her and said, with a lovely smile, something like “did you manage to discover what is interesting in me, my Konjo woregna – my lovely curious boy?” Of course, as anyone can imagine, I was embarrassed that she could see that I was constantly looking at her and that I was, in her eyes too, a good woregna.

One early afternoon, when my mother and I were in Woreta and my mother was busy shopping or buying some Lamba, coffee, salt and so on, I immediately saw the rich lady on her mule, just arriving in the market with her five servants or bodyguards. Among her five poor guys I saw two lifting the rich lady from the back of the mule down to the ground. I ran to her at high speed – to the rich lady. The rich lady of Fogera looked at me and asked, “are you here again today, my Konjo boy? “Yes, but why are those guys always carrying guns and running along with your mule on foot while you are sitting very comfortably on the mule? Why don’t they too have mules, like you?” I confronted the rich lady. And while the rich lady was still staring at me and at her bodyguards, I went on to ask her bodyguards as well. “Why do you guys run without stopping over such a long distance, carrying guns and with the same speed as the mule?” The servants or bodyguards, who did not know how to answer my questions, remained silent, just looking at their boss – the rich lady.

While I was spellbound, awaiting the response of the rich lady to my questions, but when the rich lady just began to open her mouth, saying something like “well….”, my mother who had been searching everywhere for me, saw me standing there, having a heated conversation with the rich lady and her bodyguards. As usual, and as could have been expected, my mother became furious with me. To make the situation worse, the rich lady told my mother that I was asking some “silly” questions; she felt that I was accusing her of doing something bad to her bodyguards. She also told my mother she had the feeling that I was too woregna. As one can imagine, due to my temporary disappearance from my mother’s side as well as for having hurt the feelings of the rich lady, I got two or three of the biggest smacks on my face that I had ever had from my Tati – my mother. While I cried, my mother held my hand firmly and pulled me closer and closer to her, as she apologized to the rich lady and asked for her forgiveness.

The above account is an obvious illustration of some patterns of Ethiopian socio-cultural values and norms that have, knowingly or unknowingly, been constructed to constantly discourage children from asking sensible, far-reaching questions. These repressive socio-cultural rules place excessive limits on our capacity for communication as adults – our ability to freely express ourselves. Yes, we are taught not to be open minded; instead we must be exceptionally quiet, calm and secretive, to the point that most of us are unable to make the effort needed to distinguish between what precisely should be regarded as a secret and what should not. For example, we have been brought up not to disclose household or family matters to outsiders or even to close and helpful friends and colleagues – even the fact that a family member or a partner is traveling to London or Atlanta to attend a social or political gathering is seen as a secret, although in most Western cultures and circumstances this would be seen as something that could be disclosed. Unfortunately, however, the majority of Ethiopians still believe such matters should not be disclosed except to immediate family members, probably due to fear of information getting to the wrong people or other unknown consequences, or to avoid being accused of “woregna.” It is clear that a disproportionate portion of Ethiopian society prefers shyness, closeness and secretiveness above openness and healthy, constructive communications. In addition, it is undeniably true that, in accord with our socio-cultural values and norms, talking or writing openly about vital issues related to our sexual behaviours and interactions are strictly forbidden. Not only are many of Ethiopia’s socio-cultural values and norms contrary to the modern socio-cultural and democratic values and norms that we badly wish to see implemented in our country, but also they harm us ourselves, the general population of Ethiopia, most of all. This unfortunate influence will continue to shape the attitudes of future generations, unless urgent actions and measures are undertaken by all concerned Ethiopians in an effort to modify or transform the current situation and arrive at more accommodative socio-cultural values and norms.

Maru Gubena: Readers who wish to contact the author can reach me at [email protected]

By Selam Beyene

In a series of articles published in the New York Times, Jeffrey Gettleman shocked the world with a glimpse of the atrocities committed by Zenawi’s regime against the people of Ethiopia. In so doing, Gettleman not only demonstrated journalistic professionalism of the highest order, but also provided uncommon comfort to the 70 million Ethiopians suffering under Zenawi’s iron rule.

Through a powerful exposition of the brutality of Zenawi and his deceits of the donor community, Gettleman declared: “The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have … been siphoning off millions of dollars in food aid and using a U.N. polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters…”

What support can one give to such an admirable journalist, who is owed so much by the people of Ethiopia, so that his efforts will not be in vain?

The answer may not be difficult. All genuine Ethiopians should express their gratitude for his Herculean efforts, and provide him with much needed information that exposes the brutality of Zenawi’s regime not just in the Ogaden region, but throughout the country.

Gettleman’s efforts would bear fruit, and the struggle to free the oppressed people of Ethiopia would be successful, only if the true picture of Zenawi’s regime is presented in the proper perspective, without falling in the dangerous ethnic traps that the dictator has wickedly installed for us.

When Zenawi directed one of his attack dogs, Seyoum Mesfin, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to respond to the first of Gettleman’s reports, the motive was to divert the focus of the discussion from the absence of human rights and democracy to one concerning the rise of one ethnic group against the rest of “Ethiopia”.

While fully sharing the pains of our Ogaden compatriots, as we do collectively share the pains suffered by all other ethnic groups across the land, we should guard against the tendency to fall victims to Zenawi’s ethnic politics by treating the movements to overthrow Zenawi’s dictatorship as isolated movements of disparate ethnic groups against the motherland.

A movement against Zenawi’s oppression cannot have a lasting democratic outcome, if it is anchored in an ethnic agenda. The memory is still fresh that less than two decades ago the ethnicbased movements that overthrew the dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam only brought us equally vicious dictators in the likes of Zenawi and Afewerki.

So, as we applaud Gettleman for his courage, integrity and objectivity in exposing the brutal nature of Zenawi’s dictatorship, let’s provide our support to him so that he will be better equipped with comprehensive knowledge to more effectively use the power of the New York Times toward the search for a more permanent and lasting solution to the suffering of all Ethiopians: from the Somalis and Afars in the lowlands to the Oromos, Amharas, Gurages and Tigreans of the highlands; and from the Anuaks of the West to the numerous oppressed people of the South.

Interestingly, Gettleman’s reports could not have come at a worse time for the brutal dictator, who is cornered like a wounded and dangerous beast with no place to escape:

• At home, he is vilified and humiliated, having been rejected on May 15, 2005 by the people of Ethiopia in a vote of no confidence against his dictatorial and ethnic-based minority regime.
• Abroad, he is considered persona non grata, even by his once-ardent supporters, having been found responsible, by a commission set up by his own government, for the massacre of over 193 peaceful demonstrators and the arrests and torture of thousands of opposition party members.
• As recently as July 19, 2007, a U.S. congressional panel approved legislation aimed at
  supporting democracy and human rights in Ethiopia, and sent the bill to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
• His army is bogged down in a protracted war in Somalia ― a country he attacked although it had posed no tangible danger to the security of Ethiopia.
• Despite the billions of dollars poured into his coffers by donor nations, the economy is in shambles, thanks to blatant nepotism, corruption and mismanagement. According to a recent report, the number of Ethiopians living on less than a dollar a day, has nearly tripled since Zenawi took power in 1991 ― a shameful record, especially given the baseline is the discredited regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam.
• Across the land, the flames of inter-ethnic discord he once fanned for the purpose of weakening the Ethiopian nationhood have gone out of his control and are spreading like a wildfire, rapidly engulfing him. What is the response of the desperate dictator, as the noose is tightening around him from all directions? True to his roots, Zenawi copied Stalin’s formula for the Great Purge, coerced the political prisoners, and forced them to accept accountability for the crimes he committed against humanity.

In his petty mind, the move was intended to serve several purposes:

1. The document bearing the signatures of the political prisoners would serve as a defense against the inevitable charge for crimes against humanity.
2. The release of the opposition leaders, whose only crime is to have been elected by the people of Ethiopia, would serve to placate donor countries, who have withheld much needed money to finance Zenawi’s repressive machinery and to fatten his overseas bank accounts.
3. The move is also intended to thwart the ongoing congressional activities in the US to hold the regime accountable for human rights violations.
4. Most importantly, the alleged confessions and subsequent release of the political prisoners would help to divert attention from the dreaded issue of the illegitimacy of Zenawi’s government.

However, a careful evaluation of the recent unfolding events suggests that Zenawi’s wishful thinking has no traction. No credible legal expert would believe that the documents signed under duress by the political prisoners would hold water in a court of law. Despite expensive lobbying, the plan to thwart the ongoing congressional activities has also backfired, and Congressman Payne has already declared that he’d still demand that “the killers of the 193 innocent civilians” be held accountable.

Thus, given Zenawi’s desperate situation, and the abundance of support for the democratic movement, what is the optimal course of action for the opposition?

All genuine Ethiopians in the Diaspora and back home should now seize the moment and keep the pressure on Zenawi. They should set aside their personal, ethnic and political differences, and pool their resources to address the critical questions of the day:

• The return of political power to the legitimate leaders chosen by the people on May 15, 2005, and

• The prosecution of the criminals responsible for the post-election massacre of peaceful demonstrators, for the unjust imprisonment and torture of opposition members, and for the genocide of Anuaks and other ethnic groups.

By Selam Beyene, Ph.D., can be reached at [email protected]

By Abiye Tekelemariam

Philosopher Messay Kebede has a unique take on the release of CUD leaders (Ethiopian Review, July 21). As a consequence of the demand for forgiveness, he argues, its goal can’t be none other than the need to humiliate the leaders. The popular, if not the conventional, perspective about their release is that despite the moral puzzles of last week’s deal, the outcome is better than them staying in prison.

Suppose Messay is right, and that the government’s commitment throughout the mediation process had in fact been to humiliate its opponents, and that because it has obtained the demand for forgiveness, it has humiliated them as needed. I would then say that it is reasonable to consider the deal as a massive cataclysm that changes a lot of what we know about CUD politics.

There is a philosophical matter of great importance here. To be humiliated doesn’t simply mean to be wronged, or to be a victim of injustice even though it falls in those general categories. Humiliation is a special wrong, or injustice as it is a violation of human dignity; an attack on the absolute and inherent worth of human beings. The distinction here isn’t just semantic. For example, laws give differential remedies to subjects of humiliation and victims of other kinds of injustice. The Christian doctrine of turning the other cheek doesn’t go as far as urging the toleration of humiliation. We sometimes reasonably expect persons who are victims of some sorts of injustice not to be morally outraged, and rather to forgive and forget. But forgiving a humiliator is so difficult a task that putting it as a moral, legal or any other form of obligation is unreasonable, or at least too demanding. If we violate such obligation, our nature would serve as a morally mitigating factor, if not an excusing condition entirely. It is thus reasonable to expect a humiliated person to make revenge the predominant part of his life’s project.

We may argue that politicians are rear human beings, and that because their projects have implications beyond themselves, they have an obligation to behave in a different way to ordinary individuals. Despite the general validity of the statement, it serves as a weak argument as a justification to the toleration of humiliation. If anything, politicians think of themselves as representatives of people, and as Messay himself acknowledges, an affront to the dignity of a politician is, by extension, an affront to dignity of each of the people he represents. That is especially true where the humiliation is inflicted in connection to the politician’s representation of a constituency. Physicists speak of the larger distortions of physical space when the gravitational masses are greater. Humiliation is a distortion to personal space. The larger the number of the humiliated, the greater the distortion to personal spaces, and hence, the more reasonable to expect the commitment to payback.

Of course, it doesn’t follow that, if Messay is right, the CUD leaders will act in the way I mentioned above. They may be a collection of holy people, and may in this case, as some of them have been before, be shining personal examples of forgiveness and toleration. I am not also assigning an ontological status to them as a group of vengeance seeking politicians. There may be differences among them in how they react to the humiliation. My aim here is to show that Messay’s thesis of humiliation can bear upon us the reasonable expectation that the CUD’s politics of reconciliation and love, famously captured by Teddy Afro’s song Ja Yasteserial, will change.

But I do not think that Messay’s argument is well-taken. I trust that his conception of humiliation is suspect, and contrary to his interpretation of the document they purportedly signed, it is doubtful whether the document extracts guilt from the leaders.

Messay starts his essay with references to moral psychology to explicate his theory of humiliation. He claims that one cannot humiliate what “one has not already recognized as a superior.” So in the matrix of relationships, the commitment or the need to humiliation enters as a relational value when one feels inferior to another. Messay’s argument can be reformulated as follows:

(i)(x, y) (x is inferior to y)

Humiliation is an act of the inferior
Therefore, only x is capable of humiliating y

Or;

(ii)(x, y) (x humiliates y)

Humiliation is an act of the inferior
Therefore, x is inferior to y

It seems that the truth of both conclusions depends on the truth of proposition that humiliation is an act of the inferior. Messay doesn’t say what he means by “inferior”. Thus, here I take the liberty to assume that because his argument relates to political competition, it avoids the complex, but comprehensively rejected, notion of moral inferiority even though humiliating treatment in itself is a moral one. Instead, it may mean an inferiority in talent, education, popular appeal and support, vote, etc…

If humiliation is the violation of human dignity, the proposition seems to be false. Let’s assume that y is a person who believes in the race-based eugenics, and thinks and feels that the race x belongs to(r2) is intellectually inferior to his race(r1). He thinks people in r2 are so inferior intellectually that they are like SMR(Severely Mentally Retarded). Let’s further assume that because y has, to use concepts from moral psychology, neither Transferal Respect nor Counter-Factual Interpersonal Identification, to and with x, he isn’t ready to treat him as a moral equal. Y, say, chooses to make x his slave. There is no better example of an assault to human dignity than that. But the humiliation isn’t a result of feeling of inferiority in y. In fact, the reverse is true.

Even if the conclusions of (i) and (ii) are false, Messay’s further argument remains unscathed. His argument that the purpose of the extraction of confession of guilt is the perpetrator’s mask to hide his own meanness from himself , and construe humiliation as a punishment can stand whether the humiliator is inferior or superior. So surely the argument needs examination independently of the truth of his previous proposition. Let me ask if there is an extraction of guilt.

Legal philosophers distinguish between mistake and guilt. Mistake is a false belief in the existentiality of that the knowledge corresponds to. There is a lack of volitional intent in it. Guilt, however, is for acts and consequences intended by the doer. In modern criminal law, some negligent acts can make the doer guilty of crimes, but even then, negligence is different from mistake. The text of the document the leaders of the CUD signed states in clear terms that the responsibility that they have taken is to the acts and consequences arising from their mistake.

Beyond the text, there is an important aspect of the agreement to consider- circumstances of the agreement. In general law of contracts, we have the concept of duress. If a person enters into an agreement by violence or a threat to violence, the law supposes that there is a defect in consent, and thus, the contract is voidable.The scope of concept has, in recent years, been significantly expanded in different legal systems in both form and content. Economic pressure is now routinely considered by courts and laws as a form of duress. violence can be a positive act or inaction. It is not my intention in this essay to explore whether the document is signed under duress. But in the legal world where inaction may amount to violence, there is a sufficient reason to doubt whether there is a consent free of defect in a deal made between a jailer and the jailed.

I acknowledge that answering the question of the existence of a guilt confession, not by elucidating the meaning of some of the concepts in ordinary speech, or how the agreement is perceived , but by using conventional doctrinal methods may render my project irrelevant in view of the fact that the agreement is not entirely legalistic, but that it involves political aspects as well. An argument skeptical to my doctrinal method may advance the thesis that as an agreement which is le politique, what matters is how, as a matter of habit or conviction, the text of the agreement is interpreted,and/ or how the community sees the circumstances of the agreement. This is an empirical question, and a matter for the social scientists to deal with. On the basis of some of the opinions in the media here and abroad -which can’t be taken as a scientific research- , however, there is a remarkable degree of conformity that the paper doesn’t constitute the confession of guilty.

Perhaps the reason for the commitment of the government to obtain the demand of forgiveness from the CUD leaders has more to do with realpolitik than the infliction of any form of moral damage. If Messay’s theory of humiliation is debunked, it is reasonable to expect CUD politics, here in Ethiopia, to continue with its traditional message, but with a modified strategy.

The writer can be reached at [email protected]