b) When a country lacks a core politics that is committed to the creation of a national and united Pan-Ethiopian democratic perspective, the ideas and forces organised on fragmentary concerns, identities and other relevant but non-constructive and noncomposing programmes and activities fill in centre stage. This is precisely what happened when the centre was vacated and no authority that has a pan-Ethiopian democratic credential was able to fill in the void after 1991. The question that is relevant here is this: Will the ideas and forces organised on particular concerns for only particular citizens (not all citizens of Ethiopia) be prepared to play in a rule of the game that accepts a democratic system where they are prepared to stay in the democratic game whether they lose or gain/win electorally? Supposing the TPLF/EPDRF loses electorally, will they stay in the game accepting with courage losing an election or failing to win an election and taking the defeat as a means to fight better to win the next election? This applies also to those forces that are at the moment fighting the TPLF/EPDRF such as the ONLF, OLF, Sidama Liberation Front and others whose main political approach is based on identity politics and secondarily on other matters? Supposing the rule of the game is agreed by all for a non-violent engagement and competition with an authority and system of separation of powers that is independent that can guarantee the free debate on issues, will all these contrarian forces restrain themselves from spoiling and sabotaging the very regulatory framework, norms, rules and procedures to create peacefully a system for transition from one set of ideas, policies, strategies to another without resorting to violence and deception? What chance exists given the context Ethiopia is now to seek and build a collective lively shared national direction and expect also an ideological and political stability by pursuing a process of democratic competition through democratic election and the establishment of a self-sustaining democratic system? Can the EPDRF enter into a democratic ‘serat’ and not spoil the ‘serat’ by repression when it loses? What guarantee exists it will not repeat what it did in May 2005?
c) The third very relevant factor that influences directly the nature and character of evolution of a democratic civilisation in Ethiopia is the continued state of warfare with the neighbours of Ethiopia. Even if we suppose all the actors in Ethiopia are committed to democratic procedures, competitions, elections, transitions and respect amongst the winners and losers, the regional equation remains a big constraint that can frustrate the internal dynamics and prospects for democratic renewal. The war in Somalia, the seemingly endless quarrel with Eritrea’s rulers, and Ethiopia’s rulers open appeal to the US Government that anything directed at them from Congress or the Senate is tantamount to undermine the current administration’s major foreign policy course to fight global terror- all these factors influence negatively the much desirable and necessary task of completing and establishing a free and democratic system in Ethiopia. When the Cold War was over, Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa lost. And when the global war on terror becomes over, the way our region is now implicated as the No.2 front in the global war on terror next to Pakistan-Afghanistan, it will be once more the cardinal loser. We cannot blame the architects of either the Cold War or the Global War on terror or their global adversaries Jihads for falling in their traps. Other regions in Africa are not in the front line. We must ask why our region is in the forefront of this global confrontation and enter into it lock, stock and barrel. The fault is not the stars of the horn of Africa. The fault lies entirely in the divided and the divisive elites of the Horn of Africa. The blame lies in our destructive selfish, greedy and comprador and aid addicted elite that derives resources from joining one or the other side of the war during the era of the cold war and indeed the current era of the Global war on terror either on the side of the Bush’s foreign policy or the Global jihadist anti-West foreign policy. Elites derive aid as rent from both sides at the expense of the death of millions of Ethiopians, Somalis and others in the region involved in this self-inflicted drama… continued on next page