1. The political landscape in Ethiopia bristles with an array of groups and forces that have declared themselves to be, in one way or another, friends of Western industrial powers, chiefly the USA and EU, and, as such, subscribing to the values of democracy, the market (capitalist) economy and human rights as defined by those powers. At the same time, each and every one of the groups invariably professes to be the sole custodian of the popular aspirations for freedom, liberty, prosperity and general well-being. In other words, while a reading of their political programmes and manifestoes suggests the existence of broad, common themes that all of them share, none of them is eager to concede that such is the reality or that it is at all possible. The desire to stand alone and appear to be totally independent of others runs so deep that any apparent similarity, even identity, of objectives is vehemently denied.
2. Another major spectacle the political forces in Ethiopia display is the absence of any sense of historical, geographical (spatial) or temporal perspective in their thinking or practice. Reading their literature or listening to them, one will be left with the impression that the world is still in the 17th or 18th centuries, if not earlier. Thus the Oromo Liberation Front has championed, and is constantly calling for, a re-enactment of the wars that the Oromo people lost during the rough and tumble period in Ethiopian history (lasting roughly the second half of the second Millennium) when contests to dominate the Ethiopian state took all manners of shapes and involved forces as disparate as currently arraigned to snatch power from the TPLF/EPRDF. Others too entertain the same views though with diverging emphases and pursuits. The TPLF is increasingly veering towards re-establishing the Tigrayan dynasty that lost the Ethiopian crown to Shoa after Yohannes IV. Naturally, it does not own up to this; it pontificates, instead, on its concoction of ‘revolutionary democracy’ whereby a facade of democracy is maintained (in particular to appease foreign powers who demand it these days even from their puppets) but the role of the state and its institutions have been fashioned in accordance with the whims of a small group at the top and in furtherance of their sectarian goals. Shameless arguments of ‘our time has come’ have even been openly peddled by a few Tigrayan intellectuals to resurrect and support the ascendancy of a Tigrayan aristocracy long considered dead or hopeless. This time, of course, the objective is not to create a landed aristocracy but an industrial-financial one (based it happens on transferring state assets by sheer abuse of power and sometimes under the cover of ‘privatisation’).
3. The absence of perspective has a direct bearing on the activities of political groups. It is virtually impossible to discover a political programme among the political groupings in Ethiopia that offers clear alternatives to the ongoing perpetual decline of the country and the course of self/destruction most of them engage in. The perennial jockeying for power among these groups aims at excluding everyone else and, as a consequence, the politics of the land has turned into a ‘war of all against all’. The fact that practically all of them have signed up to subservience to foreign governments, especially the US and EU, and their policies for countries like ours has not dissuaded them from adopting such a path. In other countries, like-mindedness in programmes would generally persuade groups to merge or, at the very least, work together. Thus, upwards of four groups operate under the umbrella of freedom and liberty for the Oromo people; yet, they have not been able to create a unifying platform among themselves, leave alone solve the problem of freedom for a huge chunk of Ethiopia (Oromia) without freedom for all of it! To cite another example, the Hibret groups (both domestic and foreign-based) stand to all intents and purposes on the same pedestal as that of the Kinjit; nevertheless, they make it appear that they would prefer to work with the devil rather than join forces.
4. To understand these anomalies, one should look beyond the repeated declarations of Ethiopian political groups about their commitments to democracy and justice. The concept of power among most groups is still synonymous with warlordism and fiefdom. They view the role of the general public as one of onlookers and silent supporters–one might add, just as was during the imperial era. They equate the value of democracy and the need to earn the popular mandate to govern as merely peripheral to their pursuit of conquering the state; they consider them to be inconveniences, if they themselves are in power (just as during the reign of Haile Sellasie I, then the Dergue, now the TPLF), or as one of the means of gaining access initially (virtually all groups). In other words, democracy is perceived as a means of confirming one’s claims to hold on to or gain power rather than as a foundation for popular self-rule or self-determination. Very few among the individuals at the helm of the political groups are sworn to live and die by its principles. On occasions when assertion of those principles could have had a profound impact on the political process, many have been found wanting in one respect or another. In recent times, those expelled from the TPLF leadership (Gebru Assrat & Co.) had lacked a grasp of those principles and never asserted (practised) them while they were in positions of power and influence and until after they themselves fell victim to the dictatorship that everybody else but them had witnessed and deplored. To cite another instance, one of the young pretenders who made his name by open denunciations of the autocratic rule of the TPLF and its many misdeeds, Lidetu Ayalew, did not understand, or assert, the roles of those principles in the political process when he was on the ascendancy in the merger with other groups to form the Kinjit. Instead of working out within his own organisation, in an open and democratic manner, the necessity for such a merger and the modality of its implementation, he cried (literally!) foul about the manner of his ouster from the key positions he had apparently desired to gain (a subject of an entire book he wrote) after the fact, namely on his personal defeat, and reneged on his party’s agreement to merge. It is interesting to note that his personal wounds affected all his judgements and post-merger activities leading even his own erstwhile supporters to doubt whether he was a democrat at all, whether he had abandoned fighting against the dictatorship side by side with other groups, including even the Kinjit.
5. The fact of the matter is that, although many would not admit it, the current dominant thinking among the political elite borders on feudal parochialism and autocratism. Clearly, despite the destruction of the aristocracy in Ethiopia, one of the potent consequences of the 1974 Revolution, their sway continues in the ideological and cultural fields. Open debate still trails behind secrecy and gossip, declarations of real beliefs and aims are snowed under by smokescreens and subterfuge, the critique of ideas always takes second place to character assassinations, slander, misrepresentation and the like. It may be instructive to compare two books published in Addis over the last two years in Amharic pertaining to the current conditions and the possible ways out of them. Lidetu Ayalew and Gebre Kidan Desta’s books are remarkable by their exposition of feudal self-adulation and the absence of ideas which seek to take Ethiopia forward. The authors lament, respectively, the real or imagined loss of their personal or group positions. Lidetu screams about the unfairness and devious methods used to dislodge him from his expected top position in the Kinjit without at any moment pointing to the lapse in either the democratic process or the weaknesses, if any, in the democratic cause that the Kinjit sought to champion. If his disagreement was about the lack of a democratic process in effecting the merger or the content of the programme being drawn, then his best option must have been to alert, and appeal to, his own organisation for a suitable solution. In reality, as he has written in his book, he had issues not with any of these but with some of the figures who later became senior leaders of the Kinjit. Gebre Kidan (in his book, ¾ƒÓ^à I´w“ ¾ƒU¡I}™‹ c?^ Ÿƒ“â€ÂÆ’ ÂÂeŸ³_) similarly attacks the views of what he calls the enemy of the Tigray people (the ‘Ankoberites’) simply because those people oppose the TPLF for one reason or another. His denunciations of the Ankoberites is not based on proof that the TPLF has instituted democracy in Ethiopia but on linking them with their apparent support for Emperor Menelik whom he views as a traitor to Emperor Yohannes IV. Curiously, through his vigorous defence of Yohannes IV and denunciation of Menelik and the Ankoberites he projects a historical link between the TPLF and Yohannes IV and some sort of justification for re-establishing the supremacy of the TPLF-led Tigrayan elite over the Ethiopian state lost after Menelik’s ascent to power. Although his exposure of the narrow-mindedness of the present-day ‘Ankoberites’ is generally appropriate, at no point does he seek to subject the TPLF to any criticism for its failure to embrace the values of democracy and its lack of appreciation of what its ascendancy over the Ethiopian state demanded of it. Indeed, Gebre Kidan’s unquestioning loyalty to the TPLF and refusal to take it to task even based on the pleas of the ex-TPLF group of leaders to the Tigray people consign his book to an apology for the feudal parochialism and autocracy that the TPLF has reverted to over the years. It would therefore not be surprising if Gebre Kidan took his tirade to its logical conclusion and recommended the formal crowning of a Yohannes V for Ethiopia today.
6. The limitations of the current political movement for change in Ethiopia in terms of a pronounced absence of democratic and libertarian values, even at the level of the respective leaderships, explain the proliferation of egoistic but inept individuals as well as unprincipled, even wishy-washy, organisations. As far as such persons and groups are concerned, the establishment of a network of persons equips them with the tools to stake their claims over the Ethiopian state, to the exclusion of everyone else, if possible, but at any rate with ambitions towards it. The fact that most would not countenance integrating with other groups to create larger organisations is not only symptomatic of the strong desire to capture power alone and not to share it without any one else, thus creating a fiefdom, but also of the dearth of understanding of what the democratic alternative entails. The long-standing disdain for the ordinary man or woman that the feudal autocracy has planted in the minds of the elite (notably the present-day politicians) translates into discounting them as a potent force for social and political transformation. The real meaning of democracy to the political groups (whether aspirants or incumbents) in Ethiopia therefore is an involvement of those ordinary men and women only when absolutely necessary. Where access to political power and wealth are available through other channels (such as by order of the US or EU to the incumbents, a military coup or armed insurrection supported by whoever is willing including the Mullahs in the region), the role of the populace will be unceremoniously ignored. Before it got into power, the TPLF was one of the organisations which advocated profusely the need to establish a democratic state (I´v© Sâ€ÂÓe+). Indeed, having got rid of the entire army and many other organs of the state on assuming power in 1991, it was in the unique position of starting from a clean slate. If democrats were at its helm, they could have embarked on an unparalleled era of social transformation in Ethiopia. Yet, the morning after its capture of power, it mounted attacks on the very people who had been eagerly waiting for an alternative to the diabolical military rule of the Dergue; it suppressed democratic liberties and excluded from the transitional government all other political forces save those who accepted its total domination. In other words, it re-installed the rule of the gun shortly after ending the 17-year period of Dergue rule. No wonder, people quickly dubbed its rule ‘Dergue II’.
7. The serious question that needs to be tackled today consequently is whether there are any political forces with a sufficient depth of grasp of, and firm commitment to, democratic values that can single-handedly or in cooperation take hold of the state and transform it into a democracy? It may come as no surprise to the reader that we do not find even a single force that qualifies currently for such a historical task. Although elements of democratism may be found among many groups, they do not express themselves on all occasions or fully. The secretive nature of discourse among and within Ethiopian political groups makes it extremely difficult for the democratic elements to assert themselves and gradually overtake the rampant feudal-parochial thinking that remains dominant within those groups. To be sure, the rise of Jacobins or Young Turks is not conditioned on the prior existence of a full-fledged democratic movement as they are supposed to spring into action from the moment they grasp the necessity for change. However, at least during the post-War Ethiopian historical period, the Patriots followed by the reformists and the revolutionaries did not mange to stamp their authority on the rising wave of opposition to imperial rule. The lack of an organisation to spearhead their aspirations always left them vulnerable to the powers that be. Even when, finally, organisations started to emerge in the 70s and 80s, the dominant group (EPRP) was seized by the obsession to snatch power from the ‘illegitimate’ Dergue and sacrificed everything else to that objective; its resort to ‘urban guerrilla tactics’ and total shutdown of any internal democracy (including the killing of some of the leaders and an emerging opposition) led to widespread state reprisals and the decimation of the same group and other democratic forces. The resulting demise of the Jacobins in Ethiopian history has left a gap that remains unfilled to this day.
8. In our view, the drawbacks of the currently sprawling groups in grasping democracy and practising it can be overcome in one of three ways. The first path is that of democratising them gradually, by effecting an internal transformation. Such an attempt has been in evidence in respect of the OLF and the Kinjit. Though not much is known of what is transpiring within the OLF, various sources suggest that it has had many internal upheavals and changes. Berhanu Nega’s personal account of the events and circumstances that led to the merger of the various groups into Kinjit and its participation in the 2005 elections as well as pitfalls indicates the existence of a similar process within Kinjit. Though couched as personal experiences and a political manifesto of sorts, the book represents a systematic exposition of alternative views to those held and practised by the governing party. Considering the internal dissonances and disarray that the Kinjit manifested in the period before the incarceration of its entire leadership (covered in an earlier article by the author, “Post-Election 2005 Ethiopia–A Sketch of Political Trends and Follies”), the book provides a programmatic guide for its unification and growth. One would have to wait and see whether it will serve as a tool for consolidation and resurgence of the Kinjit in the direction that Berhanu has charted. It is not difficult to judge at this stage that, in the conditions of the grip of feudal-parochial, sometimes also fascist, sentiments and thinking that prevails among the broadest membership, such a transformation will be, at the very least, long and arduous. The manner in which the internal squabbles over legitimacy within the ‘Kinjit International Leadership’ has been, or failed to be, dealt with portrays the persistent nature of the problem. No movement can become democratic virtually through a public pronouncement alone unless it begins to breathe and practise its principles. The Kinjit also has the unenviable task of proving to ALL Ethiopians that they should not fear from its prominence, that all its members subscribe to complete equality and non-discrimination. In particular, it needs to weed out, first from its leading ranks then from everywhere, persons who preach and promote plain racism under the guise of fighting the TPLF dictatorship (or the moronically phrased ‘TPLF Tigrayans’) or ‘ethnic politics’.
9. A second path for grasping democracy and practising it is to create a ‘Young Turk’ movement from scratch. Understandably, the demise of the first true attempt to create a democratic movement in Ethiopia has left behind many negative experiences. The idea of a radical transformation of society is being shunned in favour of either foreign tutelage or electoral democracy and the operation of market forces. Both options in the end count on incremental changes that might drag Ethiopia out of the morass it finds itself in–in effect along the lines of what has happened to many an African nation. However, the results of such a process have been all too familiar in those nations: unending decay, social and economic dislocation, disease and poverty. Leaving Ethiopia to the global economic and political forces and whatever they might bring about will end in the same way. Thus the adoption of novel or, better still, smart solutions to get it out of the current rot will be in urgent demand. Therein lies the rationale for the emergence of a ‘Young Turk’ movement, or shall we say, a ‘Young Ethiopia’ movement. Its objectives would be the renewal of that historical nation by installing a democratic regime and introducing radically new solutions to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
10. A third path for democratising Ethiopia is through the creation of the broadest consensus and convergence among the currently active political forces and groups. It has been argued above that there is no single force capable of spearheading democracy in Ethiopia, nor do we see a forceful expression of the values of liberty, justice and self-rule among any section or group within them. Where individuals have set out such objectives for the political forces to embrace (an example is the ‘Citizens Charter’), there still remains the absence of a forum for disseminating and critiquing them through debate and open political exchanges. Clearly, because weaknesses span groups and individuals engaged in the political process, it would be ideal to bring them all (especially the groups) together in the interest of the broadest section of the population and to try to paper over cracks in democratic thinking and practice. The alternative would be to engage in the spectacle of perennial somersaults of political groups in their pursuit to take over power from each other even with the full knowledge that none is more legitimate or mass-based than the rest. Ethiopians should not be exposed to the danger of one power-hungry group or another masquerading as democrats or liberators taking over from the TPLF only to discover the morning after that the rule of the gun has again won the day.
11. The call for consensus and convergence among political groups becomes all the more necessary because of the global forces arraigned against such nations as Ethiopia with a view to harnessing their natural and human potentials for the former’s economic and technological progress. While such forces represent a veritable danger for a total decline, even wipe out, of the entire country (not to mention that of sections that myopically seek to secede), only a unified political movement and solidly constructed national objectives can withstand their onslaught. Where, as it currently stands, political groups are allied to one foreign power or another and profess all kinds of wild dreams (Ogadenia!), the chances of rebuilding the economy will remain theoretical, forget the need to democratise the state. A by-product of creating the broadest consensus among political forces is the provision of space for alternative views and the growth of a new political culture. The remains of the Jacobins and any newly emerging ‘Young Ethiopia’ movement would have all the room they will desire to grow and supply leaders for the nation.
12. It would seem completely proven that the era of cyclical power plays in Ethiopia must come to a close if those devoted to its people and wishing to initiate a revival of the nation are to succeed. The creation of the broadest alliance of political movements and groups will be absolutely indispensable not only to take over from the TPLF but also to prevent any future repeat of decades-long dictatorship where the nation’s resources are squandered, freedom and democracy are mere smokescreens for dictatorial rule and society sinks further and further into poverty, disease and total decline. Finally, it must be noted that only such a power shift will equip Ethiopia to meet the challenges that globalisation throws at her. Any other formula will not disable the currently rife factional/fractional politics from continuing to endanger her standing presently and in the future.
The author would like to dedicate this piece to the memory of Yohannes Petros who died suddenly last week in London, England.
Assafa Endeshaw, London, England
February 2007