We in the NES humbly appeal to all concerned and with utmost gravity call on them: do not go home divided, if indeed you have come divided. We say return or go home united. Never take your divisions’ home. That will be to introduce high risk amongst the people and will probably be to tempt fate to invite self-ruin by allowing all sorts of spoilers and meddlers to have agency by weakening the strength and vitality of those who stand for an undivided and non-divisive, nation-wide and citizen-anchored Ethiopian democracy. What a shame indeed if this generation cannot do better than earlier generations in delivering the Ethiopian democratic nation with a clear national direction to modernise and remove hunger by transforming the age-old agrarian economic structure! The democratic resurgence must not fail. This is no time to retreat or waver or show cold feet over this or that minor disputes. This is time to rise to the great challenges confronting nation, people and country by saying and meaning: forward with Ethiopia’s renascent democratic movement.
The Dilemmas of Navigating a Democratic Course in Ethiopia
Since May 27-28, 1991 the country has fallen for something the current rulers have described as ethnic-based pluralism where much of the state power has been concentrated in the coalition of ethnic parties grouped around the TPLF/EPDRF. The latter have been very worried about any possible loss of control and the kind of electoral competition they permitted have not gone beyond anything that can be said to challenge the power of the TPLF/EPDRF up to and including winning by a potentially successful opposition. In 2005 the situation was created by the momentum of the election process where a pan-Ethiopian national idea competed with the ethnic-based groups and won the votes that appeared to have scared the regime out of its wits. We have seen subsequently all the massacres, mass arrests, harassments accusations and arrests of the elected leaders. After 20 months of incarceration, the elected leaders have been released under a pardon arrangement involving traditional mediation, foreign powers and the regime in Ethiopia. Regardless of how the ups and downs of the politics between Government parties and opposition parties have been and are going now, the key problem that has not been solved in our country is how to entice and incentivise all those with ideas of how to make either the people in Ethiopia as a whole govern themselves by being ladders for that purpose or as some prefer to do to demand self-determination for parts of the population with particular expressions of vernacular-ethnic identities. There is as yet to emerge a clear shared understanding and political practice where all agree to a rule of the game that through the process of competitive election and through it alone, they are happy to submit to the authority of the people, win or lose, and accept winning and/or losing where those who win become gracious and accommodating of the losers and those who lose hold no grudges and ill-will to the winners. Until now Ethiopia has not reached this democratic threshold. The Rubicon has not been crossed. There are a number of major questions that must be openly presented and addressed candidly:
a) Will the Pan-Ethiopian national revival continue to grow and consolidate its strength, as best demonstrated with the electoral success of CUDP and will the subsequent unstoppable rise in a global Ethiopian democratic movement throughout the world continue to mobilise, broaden and deepen the movement to reach every Ethiopian to make the choice of a united democratic Ethiopian system of government as the priority objective? What are the obstacles to it from the regime side, the internal emerging organisational and other inter-personal mistrust and misunderstanding emerging in the CUDP now, and other opposition parties that compete with the CUDP and possibly are not willing to make alliances with it preferring either to fight, undermine or meddle and spoil its march by slowing the democratic energy and dynamism that the world experienced in the pre-election moment of May 2005?… continued on next page