Two stories told
By Lovise Aalen
In the 2001 local elections in southern region, Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and its southern member party, the Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Front (SEPDF), won a great majority of the seats for the zone, woreda and kebele councils. In the zonal and woreda election on the 23rd of December, the opposition party Southern Ethiopian Peoples Democratic Coalition (SEPDC) was totally outnumbered, even in places where it had swept away the ruling party in the national and regional elections in 2001[1]. For the kebele election on the 29th of December, the opposition withdrew their participation, and the EPRDF was winning without any challengers. Thus, it seems like the southern local elections fit well into the pattern of the local elections conducted in other parts of the country in February/March this year, where exactly the same scenario took place.
Not surprisingly, the participants in the election for the zone and the woreda in the southern region in December 2001 described the elections in two fundamentally different and often contradictory ways. The ruling EPRDF/SEPDF described the elections generally as free and fair. They ascribed the victory of the ruling party to people’s genuine support for their policies and programmes, and accused the opposition for immaturity and lack of political capacity. The opposition party, on the other hand, described the election processes as fraudulent and unfair. According to them, the multiparty elections are just nominal, because the ruling party manipulates the process to such an extent that there is no room for real competition. If the elections had been genuinely fair, they claim that the ruling party would have lost ground because of their unpopularity among the people.
Mutual accusations were widespread. But there was no dialogue between the accusing parties and there were few attempts to refute each other’s accusations. In this report, I will present the two stories told, but will also attempt to see if there are events or statements that do not fit in with the polarised versions of the elections. Although it is difficult to assess the credibility of the two stories, I will evaluate them on the basis of my own observations of the elections. This report is based on interviews conducted in Kambata and Omo Shelokko/Tambaro in Kambata-Alaba-Tambaro (KAT) zone, Awassa in Sidama zone and Badawatchu/Shone in Hadiya zone.
The contestants
Southern region is the most ethnically heterogeneous region in the Ethiopian federation, with more than 50 ethnic groups. It is the only region outside Addis Ababa where the opposition has managed to challenge the ruling party. The governing party is the Southern Ethiopian Peoples Democratic Front (SEPDF or Southern Front), a member of the ruling coalition at national level, the EPRDF. The Southern Front has again several member parties, which are based on local and ethnic affiliation, among them the Sidama Peoples Democratic Organisation (SPDO), Kambata-Alaba-Tambaro Peoples Democratic Organisation (KATPDO) and Hadiya Peoples Democratic Organisation (HPDO).
When the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) took power and the Derg[2] evacuated the southern areas in 1991, there was no TPLF-allied southern-based organisation to administer the area. The first administrations were therefore militarily dominated and made up of TPLF-officials. An own southern-based EPRDF member, the SEPDF, was established as late as 1994, with great assistance from the central EPRDF apparatus. Well-known TPLF cadres continued to be present in the region and interfered in regional affairs even after the establishment of the Southern Front. But in the so-called renewal (tehaddso) movement within the EPRDF in 2001, the old leadership of Southern Front and TPLF cadres who had been in the region for a long time were excluded from the party. In some areas, like Sidama, the reshuffle had a dramatic impact on the party organisation. The Sidama Peoples Democratic Organisation’s (SPDO) position in the zone was severely weakened and the opposition party Sidama Liberation Movement, a member of Dr Beyene Petros’ SEPDC, was able exploit the power-vacuum that emerged for their own benefit.
The opposition party, Southern Ethiopian Peoples Democratic Coalition (SEPDC or Southern Coalition), is an umbrella organisation for 15 different ethnically based parties. It was established by Dr Beyene Petros in 1992 and was a part of the transitional government until 1993, when it was thrown out of the cabinet by the EPRDF. Hadiya zone, Dr Beyene’s area of origin, and the neighbouring zone of Kambata-Alaba-Tambaro, have traditionally been the Coalition’s strongholds. For the local elections 2001, the Sidama Liberation Movement (SLM) in Sidama zone apparently also succeeded in mobilising the voters. This organisation was established in 1978 and operated as a guerrilla movement fighting the Derg from its bases in Somalia. When the EPRDF came to power, SLM renounced its violent policies and joined the Southern Coalition of Dr Beyene. But they were not allowed by the National Electoral Board to take part in elections with their own party name until 2001, due to their violent past and that they still had a kalashnikov gun in their party symbol[3].
The Ethiopian Democratic Party (EDP) attempted to field candidates for the local election 2001 in Sidama zone, but was prevented from participating a few days before the first election day. The National Electoral Board cancelled the EDP candidates on the ground that candidates could not speak the native language of Sidama zone. They claimed that the regulations of the southern region said that any person who took a public office in the region had to speak the local tongue. But according to the constitution of the southern region, every person “without any discrimination based on colour, race, religion, political or other opinion” has the right to be elected to any office at all governmental offices[4]. EDP intended to pursue this issue further, but did not succeed in changing the decision before the elections had started[5].
Elections and the concern for individual and communal safety
In the rural areas of Ethiopia most people live on very small economic margins and the most important priority in daily life is to prevent these margins from being reduced. Any changes that might alter people’s abilities to obtain their daily income are considered as dangerous and might have great impacts on the chances of survival. The understanding of elections should take this fact into consideration. If participation in the elections, on one side or the other, is considered as a threat to people’s livelihood, they may want to disengage from it all. If, on the other hand, taking part in the elections is a precondition for securing the daily bread, peasants are likely to take part.
In most Ethiopian local communities, elders (shimagile) play an important role in conflict management and negotiations. Because of the elders’ status and respect, they are in many instances acting as the communities’ actual leaders, in addition to or instead of the formally elected leaders and judicial bodies. They are in many cases seen as the guardians of the communities’ security and stability, and are expected to make decisions that ensure the wellbeing of the citizens. Elections in the Ethiopian context imply an increased level of conflict and a mobilisation of the population that often leads to communal instability. This has particularly been the case in Southern region, where the opposition has been able to mobilise popular support. During and in the aftermath of parliamentary elections in May 2000, there was great instability in particularly two areas of the region, Hadiya and Tambaro. People were killed and detained, and schools and other public services were closed for a period of time. It is apparent that these incidents endangered people’s security and well being, and in many places also reduced their economic margins dramatically. Many people realised that supporting the opposition would imply at least harassment from the ruling party and the administrative bodies, and at worst imprisonment or death. It seems therefore that the experiences from Hadiya and Tambaro have led communities to re-evaluate their participation in elections.
During the 2001 local elections, it was apparent that whole communities had decided to stay away from politics in general and opposition politics in particular, for example in Omo Shelokko woreda (Tambaro) and Angacha town in KAT zone. Leaders of Southern Front, among them the regional president Hailemariam Dessalegn, claimed that the elders had decided to abandon the Southern Coalition because they had realised that the opposition could not keep its promises and that they were criminals[6]. The leader of the Coalition, Beyene Petros, argued that the people of Tambaro were too scared by the intervention of federal police forces in the previous upheavals to continue supporting the opposition[7]. When I visited Tambaro, I only had the chance to talk to the representatives of the ruling party, and they largely confirmed the regional president’s version of the events. They claimed that the violence was caused by opposition activists attacking the woreda and kebele offices, claiming that they had the right to control all administrative offices because they won the 2000 national and regional elections[8]. After this, the people turned against the opposition, claiming that they only caused problems. The question still remains, however, whether it was the opposition candidates’ acts in themselves which scared off the people, or if it was the acts of the federal police who turned against the people which finally made people go away from the opposition in Tambaro.
[1] One such place is Shone in Badawatchu woreda in Hadiya, where the SEPDC won over the EPRDF in the re-election in June 2000. In the woreda and zone election this year, SEPDC only won in one single kebele (Interview Ato Hussein, NEB Shone, 29.12.01).
[2] Derg is the Amharic word for committee and was the name of the former regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam (1974-1991).
[3] Interview with Jilma Chamola, acting chairman of SLM, Awassa 28.12.01
[4] The SNNPRS Constitution of 1995, article 39,1.
[5] Interview Netsanet Demelash, head of EDP in Awassa, 27.12.01
[6] Interview in Awassa, 21.12.01
[7] Interview in Addis Ababa, 17.12.01
[8] Interview with the chairman and the head of social affairs in Omo Shelokko Woreda, Modula, 26.12.01