By the Network of Ethiopian Scholars (NES) – Scandinavian Chapter
August 9, 2005
“The question of sharing power through negotiation will not be acceptable, as EPRDF had won the election democratically.” (EPRDF, Ethiopian News Agency, 9 August 2005)
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds…. None can stop the time” Bob Marley
The national election board of Ethiopia announced today that EPDRF could form a government as it has won majority seats in the house of people’s representatives. Let us take how the parties fared in NEBE’s first announcement. On June 6,2005, the NEBE announced that EPRDF won 268 seats, CUD alone won 115 seats, and UEDF also won 57 seats. After CUD and UEDF mainly complained about the unfairness and irregularities in the election, NEBE claimed to have undertaken an investigation that brought the following numbers. On August 9, 2005, EPDRF won 296 seats that are up 28 seats, CUD 109 seats, reduced 8 seats and UEDF 52 seats, reduced 5 seats. In other words it means after their complaints CUD lost 8 seats, UEDF lost 5 seats, and EPDRF increased 28 seats. Given that CUD and UEDF are the major parties that complained of voting irregularities, the NEBE seems to have gone for punishing the complainers and the complaint by decreasing even the seats NEBE acknowledged to them in the first place, and increasing the seats for EPDRF, its chief ally. CUD and UEDF complained not to lose the seats they won, but to recover the loss they were certain to reclaim. The NEBE seems to have gone for total acceptance of anything asked by EPDRF and total rejection of anything related to irregularities presented by the opposition parties. It does not make intuitive sense that in all the areas that the opposition parties complained they lost, including even in the areas where they secured victories, as duly acknowledged by NEBE by its June 6,2005 announcement. It is the best demonstration to show that the NEBE’s investigation is thoroughly soiled by partisanship and subservience to the power perpetuating need of the current incumbents in Ethiopia.
There is no need to audit the statistics, much as it embarrasses us, we have to admit that the NEBE is a national disgrace. We do not even have to think of justice will be redressed in relation to this gross robbery of the votes and voices of the Ethiopian people, because any attempt to go through court and legal route is likely to confront the chairman of the election board, who is president of the Supreme Court and also president of the Constitutional Inquiry Commission. Meles thrust all these multiple powers upon one person. Under the circumstances, it would be easier to get a lump of meat from the jaws of a lion than to get electoral justice through such a tampered legal process, as it has been recommended time and time again by foreign observers who take the role of advising the opposition parties to accept such injustice employing double standard on the way they treat regime and opposition.
We find NEBE a complete embarrassment and we are clear now that the Ethiopian people and their aspiration to democracy have been cruelly abused. Even though we know all along that NEBE and the EPDRF work closely, we did not want to believe that together they will descend to this depth of depraved robbery, completely oblivious to the long-term harm that their childish game will impart to Ethiopia’s aspiration to create, a free, democratic and open society.
The politics of blackmail and diktat so characteristic of Meles & Co has always had exclusive and non-reconciliatory consequences. This has been clear from 1975 when they formed the nucleus that eventually managed to come to power in 1991. They fought the TLF who had a similar idea and who also was fighting the same enemy they were fighting. They fought the EDU and the EPRP, who were fighting the same forces they were fighting. They fought the EPLF even when they had a strategic alliance with them by fighting with EPLF to make Eritrea a separate state. They also fought with EPLF to remove the ELF, its competitor in Eritrea. In 1991 they dismissed all those elements and groups they invited to form a transitional Government that did not fully obey their line, (e.g., the OLF, the Southern Unity Coalition led by Dr. Beyene Petros, and various individuals’ representing different groups.) They have now split the TPLF and nearly half of the leadership is either in jail, in exile or living in the country without any substantial public role. Related to the split in the TPLF, they dismissed the former president and a number of other regional leaders. So if one traces the short political history of Meles & Co, one sees that they are ‘democracy-talking but authoritarian- practising’ liars, while at the same time remaining arrogant, inhumane, full of devious intrigues, unscrupulous, immoral, intolerant, anti-democratic and a violent. It is difficult to imagine they will change, even though almost all who wish the country to put behind the violent past wish them to change and join and share the national thirst for imbuing the country with democratic imagination.
The key relationship that fosters a democratic energy is the development of state-society relations. When it comes to the way the state relates, under the Meles & Co dictatorship, to society, one sees nothing but the imposition of crude power and knee-jerk reaction of quick ‘shoot to kill’ citizens without giving any chance to the right to dissent. Over 3,500 people have been killed as part of the violation of human rights in the last ten years according to human right reports on Ethiopia. This figure does not include the displaced or the death toll related to the recent Ethiopian-Eritrean war.
For the first time May 15,2005 looked as if that Meles & Co may be changing the paradigm, habit and routine of violent engagement with an electoral and democratic alternative. The pre-election debates and the peaceful demonstrations, despite reports in the countryside of various abuses, looked on the whole that there was a flicker of hope, that something different has emerged in the way politics unfolds in Ethiopia. Alas this was to be rudely aborted by the way Meles & Co’s usual habit and reflex of violence took over reason and the window of opportunity to see a democratic possibility in the country. They announced immediately that they had won before the counting is finalised. They took a number of measures through the military, militia, media and the NEBE to change the opposition’s claim of victory into defeat. Eventually they set in motion a process that will have secured them a majority that will kill any sense of a embedding an intelligent and vibrant democratic public culture and debate in the country. They chose to pursue an illegitimate route to ‘legitimise’ their own exclusive electoral ascendancy.
We have now reached a moment when the EPDRF has finally declared a Government. It has been given the green light by the NEBE to form a Government. It seems to us that they will have no incentive to enter into any arrangement that will bring about national reconciliation for a long-term reversal of the politics that can enable Ethiopia to move out of the vicious circle of poverty and conflict. For myopic rulers, poverty and conflict remain fertile grounds for keeping themselves in power by exploiting real and imagined differences, in some cases even manufacturing and exaggerating those differences like in the case of playing up the Rwanda genocide to silence dissent in Ethiopia.
Is it to Govern or to misgovern: that is the question
It is clear that in Ethiopia that people will not believe that the regime had won in an honest, fair and just election. There will be millions of Ethiopians across the nation and the world, who now justifiably feel not only is the Meles & Co cabal a prisoner of its violent history, but also it is now a wholly lying, and cheating group that can go any length to stay in power. The people have lost trust and confidence. They feel doubly cheated, and ask why did they accept in the first place an election to go this far and cheat when the people threaten through voting to reject their rule? The people now believe the election was not carried out to make them decide on who should govern them. It was made by Meles & Co. because of the particular policy of this group to allow the extraordinary flow of foreign aid, and grant into the economy. The donors have insisted that regimes that would like to scale up the share of foreign assistance have to also accept multiparty election. So in order to appear that they are doing what donors wanted, they have to go through the motion of undertaking election that they do not believe in and are not part of their style or way of their usual politicking. This brings to mind what Addisu Legesse asked in a donor conference. He said Ethiopia needs 122 billion dollars over a decade to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. If they can ask so much, and they get a lot as it is, though poverty is not growing less, they have to accept the ‘good goverance’ conditionality. Unfortunately for them, the May 15,2005 election just went beyond their plan and expectation. They expected to be returned. But the people wanted to intern them into oblivion. They made their coup against the will of the people, and NEBE helped to do so being the chief instrument to carry out the work that deflated the moral and trust of the people. This election has been mismanaged. The consequence of this management remains costly. There is now a crises of confidence, crises of credibility, loss of trust, crises of perception, crises of impression that can easily create a situation where those who have forced themselves over the people thwarting their will may not be able to govern, and those in the opposition who refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the NEBE manipulated result may not have the capability to control the anger of the people… such a development creates the classic situation of a crises of the old cannot continue in the old way and the new is having many barriers to be born and assert its new democratic objectives. It will come as no surprise, therefore, if the people refuse to be governed by the old rulers.
Something critically important has taken place in Ethiopia. A people that have been cheated will not forget or forgive such injustice. To govern with misgovernment will not be easy. To govern a people who trust the governors will be easy. The Ethiopian people know in their heart that this Government has cheated them of the priceless belief they must have in government. This makes the years to come very difficult under the rule of Meles and his friends. The regime can attract donor money, but it will not solve the poverty question in the country simply because the people have no trust in those who govern them. This difficult situation could have been avoided had there been honesty and integrity and a sense of responsibility to people, country and nation. We do not know how the people may respond. What we know is that the response will not submit or surrender to the current regime. The regime probably would resort, true to form, to the use of illegitimate force and violence to impose its diktat. This will not help to create trust. It will deepen the mistrust. Under such conditions, the governance will be self-serving rather than public serving. All the donor money too will not be helpful but hurtful to the people and the country by ending up possibly in the web of corruption and equally possibly also in financing the regimes’ weapons of repressions.
It is extraordinary to witness how leaders of the opposition parties behaved with statesmen like vision and how Meles misbehaved as a small-minded village tyrant. He is reported to give the opposition the ultimatum, saying you must decide whether you are in or out.’ In’-means to surrender to his whim. ‘Out’- means to oppose his whim. The opposition has been in the process, and it is Meles & Co by killing students, declaring state of emergency and all other misdoings that can disqualify them, by having chosen to be out of the democratic process preferring authoritarian methods to deal with the people and the opposition parties. But to use such childish tactics- such as are you ‘in’ or ‘out’- for a supposed leader of a country is simply incredible. Supposing they applied the same to him and say to him are you in the democratic process, do you respect the democratic process, why do you tamper with the democratic process? Why fail to undertake investigation properly? Why use our legitimate complaint into an opportunity to return your cadres by killing and intimidating our witnesses and using the NEBE for such jobs including some of their members serving openly partisan interests? All these actions suggest that the claim by the EPDRF that it is in the democratic process is tenuous. It may have been until May 15,2005 just, but after that its actions belie any submission to democratic authority.
It is not only you are in or out, but also you cannot be in and out, that Meles has chosen to dictate to the opposition as well. In addition he has been reported to retort that the opposition if they do not accept what Meles and others have incubated have a few other options. Meles spelt out the options as follows: They can remain inside the country bowing to the rulers all the time, they can go into exile, and they can try armed struggle, they can be like the OLF and go to the political wilderness and so on. How anyone can wish Ethiopia that has gone through armed hell for so many years, yet another bout of armed struggle is beyond comprehension! Meles speaking with such childish and simple-minded notions is simply a curse and not a blessing for our country. He is completely reckless and cruel in the way he is so casual and superficial in providing as an option another cycle of armed violence for the country. Knowing what Ethiopia has been through, it is condemnable and criminal to recommend armed struggle as an option.
Given the context of Meles’s response described above, we commend highly the way the opposition showed patience and vision to avoid any harm to the people of Ethiopia. . We in the NES appreciate the opposition representatives attempt to present the case for restoring public trust with civility, humility and far-sighted vision and a sense of great historical responsibility. The fact that they invited the EPDRF to conceptualise its relations with other parties, the people, society and the country with national reconciliation has been indeed noble. That the ruling group declined their invitation shows more the myopia of Meles & Co than anything else. Unfortunately the choices of re-run of a national re-election or a national reconciliation conception of governance do not seem to be accepted by the regime. The regime has declared victory and called the outcome ‘democratic and legitimate.’ Where force and fraud were involved, it is not credible to declare the election is ‘democratic and legitimate’ and expect the people to believe it. It can believe its own lies, but it must not force those lies on the people, nor should it expect the people to believe it.
Ethiopia has now moved from hard choice to one choice only to show to the regime that the people do not have to accept any stealing of their voice and their votes by anyone. They must not be bullied to surrender to accept a broad day light robbery of their votes. They have a right to show peacefully their protest against this injustice by using all peaceful, popular and democratic expressions and avenues open to them. There is a need for a worldwide peaceful movement to respect voice and vote. This movement must be developed both inside and outside the country. All those who stand genuinely for human rights, democracy and democratic governance, the rule of law, and those who oppose all forms of officially sanctioned abuse must support it. The international community that claims to stand for human rights and democracy should support it. Any attempt to suppress this popular movement by the regime must be recognised that it will have the sole responsibility for any harm done to people who resist injustice. Any use of extra- judicial killing, harassment of the millions of people that supported and voted for the opposition parties, and did not vote for the ruling group must be protected. The attempt to abuse them that has started apparently by denying them fertilisers and other agricultural inputs must be resisted.
Concluding Remark
In a series of press releases, we have tried to strive, seek and discover a way that will bring the best possible climate to facilitate the production of a future that rehabilitates rather than a future of violence and poverty that kill in our ancient country. We have shown an unyielding determination to the argument that, what the people achieved must not be stolen or lost. We have tried to unmask the abuse of power and dismissed the arrogance of the high office holders as wholly unbefitting to the challenges of building a free and open society in Ethiopia.
Having said that, we in the NES would like to make it clear that our involvement in the current struggle is driven by the highest ethical imagination to see good done to the much abused Ethiopian people, the country and the nation. We may not say all that needs saying in temperate or acceptable expressions. Our language may bite, but our paramount desire is to see good prevail in one of the three oldest nations on this earth, that has unfortunately not made it yet to the promise land. We think and feel that Ethiopians can learn to unite, organise and develop, and thus finally convert the country’s current disadvantage into an advantage. It is this optimism that fires our imagination and fuels our engagement. We are fired by the burning desire to see that our country achieves an irreversible civilisation-transition, to make it the civilisation-nation that it ought to be, given its old history, by mounting and engineering a paradigm shift through the sharpening of our collective handiwork, and the reinvigoration of our collective national self-esteem—a national self-esteem that has been dented and even battered by those who have chosen to express their solidarity only after making sure that they have taken much in terms of a particularly an uncongenial casting of the country as the premier symbol of hopelessness and tragedy in the world. We believe a country that has disadvantages can turn that disadvantage into an advantage. Equally important, a country that has advantages may not realise the fullness of what it has. Whether it has advantages or disadvantages, the ultimate yardstick resides in the ability and capability of that nation to turn advantage or disadvantage into freedom as development.
We have read politically that May 15,2005 is a clarion call to make an irreversible change and move away from the earlier rule by monarchy deriving legitimacy from the transcendental mysteries of divine election and providence, and any of the varieties of authoritarian autocracy and dictatorship that came afterwards such as that of the military, the current ethnic entrepreneurial minority rule, and the agitation to whip up regressive racial, vernacular, and narrow ideological species and dominations. We would like to see a recrudescence in, to and of democratic governance, that is derived and legitimated by the free voices and votes of free Ethiopian citizens achieved vibrantly with full of interest, freshness, industry, and vitality. We would like to see civic expression, civic identity and civic engagement across the land. We would like the people to be answerable only to the authority that emanates from their own conscience, choices, preferences, moral ideas and fellowship to their fellow human beings, and in addition also, from their sense of dedication, commitment, responsibility to people, nation and country. We believe the time is now to undertake the transition from rule by providence, dictatorship and autocracy to government by the people, for the people and of the people. We want this government to be borne not from the barrel of the gun but from the free will of the people who express civic political rights unhindered by any intimidation, threat and childish bullying that has been a trademark of the politics of the last fourteen years. We believe the opportunity is open to make the desirable transition to democracy possible, even as we recognise the dangers posed by the regime to abort this noble outcome by privileging selfish sectarian concerns over the good and accomplishment of the larger national purpose. Regime acolytes tend cut and paste intellectually dishonest views to justify the illegitimate as legitimate, the anti-democratic as democratic. They remove the context of the regime’s action for derailing the democratic process by its negative engagement through the use and violence and provide a sanitised role to it as if it were completely innocent. That is totally disingenuous and possibly such a dishonest defence is motivated by lucrative business, personal and other benefits that flow to the acolytes. It is very difficult for any sensible person not to see the enormous value of undergoing genuine reconciliation for the healthy political evolution of Ethiopia. They also play with the widely recognised fact that the turnout of the election was unprecedented while the election management and handling of result has been wholly inadequate. The acolytes try to confuse by a particularly pernicious intellectually dishonest and context-less pick up phrases and quotes as a way of helping the regime. It shows the regime has no serious intellectual backbone except for the childish pinpricks of the acolyte types.
It has been said, but time can be guilty as well, as witnessed by the convulsions that our country experienced from May 15,2005 onwards. Did we not observe dramatic rising of emotions where at one moment the nation was thrown into the ecstasy of millions of people voting, the next moment the emotions dropping with the tragedy of people being massacred by the forces that stood to damn the democratic resurgence that the people themselves so demonstrably created. The rising and ebbing tides and swings of sudden emotion from happiness to sadness is indeed a cruel irony experienced by arguably one of the gentlest peoples on this planet. The people, the country and the nation have been exposed to what turned out in the end to be an expectant exuberant celebration followed quickly by the sheer frustrations of not realising it in addition to the feeling of sorrow not only for the sake of the people killed, arrested, beaten and bullied, but also for the danger that the moment of democratic transition that arrived so manifestly may be dimmed or even lost.
We think that today in Ethiopia democracy has manifested through the expression of voice and vote by the people. What is threatened is the realisation and fulfilment of this democratic expression. The significance of this massive expression of voice and vote is that any ruler that threatens to abuse this public revolt against dictatorship would be rudely shocked. Rulers cannot govern by resorting to cheating and force. The people will resist in many forms. The society will sooner or later transform into an ungovernable situation. These myopic rulers who throw childish tantrums will not know what will hit them when an irate population rises and goes for them. There is a classic situation where those who would like to govern through dictatorship cannot. The sooner they fathom the significance of May 15,205, the better for all.
Power does not concede without demand. It never has and it never will, said Frederick Douglas. There is no freedom without striving for it. The struggle for democracy is thus in front of us. This is a struggle to make sure that the voice and vote of the people are respected and not infringed by arrogant power. As the people turned up to vote, they must be led to turn up to protest any attempt at a theft of their votes and voice. Neither fear nor appeasement/surrender to the regimes’ relentless insistence to accept theft must be condoned. People must resist theft. It is in their rights to resist and not surrender to any form of abuse. The right to resist is borne in relation to the power of abuse that they experience. Ultimately the responsibility lies in those who did wrong and not those who try to rectify wrong.
Professor Mammo Muchie, Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter
Berhanu G. Balcha, Vice- Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter
Tekola Worku, Secretary of NES-Scandinavian Chapter
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