Nineteen years and counting. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his ruling EPRDF party are cruising to an easy “victory” in the May 23 elections. Taking power in 1991, Meles is as entrenched as they get.
Meles’ win did take some work. After the 2005 election, in which the opposition did too well for his liking, the hammer fell. Since then, political opponents and local journalists have been jailed. Foreign journalists denied visas. The internet jammed. Newspapers closed. There are credible reports of food aid being used as a political weapon. The government jams our Voice of America broadcasts, despite the nearly billion dollars of aid we give it each year. The State Department reports that Ethiopian security services commit politically motivated killings. The Meles government has the repression thing down pretty good.
Meles has buddies. Throughout the continent, several leaders are into their second, third and nearly fourth decades in power. No democrats here. The State Department tends to put them on pedestals, especially Rwanda’s Kagame and Uganda’s Museveni. Along with Meles, the Clinton Administration lauded these “new African leaders.”
I ran into the Ethiopian Ambassador last week. On democracy, he pleaded for time. African democracy is young, for sure. But that absolves sins of omission, poor infrastructure that frustrates voting, for example. Political hits and other violence against democrats are inexcusable. The Ambassador didn’t mention that his government is committed to “revolutionary democracy,” a collectivism that tolerates no dissent. The New York Times quotes a prominent Ethiopian dissident saying, “They still have this leftist ideology that the vanguard party is right for the people.” Trust me, they always will.
Last week, with seven other members of Congress, I wrote the State Department charging that in recent years it “has rarely spoken out about the Meles government’s human rights violations.” Diplomats, never wanting to offend, always short democracy. They go especially easy on Ethiopia because it checks jihadists in neighboring Somalia. I doubt the Ethiopian government hits them as hard as its political opponents.
Getting excited about democracy risks driving the Meles government into Chinese hands, some argue. Beijing is pouring billions into Ethiopia. This possible dance with Beijing says a lot about the Meles government’s true colors. Clearly, our real allies are the brave Ethiopian men and women fighting the rot of years of Meles’ unchecked reign. Aid them. Sadly, power has gotten to the point of absolutely corrupting Meles’ 19-year rule.
(Ed Royce, a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from California, is a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and a former chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa.)
I am still struggling to make sense of Sunday’s election from the viewpoint of the Woyanne government itself. There is no doubt that its results represent a crushing and demoralizing defeat for the opposition. Such a colossal defeat shows once again the pettiness and the self-defeating impact of the disputes among opposition forces by underlying the imperative of unity as the only path to acquire any political weight in a democratic contest. It also reflects the extent to which the opposition has underestimated the power of manipulation and intimidation that the Meles’s regime still possesses. As a result, it jumped into the electoral contest without sufficient guarantees of impartiality, a position inspired by the prevailing belief that the regime is on its last legs.
But the big enigma of Sunday’s election has to do with the exact benefit that the Woyanne ruling clique is gaining from a defeat of this magnitude of the opposition. The more the regime denies that votes were rigged and voters and candidates intimidated, harassed, and threatened, the less easily answerable becomes the question of knowing why the regime cooked up a victory claiming 99.66 % of parliamentary seats. Let alone external observers and governments, any person alien to Ethiopian politics would conclude that such a result can be obtained only if the opposition has been stifled or non-existent.
If the Woyanne regime wanted to shore up its legitimacy badly tarnished by its electoral defeat in 2005, the reasonable thing would have been to give some seats to the opposition, thereby providing some semblance of fairness to the election. To the extent that a total victory takes away all credibility from the electoral process and, therefore, defeats the initial purpose of recognition, the decision to conduct a fake election resulting in the ousting of the opposition from the parliament sounds discordant indeed. Hence my question: what is the purpose of plotting a fake election that lamentably fails to convince anyone, since we can assume that Meles and his clique expect some king of benefit from the exercise?
I have played with various hypotheses; I have also reflected on what some commentators had already said or written, such as the construction of a totalitarian state or the deliberate intention of undermining nonviolent forms of struggle. These two reasons are valid: the eradication of the opposition completes the construction of a full-fledged totalitarian state, just as it presents nonviolent opposition as a hopeless strategy. However, these two goals hardly agree with the equally important need that the Woyanne regime has to be recognized as a legitimate winner by the international community.
All the same, let us look closer: there is more than one way of obtaining international recognition. There is the democratic way of majority vote; there is also the default way demonstrating the utter insignificance or unviability of the opposition. As far as the Woyanne regime is concerned, Sunday’s election has shown to Ethiopians and the whole world that there is no opposition to speak of. In my view, the decision to concoct an election purging the opposition from the parliament reflects the TPLF’s complete desertion of the very idea of free and fair elections. The TPLF elite has drawn from its 2005 electoral debacle the final conclusion that it cannot rely on any sort of fair competition.
On the other hand, one of the implications of the total defeat of the peaceful opposition is to discourage nonviolent struggles and push more people toward armed struggle. The prospect of widened violent confrontations will allow the Woyanne to openly give up its democratic façade and crack down opponents, henceforth accused of using unconstitutional means to come to power. In this game of violence, the Woyanne regime is better equipped and experienced and can also gain recognition as a government defending itself against terrorism.
The other and by far the most important implication of the crushing defeat of the opposition is its ability to provide emotional soothing. The humiliation of the 2005 election is still fresh in the mind of many Woyanne leaders and cadres. From the viewpoint of removing an emotional wound, the landslide victory supplies a demonstration of force that humiliates both opposition leaders and those millions of Ethiopians who voted for Kinijit. It shows, by hook or by crook, the total control of the country by the Woyanne totalitarian machine. In other words, it says: here is the bare fact, deal with it!
From such a resounding demonstration of force, we can even expect a timid opening of the political space. Now that things have been straightened out, the game of “free election” can resume with the understanding that the right to oppose––a gracious gift of the victor––must never include the goal of defeating the TPLF.
(Dr Messay Kebede is professor of philosophy at The University of Dayton, Ohio. He can be reached at [email protected])
U.S. Department of State Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs P.J. Crowley slammed the tribal ruling junta in Ethiopia for conducting an unfair election on May 23. Mr Crowley spoke at the Daily Press Briefing of the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC May 26, 2010. Among other things he said “through out the electoral process freedom of choice for voters was constrained by the actions and inactions of Ethiopian government officials, the national elections board of Ethiopia, and the ruling political party.” Watch below (forward to 02:10):
Union of African thieves, murderers and rapists (AU) has issued a report today on the May 23 elections in Ethiopia stating that it was free and fair. What else can be expected from these goons? The following is a report by AFP:
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — African Union observers on Thursday said Ethiopia’s parliamentary elections won resoundingly by incumbent Prime Minister Meles Zenawi but disputed by the opposition reflected voters’ will.
The 60-member monitoring team said Ethiopians voted in freedom in Sunday’s polls whose conduct they also praised.
“It is recognised that 2010 Ethiopia’s legislative elections reflected the will of the people,” they said in a statement.
“Conditions existed for voters to freely express their will.”
However, European Union observers said the elections were unfair and lacked political freedom.
Opposition groups have also rejected poll results and called for fresh elections, arguing that the vote was riddled with fraud.
Meles, who has ruled Ethiopia for almost two decades, dismissed those calls.
Shambel (Captain) Fikreyesus Seyoum, a distinguished Ethiopian elder in Atlanta and a great friend of Ethiopian Review, passed away on Tuesday, May 25, 2010.
A graduate of Harar Military Academy, Shambel Fikreyesus served Ethiopian armed forces in several capacities until 1979. After retiring from the army, he completed his BA from Addis Ababa University and served in several government agencies in Ethiopia until he moved to Atlanta in 1993.
For the past seventeen years, he had been residing in Atlanta where he was instrumental in establishing Mahdre Andnet Ethiopian Association, and Tegbar civic group. He also served as a board member of St. Mary’s Ethiopian Church.
Shambel Fikreyesus’ passing away is a big loss to the Ethiopian community in Atlanta. He is survived by his wife, five children and one grandchild.
His funeral service will be conducted on Saturday, May 29, 2010, at St. Mary’s Ethiopian Orthodox Cathedral in Stone Mountain GA at 12:00 Noon.
Messages of condolences can be sent to his family at [email protected]
Medrek, the eight-party opposition coalition in Ethiopia, has issued a 7-page strongly worded statement expressing its outrage at the ruling party, Woyanne, for the way it has conducted the May 2010 elections. In the statement, Medrek thanked European Union observers for exposing the election for what it is — unfair — and demanded a re-vote. Click here to read the statement (pdf, Amharic).
