1. The Ethiopian polity was transformed from a one-party state to a multi-party democracy. I am trying to think of one other polity where such a transformation took place with the same party leaders staying on in power. Of course there were severe bumps along the way, and injustices whose pain will linger for a long time.
2. Political elements competitive with the EPRDF regime transformed themselves from a vast number of splinter groups into a system of three major parties. In Adama (Nazret) in 1992 I found two political party offices side by side, both saying they stood for Ethiopian national unity. “Wow! That is great!” I thought. “But why aren’t you two together?” There was no difference at all in what they stood for, the staffers explained–only a clash between the personalities of the party heads. It seemed that those who favored genuine Ethiopian unity could never get united. But now most of them have.
3. Hapte-Selassie Tafesse was offered the site of the Jubilee Palace in which to create a national museum of Ethiopian paintings and other treasures. Same old jovial Haptos. We reconnected joyously after forty-five years. When I mentioned my visit to prisoners at Kaliti, he quipped: “Well, I was in prison for eight years and you didn’t even visit me once!”
4. Much new housing appears to have sprung up in and around Addis Ababa. It gives the impression of a burgeoning if not booming economy, a picture that contrasts with the image of dreary depressed Addis one sometimes gets from abroad. Critics note that the housing was constructed hastily and contains functional flaws.
5. Universities were expanded and plans to erect enlarge the system of higher education to twenty-two universities were announced. The expansions are coming at the expense both of quality of the universities and the health of the secondary school system, and with no resources in sight to move toward realization of the more ambitious plans.
6. In Gawls, Afar region, the skull of a small human ancestor, which could be a missing link between extinct Homo erectus and modern man, was discovered along with several stone tools and fossilized animals. Sileshi Semaw of Indiana University, director of the Gona Paleoanthropo-logical Research Project, reports that the hominid cranium “is very close to the appearance of the anatomically modern human.”
7. The world’s first multi-disciplinary peace center was established in Awassa, offering regular training in aikido, the martial art of peace; workshops in conflict resolution; training in nonviolent communication; and a library of literature in Amharic and English on peace studies. Story to come.
8. Two million Ethiopian infants were added to the population of the poorest country on the planet–thereby guaranteeing continued misery for vast numbers in a largely agricultural economy affected by massive deforestation, soil erosion, erratic rainfall, diminished land per person, and epidemic diseases. As Sahlu Haile, Packard Foundation senior program advisor, wrote in a prize-winning report, population growth will drive Ethiopia’s future: infrastructure and agricultural land cannot support its growing numbers, so huge numbers are trapped in vicious cycles of poverty, disease, and hunger. The government developed a policy to educate girls to avoid early marriage and early childbearing and to support family planning, but inaction, disinterest, and ambivalence of senior officials has stood in the way of implementing it. And United States agencies have been inhibited by rules against the promotion of family planning.
9. Following protracted antagonism, leaders of Government and opposition parties met on October 2, 2005 for a series of talks that could pave the way for elected members of the latter to enter Parliament. They met every day for some five days and were approaching agreement, then the talks broke down.
It’s amazing to think how close they were to a solution that could have averted the November killings and all the subsequent turmoil. Still, it shows the potential for reconciliation and Ethiopia’s resurrection.
There is rumor of mass civil disobedience in Ethiopia. Over the past month, the U.S. Embassy has been reminding and urging Americans in Ethiopia to “avoid demonstrations intended to be peaceful [which] can turn confrontational.†On April 22, Sudan Tribune online published a press release purportedly issued by Tegbar League Addis Ababa announcing the initiation of a “peaceful civil disobedience campaign against the Meles dictatorship.†The campaign is aimed at pressuring the “government to respect the people’s vote and to demand the release of all political prisoners.†According to the press release, the objective of the concerted nonviolent acts of civil disobedience is to “systematically make the country ungovernable and choke the Meles regime by drying up its sources of revenue.â€Â
In a three-part series, we shall attempt to present an overview of the history, practice and philosophy of civil disobedience and nonviolence, and the unique contributions of Henry David Thoreau, Mahatama Ghandi and Martin Luther King to the global nonviolence movement.
Henry David Thoreau
Is there a moral duty for men and women to nonviolently resist oppressive and unjust laws, and the commands and demands of a despotic government? If there is such a duty, what is the best method of resistance? If civil disobedience and nonviolence are morally justified methods of resistance, what are the foreseeable consequences of such resistance for the individual and society?
Henry David Thoreau, the 19th Century American philosopher, was the first modern thinker to systematically consider the moral dimensions of disobeying unjust laws and oppressive civil government. He concluded that nonviolent civil disobedience was justified, because in a democracy government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed and by delegation from free individuals. If government abuses or perverts the will of the people, Thoreau argued, any individual has the moral right, indeed a higher moral duty, to stand apart from the laws of that government and actively and nonviolently resist it.
Thoreau, an ardent abolitionist and pacifist, condemned the practice of slavery in America, and railed against the federal fugitive laws which allowed slave masters to recapture and repossess slaves who had escaped to the free states. He also opposed the westward territorial expansion of the United States and annexation of what is now western United States by President James Polk in the Mexican-American War (1846-48 ) under a general doctrine known as “Manifest Destiny,†which was based on a belief that God had given America a mission to expand its borders from “sea to shining sea.â€Â
In his book, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience(1), Thoreau explained his philosophical justifications for civil disobedience and the moral duty of individuals to engage in it to preserve their individual integrity and advance the common good.
Thoreau had little confidence in elected leaders or governmental institutions. He believed that “government is best which governs least,†but such government he did not find in his day. He acknowledged government was necessary, but only in so far as it is the “mode which the people have chosen to execute their will.†He believed the leaders of his day, entrusted with the people’s will, were “liable to abuse and pervert [that will] before the people can act through it.â€Â
The inevitable “perversion and abuse†of the people’s will presented Thoreau two problematic issues in the functioning of democratic government: 1) the tendency for majority rule to degenerate into tyranny of the majority, and 2) the tendency for citizens in a democracy to abdicate their moral responsibilities in favor of blind obedience to the law. Thoreau questioned: “Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?â€Â
For Thoreau, men could be distinguished by their demonstrated abilities to act their conscience and convictions. He felt most citizens — out of ignorance, indifference, or cowardice– would rather show blind respect for the law than disobeying it even when they are convinced the law is oppressive and unjust. He believed government had reduced ordinary citizens to “serve not as men, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables.†He felt these citizens had no “moral sense, but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones. Such [men] command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.â€Â
Thoreau had an equally dim view of the “esteemed good citizens†of society — legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, scholars, businessmen and office-holders — who have compromised their capacity to make moral distinctions and judgment to advance their self-interest and were “as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God.â€Â
Thoreau saw social redemption in a third and much smaller group of citizens — heroes, patriots, martyrs and reformers — whose chief distinction is that they “serve the state with their consciences, and necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.â€Â
In his day, Thoreau saw his civil disobedience as a proper response to the evil institution of slavery and the unjust expansionist war in Mexico. He thought the American government of his day was a “disgrace,†and declared: “I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also.†Thoreau refused to accept a government that kept a sixth of the American population in bondage, yet piously claimed to be the land of liberty. He found it necessary to oppose an unjust war against Mexico resulting in the destruction of indigenous populations in a shameless land grab.
Thoreau demonstrated his civil disobedience by becoming part of the antiwar movement of the day and refusing to pay poll tax which he felt was used to support an unjust war and extend slavery into the western territories, which proved true when Texas became a slave state upon joining the union in 1861.
The greatest source of frustration for Thoreau was the inertness of the thousands of his countrymen who were opposed to slavery and the Mexican War, yet did nothing to put an end to them. Thoreau complained that these citizens will “sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing…. They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man; but it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it.â€Â
The impact of Thoreau’s advocacy of civil disobedience has been wide-ranging, inspiring notably Ghandi to mount a passive resistance independence movement in India and Martin Luther King to lead a nonviolent civil rights movement in the in the United States.
If there is a lesson to be drawn from Thoreau’s philosophical discourses, it is that civil disobedience is both an act of uncommon virtue and valor, and an extraordinary act of patriotism by an individual in a given society. As to the “ninety nine patrons,†they have a choice of not acting, and continuing to practice their well-worn virtues: ignorance in the face of manifest injustice, indifference in the face of suffering, deprivation and oppression, and cowardice in the reflective mirror of their own conscience.
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Al Mariam, Ph.D., J.D. (Esq.) is professor of political science and a defense attorney in California : [email protected]
ADDIS ABABA (ENA) — Registration of voters and contesting candidates across the nation was officially closed at 7 p.m. (local time) on 13 February 2005 with the exception in the Somali Regional State where the election would be held in August 2005, the office of the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) announced.
Deputy Chief of NEBE Tesfaye Mengesha told ENA on Sunday that registration documents would be sealed in the presence of election executives, public observers and political parties’ representatives.
The respective polling stations should fill in the statistical data of the registration on appropriate form by 14 February 2005, he said, adding that the registration document would be open to public the next day as per the board’s schedule. Tesfaye said the board would receive and scrutinize any inconveniences to be reported by election executives, observers or representatives of political parties.
Scrutiny of competing candidates would be undertaken across the nation on 14 and 15 February 2005 at constituencies and woreda district electoral offices. As per the programme, candidates of political parties would bear candidature symbols selected by their respective political parties while independent candidates would choose symbols on 14 and 15 February 2005, he said.
Contesting candidates for seats in both the House of People’s Representatives and regional councils would receive candidature identification cards on 16 February 2005 at the respective woreda electoral offices, the official said. The candidates may begin their election campaign on 16 February 2005 in their respective constituencies, he indicated.
He also said special registration of voters would be carried out as per the decision of the board soon as fire accident was reported in various polling stations in Dilana-Dima Woreda of the South Ethiopia Peoples State — Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ State, in southern Ethiopia.
According to the chief, fire accident destroyed the registration file and voters identification cards in those polling stations. The necessary documents would be sent for special registration of voters in those areas, the official noted.
The number of voters registered to cast ballots in the upcoming national elections is estimated to reach 25 million, Tesfaye said. About 30 million voters were registered in the 1992 E.C. (Ethiopian Calendar, 2000) national elections.
ADDIS ABABA (IRIN) – Ethiopia’s parliament reformed the country’s electoral law on Tuesday ahead of May’s general election, but the ruling stopped short of hopes by opposition parties.
It was the first time that the law had been amended since the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) came to power in 1991. The reform agreement was made by the EPRDF and the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF), a 14-strong coalition of opposition groups.
However, opposition groups insisted on Wednesday the reforms did not go far enough and said they are still undecided over whether they will participate in the 15 May elections.
Merera Gudina, chairman of the UEDF, told IRIN their fundamental concerns over the impartiality of the country’s electoral commission still remained.
“The fundamental problem, the question of restructuring the electoral board, still remains,” he said. “There are some minor changes, but it has not gone far enough. We are in a dilemma over whether to participate in the election because of this problem.”
Merera said the UEDF would announce within a month whether they would challenge the government after discussions with members of the coalition group.
Tesfaye Mengesha, deputy head of the National Election Board, however rejected claims that the commission was linked to any political parties.
“We are appointed by parliament,” Tesfaye told IRIN. “We are non partisan.”
Merera said the parliament agreed to 20 changes of the 30 proposed.
Among the most significant amendments was scrapping the number of signatures required for a candidate to stand in an election. Opposition groups were also allowed the right to call meetings and stage demonstrations, while access to state-controlled airtime has also been agreed upon.
The EPRDF will get 44 percent of airtime. The two main coalition opposition groups will receive 23 percent each, while a further 10 percent will be divided up between minority parties.
The reforms came as NGOs expressed concerns that they may be excluded from monitoring the elections. A network of NGOs believe that “vague wording” in the amendments could now exclude them from the process and are now seeking government assurances.
The previous law specifically allowed for local NGOs to monitor the elections, but that has now been dropped and replaced by “people’s organisations”.
“We have reason to suspect that this amendment was probably deliberately intended to exclude NGOs from any election monitoring activity,” said an official from the Organisation for Social Justice in Ethiopia.
The UEDF coalition currently has nine members in the House of People’s Representatives, while the EPRDF has 481 members. The EPRDF, which ousted former leader Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991 after a 17-year guerrilla war, won 481 seats in the 547-seat assembly in the last national elections in 2000. The next Ethiopian general elections are only the third democratic ballot in the country’s history.
ADDIS ABABA (IRIN) – Federal elections in one of Ethiopia’s nine regions are to be delayed until several months after the rest of the country has voted, officials said on Thursday.
Tesfaye Mengesha, deputy head of the country’s National Election Board, said the postponement of the polls in the Somali Region was due to the nomadic nature of the population and scarce resources. But the move has been criticised by some opposition groups, who called for the entire elections to be delayed while “proper preparations” are put in place.
“This is unacceptable,” said Beyene Petros, vice chairman of the 14-party opposition coalition group, the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces.
“We can see room for irregularities like double voting as people from certain parts of the country move to other areas,” he said. “The proper preparations are not there so we think the elections should be postponed.”
Somali Region in eastern Ethiopia has a population of around 3.4 million people, many of whom are nomadic herders who travel vast distances with their animals. It also shares a 1,600 km border with Somalia. An estimated 1.8 million people in the region are expected to vote.
Tesfaye said while the election was scheduled for 15 May, the polls in Somali region were likely to take place in July or August. He emphasised that the results from the rest of the country where more than 38 million people are expected to vote would be announced as scheduled on 8 June.
“Most of the people are nomadic and not settled so we have to use a mobile registration system and to apply this system we have to use huge manpower and many vehicles,” he said. “We have to finish the election process in the rest of the country and transfer the resources to Somali Region.”
Tesfaye added: “It is because of our capacity. We have no manpower. We do not have sufficient vehicles.”
The delay also caused some surprise within the international community, which is monitoring the election process and has pledged US $7
million.
The Ethiopian government has already invited election observers from Russia, China, Japan and the European Union to monitor polling. One western diplomat told IRIN: “We will be raising this with the National Election Board.”
Ethiopia’s legislative branch consists of a bicameral parliament: the 110-seat House of the Federation and the 547-seat lower chamber, the House of People’s Representatives. The general elections would be only the third democratic ballot in the country’s history.
