Ethiopian PM, Hailemariam Desalegn attends African Summit in Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa January 2016.
There is every sign that Ethiopia is plunging into a crisis whose scale, intensity, and multiple and interdependent drivers are unprecedented since the founding of the regime in 1991. The Ethiopian leadership remains in denial. The long meetings of its ruling bodies have culminated in a report on 15 years of national “rebirth”, in which it awards itself good marks, whileacknowledging the existence of a few problems here and there.
Nonetheless, the odd warning signal may be
heard – though very seldom – in counterpoint to the general complacency.
Hailemariam Desalegn, prime minister and chairman of what is
essentially the single party, has gone so far as to warn that the issues facing the regime are a matter of “life or death”,[1] and that Ethiopia is “sliding towards ethnic conflict similar to that in neighbouring countries”.[2]
Well, these neighbouring countries include
Somalia, epitome of the ‘failed state’, and Sudan, which has split in
two and where civil war is raging in the new Southern State. In this,
unusually, he is in agreement with Merera Gudina, head of one of the
main opposition parties still permitted to operate, who speaks of the probability of “civil war […] if the government continues to repress”.[3]
There is every sign that Ethiopia is plunging into a crisis whose
scale, intensity, and multiple and interdependent drivers are
unprecedented since the founding of the regime in 1991, although the
impossibility of field research precludes any in-depth and conclusive
assessment.
The first, very discreet signs of this crisis
appeared in the spring of 2014 in a part of the country where they were
probably least expected: in Tigray, where the Tigrean People’s
Liberation Front (TPLF), pillar of the quadri-ethnic party ruling
coalition – the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF) – seemed both unopposed and unopposable.
Yet the Tigreans loudly and clearly accused
“their” Front of neglecting them by only looking after its own interests
or, as Hailemariam Desalegn expressed it, of using “public authority for personal gain at all levels”.[4]
The crisis erupted into the open a few weeks
later in Oromya, with additional grievances. In the most populous of the
nine states and two municipalities that make up federal Ethiopia, a
state that is also the country’s economic powerhouse, students took to
the streets to protest against the Addis Ababa Master Plan. Their
suspicion was that this would inevitably lead to a transfer of
sovereignty from the Oromo region to central government and be
accompanied by “land grabbing”, the expulsion and dispossession of the
local peasant farmers. Protests resumed in November 2015 and continue
today at a larger scale that now includes the general population and
almost the whole of Oromo State.
Turning up the heat
The heat was turned up a further notch in
mid-July with the advent of protests in the historic heart of Amhara
State. Together, Amhara and Oromo account for almost two-thirds of the
country’s total population. The diversity of the ways of life that
characterizes Oromo – farmers and pastoralists, of its religions –
Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Protestant, animist, together with its very
loose traditional structures, prompts Merera Gudina to emphasise “the chronic division between Oromo political forces”.[5]
By contrast, the homogeneity of the Amhara population – in its vast
majority small farmers and Christian Orthodox – fosters unity, while its
mobilisation is favoured by its sense of hierarchy and discipline.
Finally, the parallel protests by Oromo and Amhara, with largely shared
reasons and objectives, breaks with their historical antagonism: the
dispossession and subsequent exploitation of the Oromo by an Amhara –
and Tigrean – elite from the late nineteenth century onwards, embedded
their relations in a system that the Oromo have described as colonial.
The toughest demonstrations that the regime
had faced followed the contested elections of 2005. They were
essentially confined to Addis Ababa, with the young unemployed playing a
major role. In all, they lasted only a few days, in two surges. They
came in response to a call from established political forces for a very
clear outcome – respect for the verdict of the ballot box. The regime
reacted in unison with violent repression – killing almost 200 and
arresting tens of thousands – immediately followed by a large-scale
strategy of political reconquest through the expansion of the
quasi-single party and a rallying of the elites. The protests very
quickly died down, and the opposition forces collapsed.
This time, the protests affect the country’s
two main states. Despite the repression – hundreds killed, thousands
arrested – it has been going on for nine months, with varying degrees of
intensity. The attempts at dissuasion through fear have not been enough[6]
– at least for the moment – to demobilize the protesters, as evidenced
by new forms of protest such as the recent “dead city” operations in the Amhara region[7] and the just launched boycott campaign in Oromya.
This time, a whole generation of young people
is in the forefront of the protests – the 15-29 age group represents
more than a quarter of the population – starting with, but not confined
to, all those who have benefited from mass education, who have carried
their elders with them. This time, their anger derives from widespread
discontent, focusing on three areas.
First, they are fed up not just with the
regime’s authoritarianism, but more so with the way it is exercised:
supervision and control that are stifling, intrusive and infantilising,
imposed everywhere, all the time, on everyone, by a Party that has
swallowed up the State. The second focus is the implementation of a
federalism that is in theory equitable, but in reality profoundly
unbalanced. Tigray, representing 6% of the population, was the epicentre
of the rebellion, which threw out Mengistu Haile Mariam’s
military-socialist junta in 1991, the Derg. It was headed by the Tigrean
student elite that founded the TPLF. This historical role justified its
initial primacy.
Twenty-five years on, however, this elite
remains vastly overrepresented at the apex of political power, the army,
the security services. In addition, through public and para-public
companies, it controls two thirds of the modern economy, excluding
traditional agriculture. In
the specific Ethiopian case… a tentacular and increasingly voracious
and arrogant oligarchy… has ultimately filtered down to village level.
The third focus of discontent is the
backlashes of the “developmental state”. This system centralises
revenues at the summit of power, which supremely decides on its optimal
use for development across the country. This strategy has been decisive
in the exceptional economic growth of the last decade – probably around
6% to 7% per year – and in the expansion of education and health
services alike. However, the centralisation it entails is evidently
incompatible with authentic federalism. Moreover, in the specific
Ethiopian case, the fact that the functions of political leadership,
economic decision-making and the management of public and para-public
enterprises are concentrated in the hands of the same people at the
summit of the party-state, free of any control and political
counterweight, has led to the creation of a tentacular and increasingly
voracious and arrogant oligarchy, which has ultimately filtered down to
village level.
These flaws have had a cumulative and mutually
reinforcing impact. In Oromya in particular, the implementation of
development projects dictated from above and often controlled by
nonindigenous oligarchs, has frequently been marked by authoritarianism,
spoliation and ethnic favouritism. In the case of “land grabbing”,
there are multiple instances of land being brutally appropriated and
embezzlement of the compensation owed to evicted farmers. The triggering
factor for the protests in Amhara region was the authorities’ refusal
to tackle the dispute arising from the incorporation into Tigray of the
Wolkait region – a thin strip of land in the north that was part of the
imperial province of Amhara – imposed after 1991 without public
consultation of any kind, together with the transfer of western areas to
Sudan, a process conducted in total secrecy.
“Thief!”
The demonstrators’ slogans and targets speak
for themselves. They have attacked prisons to free the inmates. They
have ransacked public properties, not just offices, vehicles, etc., but
also health centres, unemployment offices and cooperatives, places they
see as existing more to control the population than to perform their
purported functions. They
have ransacked public properties… they see as existing more to control
the population than to perform their purported functions.
They have gone after local party bosses and
their possessions – the lowest layer of the oligarchy – targeting
government representatives as much as the despoilers. They have burned
businesses owned by national and foreign investors (farms, factories,
hotels, etc.) because they symbolise an external stranglehold over
Oromya and the Amhara region. “Oromya is not for sale”
was one favourite slogan. In short, the demonstrators are targeting
both the persons and property of those they see as having obtained
position and/or wealth at their expense, through the patronage of the
ruling power. “Thief!” is one of the most oft repeated slogans.
In Oromya, the conviction of having remained
second-class citizens in a system dominated by a “northist” minority,
and in the Amhara region of having become second-class and of feeling permanently “humiliated and marginalized”[8]
because a part of the Amhara elite was dominant in the imperial era, is
less and less tolerated. The assertion of ethnic identity and the
demand for the full rights associated with it are at the heart of the
demonstrations. “We want genuine self rule”, cry the Oromo, “We are Amhara”,
declare the crowds in the historical capital Gondar, or in Bahir Dar,
the new capital. However, these claims are also taking a very worrying
turn. In Oromo, demonstrators have gone after Amhara and Tigreans, as
well as their properties. Tigreans have been targeted in the Amhara
region. However, distortions of every kind in the propaganda war make
the reality difficult to grasp. In particular, were the rioters
targeting arrivistes more than Tigreans, or vice versa? Anyway, Tigreans
are even beginning to leave certain areas, notably in a “mass exodus” from Gondar.[9]Some go so far as to speak of “ethnic cleansing”.
There are pressing calls for these practices
to cease, both on social media and from the legal opposition. But as
Beyene Petros, one of its leaders, explains: “we’re just watching… people are coming out spontaneously… political parties are bypassed”.[10]
By contrast with 2005, this popular protest is largely independent of
the legal opposition, and even the illegal opposition groups, such as
the Oromo Liberation Front, the oldest and most radical of the Oromo
“nationalist movements”, and Ginbot 7, heir to one of the big opposition
parties of 2005 and considered a pan-Ethiopian movement.There is no secret central command orchestrating events.
There is no secret central command
orchestrating events, although there is no doubt that informal
clandestine networks, with links to the diaspora, are contributing to
basic coordination and the exchange of information. “These protests are at the level of an intifada”, claims Merera Gudina,[11] or rather at the level of what could be called an “Ethiopian Spring” reminiscent of the “Arab Springs”.
‘Arab plot’
In addressing this situation, the ruling power
clings stubbornly to a binary, reductive and simplistic analysis. True,
it quickly shelved the Master Plan, an entirely unprecedented
turnaround. It also reaffirmed the self-critique that emerged from the
congresses of summer 2015: beyond the immense benefits that it has
brought – peace and development – its action has been marred by failures
and deficiencies, notably with regard to corruption, bad governance,
unaccountability and youth unemployment. The narrative is that these are
the only failings that the “public” condemns, which makes them “legitimate”. It has undertaken to correct them and “to discuss with the people” in order to tackle them more effectively.
So the legitimacy of these “public” claims is accepted. But those who demand more are supposedly driven by a “destructive agenda” manipulated by “destructive”, “anti-peace”, “anti-development elements”, “bandits”, or even “evil forces” and “terrorist groups”, “extremist Diaspora members who have negotiated their country’s chaos for money”, which are puppets of “foreign actors” or “invaders”, starting with Eritrea. It is they who are “hijacking”
peaceful demonstrations and turning them into illegal and violent
protests. Websites close to the TPLF, among the few accessible in
Ethiopia, are more explicit: according to them, the wave of protest is
simply the outcome of an Arab plot, led by Egypt, in which Asmara, the
OLF and Ginbot 7 are mere “foot soldiers”. Their real purpose? “To destabilise” Ethiopia, repeats the government, “the total disintegration of Ethiopia as a country”, according to these websites.[12]
To attribute the crisis to external, foreign
conspiracy is unjustifiable. Eritrea, still in an on/off state of war
with Ethiopia, and Egypt, deeply alarmed by the construction of a
colossal dam on the Nile, would undoubtedly welcome a weakening of
Ethiopia. It may even be that they are trying to fan the flames. But
they do not have the means to light the fire and keep it burning. And
the ruling power’s claim that they have been able to do so is itself an
admission of weakness: for them to succeed, the regime must already have
been resting on weak foundations.
This externalisation also exempts the
government from having to consider the grievances at the heart of the
protests, going far beyond a few personal failings and deficiencies in
implementation. Externalisation is also used to justify repression as
the only possible response: there can be no compromise with the enemies
of the motherland. It would therefore be pointless to move beyond the
use of force and engage in the political sphere, as it did in 2005.
Above all, however, the government rejects this option because a
political response to the protesters’ demands would require it to
question its whole political structure and policy.
‘Intellocracy’
The TPLF is a child of the student movement of
the end of Haile Selassie’s reign, radically Marxist and above all
Leninist. From its creation, it adopted the movement’s analysis of
Ethiopian society. The peasantry – still 80% of the population today –
backward and illiterate, the working class tiny and in any case
‘trade-unionist’, the ‘national’ bourgeoisie equally small and anyway
indecisive, assigned an irreplaceable role to “revolutionary intellectuals”,
as Lenin defined them. They are the only ones able to develop the path
that would bring Ethiopia progress and well-being, and therefore the
only ones with the legitimacy to impose it on Ethiopians, willingly or
by force if necessary.[13]
This conviction remains. Just a few years ago, Hailemariam Desalegn explained: “due to poor education and illiteracy, the Ethiopian public is too underdeveloped to make a well reasoned, informed decision”; so the “enlightened leaders” have “to lead the people”.[14] At the other extreme, every local official is convinced that his position places him within the circle of “enlightened leaders” and that he has the right and duty to assume all the authority associated with that role.
This messianic vision creates an unbridgeable
divide between a handful of ‘knowers’, an ‘intellocracy’, which alone
has the legitimacy and the capacity to exercise power, and all the
others, the ‘ignorant’, in other words the people, reified and bound to
obey in its own interests, whatever it may think. It justifies a
totalising ascendancy in every sphere, exercised through an age-old
hierarchy on which the Leninist formula “democratic centralism” confers a
modern and revolutionary dimension. Or, in this particular case, “revolutionary elitism” or “elitist centralism”.[15]
Of course, the outcome has been exactly the same: centralising excess
and denial of democracy, culminating with the installation of a “strong
man” at the apex of a pyramid of power. Meles Zenawi, the prime minister
until his death in 2012, would become the acknowledged fulfiller of
this role, drawing on immense rhetorical skills backed by an exceptional
intelligence.
In this binary vision, the political spectrum
is inevitably polarised at two extremes. The ruling power is the sole
promoter of peace and development. Those who oppose or merely question
it are assigned to the “anti-peace”, “anti-development”, “anti-federalist” camp, as “chauvinists” or “narrow nationalists”,
threatening the Ethiopian state and the integrity of the country.
Although masked in the early days of the TPLF by the collective
operation of the leadership, this conception of ruling, monopolistic and
exclusive to the point of extreme sectarianism, is in essence
undemocratic. It legitimises the use of force whenever those in power
deem it appropriate.
A new middle class
However, a growing section of the population
is no longer prepared to be stifled, undervalued and marginalised. A new
middle class has emerged, essentially in the public sector, in services
and – largely unrecognised – in the countryside, where a rump of
recently enriched farmers has emerged. 700,000 young people are in
university, 500,000 have obtained degrees in the last five years.[16] In a country of close to 100 million inhabitants, the number of mobile phone customers has reached 46 million, internet users 13.6 million,[17]
compared respectively with fewer than a million and 30,000 ten years
ago. Satellite dishes have sprouted on the roofs wherever electricity is
present, breaking the public television monopoly. It is estimated that 4
million Ethiopians live abroad, but still maintain close relations with
their native country. Millions of Ethiopians are suddenly connected to
the world.
More globally, the demands society now places on the regime
are commensurate with the upheavals brought about by the development it
has driven. In this sense, the regime’s very successes have come back to
bite it.
Ethnic faultlines are also imprinted in the
regime’s DNA. From the mid-1980s onwards, the TPLF carried its combat
against the Derg from the regional to the national level. At least
within the country’s two major “nations”, Oromo and Amhara, it thus had
to find ethnic political movements to join it. But rather than forming
partnerships, which would have entailed power-sharing, it imposed its
grip on them. That is the original sin of federalism ‘Ethiopian style’.
Rather than reaching agreement with the
spearhead of anti-Derg struggle in Oromya, the OLF, it created the Oromo
People’s Democratic Organisation (OPDO), drawn from among its Oromo or
simply Oromifa-speaking prisoners. This structure would be confined to
the rank of ‘junior partner’, even more than the Amhara National
Democratic Movement (ANDM), the Amhara component of the EPRDF, although
its initial nucleus had been an autonomous group. The new Oromo and
Amhara elites that joined this structure did so more out of opportunism
than by conviction, and in general at least without recognising their
leaderships as legitimate representatives.
Federalism, which was supposed to achieve a
harmonious balance in inter-ethnic relations, has in fact as practised
led ultimately to their deterioration. It faced an insurmountable
contradiction. On the one hand, it promoted new ethnic elites to
political, administrative and economic functions; on the other, it
continued to keep them subordinate, while sharpening ethnic identities.
Large parts of these elites, and moreover large swathes of their
nations, are no longer prepared to tolerate this.
Deepening faultlines
Ultimately, the exclusiveness and top-down
approach are having a negative impact on the economy. In the first
phase, the party’s control over the State and the modern sector
encouraged the mobilisation and effective use of resources. At this
time, the ‘developmental state’ proved its worth by delivering
remarkable economic growth. It has to continue if the regime wishes to
tout it as a pillar of its legitimacy.
However, this model is on the wane. The
developmental state has gone off the rails, diverted by the oligarchical
dynamic. The onus is on private investors, in particular foreign
investors, to take over from public investment to drive structural
transformation towards a globalised market economy. However, the
governing power’s obsession with maintaining control is stifling those
investors.
Finally, the party political discipline
imposed on the technocracy smothers its professional capacities and its
confidence. This is one of the primary sources of frustration. It also
hampers the effective use of the resources essential for growth in an
increasingly complex economy. Yet even at its current rate, that growth
is unable to absorb the two to two and a half million young people
entering the labour market each year, including new graduates,
contributing to the anger that is now exploding in the streets.
In light of these contradictions, the fault
lines are deepening. The discontent of the Tigreans has triggered the
emergence of a ‘reforming’, pragmatic and politicised current inside the
TPLF, which wants to rally them by making the Front work for them
again. It advocates breaking with the “rule of force”, an immemorial
feature of Ethiopian history.
It underlines that the only way to achieve
long-term stability, beginning with peaceful changes of government, is
through the step-by-step introduction of the “rule of law” by full and
integral application of the constitution, notably the separation of
powers, the exercise of fundamental liberties and an authentic federalism.[18] It would have to be “consociationalist”.
The chief nations would be equally represented, with decisions taken by
consensus, so each would possess an effective right of veto. The second
“traditionalist” or “conservative” current rejects significant change
and argues for continuity. Essentially, it takes the view that Ethiopia
is not yet mature enough for democratic move, and still needs to kept
under iron control. A website close to the TPLF argues: “the
people are not ready yet in every aspect and meaning of the word
(democracy). Any attempt to accelerate that process other than its
natural course… can only lead to darker places”.[19]
Reflecting the intensity of this division,
these websites are full of heated debate between those who show real
understanding of the protests and those who utterly condemn them,
between those arguing for immediate political openness and those calling
first and foremost for the crushing of the unrest. However, they agree
on one point: an unprecedentedly virulent condemnation of the leadership
of the Front, which is deemed inept and incapable of handling the
situation.
This political division has also reached the
ranks of the ANDM and OPDO, but here the focus is on federalism. The
“ethno-nationalists” reject the asymmetries of the current federal
system and are keen to assert their party’s autonomy from the TPLF.
Their adversaries are considered too weak to fend for themselves and
vitally in need of the TPLF’s support. So, the OPDO base has literally
disintegrated. At its summit, there is overt opposition between Abadula
Gemeda, who expresses understanding for the claims of protesters and is
the only leader who enjoys real popularity, and Muktar Kedir, who is
perceived as an insubstantial apparatchik imposed by the TPLF. The same
applies to the problematic destiny of Gedu Andergatchew, President of
the Amhara region, number two in the ANDM and the Movement’s real
heavyweight in terms of popularity, and the official number one, Demeke
Mekonnen, a much criticised figure who is nevertheless supported by the
TPLF.
This ethnicisation of the political landscape
is also apparent in the deterioration of relations between TPLF, ANDM
and OPDO. Discussions with their rank and file members and a reading of
their websites give an insight into their mutual mistrust.
In the TPLF, there is an iron belief that the “rotten chauvinists” and “revanchist” Amhara, controlled remotely by Ginbot 7, have “hijacked” the ANDM, are intent of restoring their former hegemony by “overtaking the position of TPLF in the Ethiopian politics” and are even once again forcing Tigreans “to defend our existence from extinction”.[20]
In the ANDM, there is a conviction
that the TPLF wants to continue to make Amhara pay for the former
dominance of some of their elite, to marginalize them and to dispossess
them of ancestral lands.[21]
For the ordinary OPDO party official, nothing has changed since the
nineteenth century conquests: exploitation, oppression, marginalisation,
or even quite baldly “genocide”.
Hackneyed as it clearly is, the word is widely used, symptomatic of a
paranoia that casts doubt on what remains of the unity at least at the
base of the EPRDF.
These fractures were born since the initial
formation of the ruling power. Meles Zenawi widened them, but succeeded
in masking them by maintaining an iron grip over the tensions that they
engendered. The present wave of protests has exacerbated them. They are
splitting, not to say cracking, the party, from its summit to its 7
million member base, which is torn between loyalty and discipline, the
material advantages of membership, and the ever-growing swell of popular
aspirations within it.
In Oromya, part of the OPDO pushed behind the
scenes for overt opposition to the Master Plan. The regional police were
unable to cope or adopt a prudent ‘wait and see’ strategy. Today, they
are virtually out of the game, and the federal police and army have had
to intervene. The OPDO has essentially been relieved
of the government of Oromya, which is under military administration via
a “Command Post” based in Addis Ababa and headed by Hailemariam
Dessalegn.[22]
In the Amhara region, at least the big initial demonstrations were held
with the support or tacit approval of part of the ANDM, although
officially forbidden. Out of their depth, the Amhara State authorities
had to request army intervention. The regionhas been placed under military command.[23]
The growing number of leaks of documents and
recordings of discussions at the highest level of government and the
State-Party are testament to the fact that frontline leaders now have
one foot in the government camp and one in the protesters’ camp.
Villages and entire local areas are taking advantage of the dilution or
even disappearance of public authority to set up embryonic forms of
self-government. In places, the State-Party’s local structures have
placed their organisations at the service of the protesters. Armed men,
who can only be village militiamen in principle strictly under local
government control, have fired in the air alongside demonstrators. They
are necessarily involved in fatal ambushes on soldiers and attacks on
military depots. Desertions and overt acts of insubordination are taking
place.
Losing authority
By contrast with 2005, when neither the
federal nor regional governments lost control, today – at least at
certain times and in certain places – they have lost authority over
their own agents and even their monopoly on the use of force.
Hailemariam Desalegn had to concede: “chaos” has broken out “in parts of Oromia and Amhara states”..[24]
There has been a shift from demonstrations to riots, and then from
riots to pockets of insurrection. Militiamen and farmers hold hundreds
of thousands of weapons. The transition from unrest towards a scattered
armed peasant revolt (a “jacquerie”), is a possibility.
The crisis is not only about a change of
government, or even regime change. It is systemic, because it is rooted
in the form in which contemporary power has been exercised since its
bases were laid down in the middle of the nineteenth century. This has
been theocratic, authoritarian, centralised, hierarchical, ethnically
biased, monopolising the country’s resources.
“Intellocracy” has replaced theocratic
feudalism, but other main traits have been more or less transposed in an
updated form. The ruling power faces more or less the same demands as
those it addressed to Haile Selassie’s regime forty years ago: rule of
law; fair use of assets, beginning with land (“land to the tiller”,
went the slogan; denunciation of “land grabbing’” now); the “national
question”, in other words a balanced relationship between Ethiopia’s 80
“nations, nationalities and peoples”; and, at the crossroads of the land
issue and the “national question”, the border conflicts between the
states. “They want to rule in the old way, and people are refusing to be ruled in the old way”
“They want to rule in the old way, and people are refusing to be ruled in the old way”, is Merera Gudina’s concise summing up.[25]
What the protesters – and indeed the “reformists” – are demanding is
huge: the shift from an imposed, exclusive and closed system, to an
accepted, inclusive and open system. This would require a total
reconstruction, an outcome that the successors of Haile Selassie, then
of Mengistu, failed to bring about.
For the moment at least, this goal is well
beyond the EPRDF’s capacities. Firstly, it is paralysed by its
divisions. These range from personal conflicts to business rivalries,
from old ethnic tensions to new political disagreements. Secondly, the
Front would risk disintegration if the “reformists” tried to force
through their views. Whatever side they are on, its leaders know that a
split would be fatal to everyone. They are obliged to maintain unity,
with the result that they seem for now condemned to immobility.
Opening up
The majority of the Front perceives opening up as a leap in the dark and a fatal threat to its positions and its interests.
Opening up to the opponents of the Front would
have to go hand-in-hand with an internal opening up. It would
inevitably threaten numerous unfairly acquired positions.
Until now, the rule of winner-takes-all has
reigned. In the general perception, or at least ‘Abyssinian’ perception,
authority is either absolute or moribund: if it accepts concessions, it
implicitly acknowledges that its end is imminent. To open up would
therefore trigger a sharing of power, which could culminate in total
loss of power.
Opening up would also mean a historic shift.
For centuries, power has been “northern”, Abyssinian. A fair
representation of the different ethnic components is inconceivable
without the Oromo, the largest ethnicity, playing a central role, a role
moreover that they are demanding.
That would be an even more hazardous leap for
the TPLF, abandoning its domination and betting that a genuinely
democratic federalism would emerge. In other words, that nations or a
coalition of nations much more populous than the Tigreans would not
impose majority rule, threatening the preservation of what for the Front
is non- negotiable: Tigreans remaining in charge of Tigray. Finally, power and enrichment go together.
Finally, power and enrichment go together.
From the summit of the state-party to its most modest ranks, official
positions and oligarchical rents are mutually reinforcing. This material
dimension is an overwhelming reason to preserve the status quo. In
particular, the vast majority of the Front’s members think that it is
right that their commitment and obedience should be rewarded with direct
or indirect favours.
To open up, but to whom, in what domain, and
to what point? Everyone agrees that the protest movement has neither a
recognised leadership nor a clear programme, which is its major
weakness. Would it consider itself authentically represented by the
legal opposition, enfeebled through repression and its own divisions, or
by the more radical illegal opposition, whose real representativeness
is impossible to assess? Would these very diverse forces agree on a sort
of shared programme of demands?
Up to now they have always stumbled over two
crucial points: whether to maintain public ownership of land – far and
away the primary asset – or to privatise it; and whether to accentuate
or to temper federalism. For the moment, the voices making themselves
heard cover a very wide spectrum of demands, from the launch of a
national dialogue through to the total and immediate overthrow of the
EPRDF. And history tells us that in such circumstances the extremists
quickly prevail over the moderates. But the word compromise has no direct translation in Amharic…
Yet short of plunging the country into chaos,
there exists no credible alternative to the existing authority, except
in the long term. Supposing the EPRDF were to decide “to rule in a new
way”, it would only do so on condition that it remained in control of a
very gradual and therefore very long process of change. Which of its
adversaries would accept this? On one side or the other, all-or-nothing
politics have so far been the rule. But an inclusive and open system
cannot be created unless all the stakeholders, without exception, are
ready for compromise, in other words ready to make reciprocal
concessions in order to reach an agreement. But the word compromise has
no direct translation in Amharic…
Worst case scenario
So every scenario remains possible, including
the worst-case. The regime may decide to continue on the same
trajectory, relying on repression and the acceleration of its recovery
plan for the state-party. It could be that the machinery of repression
will stifle the protest movement. This machinery is extensive and
experienced. It is even possible that the army could decide to take
matters into its own hands, if it thought that the political leadership
was failing. Its effective head, Samora Yunus, has always said that “the army is always vigilant to safeguard the constitutional order”.[26]
But will it be able to, especially if protest
intensifies, and in particular if it takes root in the rural areas? From
a leaked record of a meeting of army chiefs, it seems that some are
uncertain about the physical capacity of the troops to hold firm on
multiple fronts, and above all about the risks of insubordination, or
even mutiny, resulting from the ethnic divisions in their ranks.[27] “Killing is not an answer to our grievances”
Even supposing that simple repression works,
the probability is high that it would only offer the regime a period of
respite before, sooner or later, a new – even more devastating – surge
of unrest. To prevent this, it has just decided to put on the table the question of Wolkait and the relations between Addis Ababa and the Oromo lands around it, and above all to “sack and reshuffle party and government officials including Ministers” in the coming month, all through wide-ranging discussions “with the people”.[28]
But even the legal opposition judges these reforms to be “cosmetic”.[29]
Up to now, these discussions have always consisted in a massive process
of self-justification, with no genuine consultation of the people,
which is unable – or does not dare – to make itself heard. Moreover,
this promise is an old chestnut. The struggle against the dark triad of
corruption, bad governance and unaccountability, on the agenda since the
early 2000s, has had no impact. The campaign to “purify”
the state-party of its black sheep, launched with much fanfare in the
autumn of 2015, has been a damp squib. It touched only minor officials,
while none of the senior figures – some are notorious for their corrupt
practices – was affected, leading the population to conclude that the
campaign was nothing but a smokescreen.
This triad of failings extends from top to
bottom of the EPRDF. It is hard to see how the Party could put an end to
them in response to what it sees as the main demand emanating from the
people, without putting itself at high risk.
“Killing is not an answer to our grievances”,
cry the demonstrators. For the moment, however, no other genuine
answers are to be heard or seen, unless basic common sense, not to
mention democratic aspirations, were to prevail in the ruling power.
[1] Walta, August 30, 2015
[2] BBC, August 3, 2016
[3] Thomson Reuters Foundation, August 11, 2016
[4] Ethiopian Herald, September 2, 2016
[5] OPride, August 3, 2016
[7] Daniel Berhane, August 17, 2016
[8] ECADF, September 2016
[9] Daniel Berhane, August 13, 2016
[10] AFP, August 17, 2016, http://www.ethiomedia.com/1016notes/6057.html
[11] Washington Post,
August 9, 2016,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/a-year-after-obamas-visit-ethiopia-is-in-turmoil/2016/08/09/d7390290-5e39-11e6-8e45-477372e89d78_story.html
[12] See, for example, Walta, August 31 2016, The Ethiopian Herald, August 20, 2016; Tigray On Line, August 13, 2016;Walta, August 11, 2016.
[13] See for example Messay Kebede, From Marxism-Leninism to Ethnicity: the Sideslips of Ethiopian Elitism, University of Dayton, 2001.
[14] Cable from the US Embassy in Ethiopia, April 28, 2008
[15] Gebru Tareke, The Ethiopian Revolution. War in The Horn of Africa, New Haven/London, Yale University Press, 2011, p. 89.
[16] Ministry of Education, Education National Abstract 2013-2014, Addis Abeba, June 2015.
[17] Walta, July 13, 2016
[18]
The most notorious expression of this position has just been provided
by General Tsadkan, a military hero of the TPLF and then of the
Ethiopia-Eritrea war, since excluded from the Front but still profoundly
respected within it.
[19] Aiga Forum, August 25, 2016
[21] Messay Kebede, a well know intellectual, underlines “the TPLF’s systematic policy of humiliating and marginalizing” the Amhara, which led to “the psychological frustration of humiliation at being both degraded and demeaned”; Ethiopian Review, September 2, 2016
[22] Addis Standard, June 25, 2016
[23] Addis Standard, September 1, 2016
[24] Walta, August 13, 2016
[25] Washington Post,
August 9, 2016,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/a-year-after-obamas-visit-ethiopia-is-in-turmoil/2016/08/09/d7390290-5e39-11e6-8e45-477372e89d78_story.html
[26] The Ethiopian Herald, September 3, 2016
[27] ESAT Daily News Amsterdam, August 12, 2016
[28] Daniel Berhane, September 1, 2016
[29] Ethiomedia Forum, August 31, 2016
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