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So much has changed over the past five years. I
agree with that, but I did not say it. Bereket
Simon, chief of the Communications Affairs Bureau,
and Hailemariam Desalegn, the government whip, made
that point in retort to comments from Terrence Lyons
(PhD), director of the Centre for Global Studies at
George Mason University, who has been following
Ethiopian elections since the beginning.
He was talking from the United States through a
video conference last week at the US Embassy in
Addis Abeba, in the attendance of political party
representatives and the media.
There surely have been big changes over the last two
decades. The biggest change undoubtedly was the fall
of the Derg and its replacement by the
Revolutionary Democrats. It is no fairytale, of
course, and although the “evil king was slain,” that
was far from a happily ever after ending.
The prince won the gun battle, and in the ensuing
19 years it would wage a mind battle with all the
resources in its hands and fall far short of
achieving its objective of being voluntarily elected
into power, at least not overwhelmingly.
In the beginning, the Ethiopian Peoples’
Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) seemed to
accommodate opposition forces in the post-Derg
government. But then it intensified its commitment
to redraw Ethiopian geopolitics on regions whose
demarcation was based on linguistic
cultural-identities. The Coalition of Ethiopian
Democratic Forces (CEDF) would find itself out of
favour and out of the game, and the OLF was rapidly
expelled in favour of the Oromo People’s Democratic
Organisation (OPDO) and was then militarily crushed.
Lyons argues in an article he wrote in 1996 that the
EPRDF’s politics were bolstered by “an experienced
and battle hardened military that could act
decisively when necessary.”
The June 1992 election, which followed exactly a
year after the optimistic July 1991 national
conference, held at Africa Hall in Addis Abeba,
started with a positive tone, but eventually the
opposition camp would withdraw complaining of
various forms of harassment, and the EPRDF would
proclaim a 96.6pc victory and call the election.
From then on, the EPRDF would continue getting
stronger and the opposition weaker.
In March 1993, opposition leaders, including some
that were represented in the Council of
Representatives (CoR), gathered in Paris and
condemned the political conduct of the transitional
government of Ethiopia. That led to those
representatives from opposition parties losing their
seats in the transitional council.
In December of the same year, the opposition held a
conference they described as standing for peace and
reconciliation, at the Ghion Hotel, in Addis Abeba.
They perhaps naively expected leaders of the EPRDF
to take part in it. They not only boycotted it but
also arrested some of the opposition leaders who had
been a part of it and come from exile, including
Genenew Assefa, who now is a staunch supporter of
the Revolutionary Democrats. Abera Yemaneab remains
to this date behind bars, charged and convicted of
involvement during the period of what is known as
“the Red Terror.”
During the first national elections in 1995, the
EPRDF was virtually unchallenged. It won 484 of the
547 parliamentary seats.
“The major opposition movements failed to find a
strategy that would force change,” argues Lyons,
although support for the EPRDF had diminished.
Over the following years, the Revolutionary
Democrats insisted that the opposition parties play
by the rules they set. They also continued resisting
foreign interference in internal politics, including
attempts by opposition parties to bring Jimmy Carter
into Ethiopia as an arbitrator.
For a long time to come, the opposition kept trying
to score points with their calls for reconciliation,
and the EPRDF repeatedly turned them down claiming
there was nothing to reconcile. Ethiopia would
continue holding elections that were largely
discounted by the local private media, opposition
parties, and international observers.
A turning point, or a false promise of it, came in
2005, largely due to the sudden success of the
Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD). A success
Bereket once dubbed as a “windfall.” Nonetheless,
the CUD’s multiple weaknesses were masked by the
powerful debate skills of Brehanu Nega (PhD) and his
friends. That success, like a shooting star, came
fast and disappeared just as quickly.
Hailemariam and Bereket were right when they listed
that the media, antiterrorism and civil society laws
were among the many changes the EPRDF led government
had achieved since 2005. Where I disagree with them
is that those laws actually made life harder. For
instance, as Lyons argued following the civil
society organisation (CSO) law, we did not see a
flourish of civil society organisations, but rather,
their mass disappearance. Journalists now do not
only have to look at the media law but also at the
antiterrorism law. And of course, for one reason or
another, the great majority of the private press
disappeared after the 2005 election.
Today, as in before the 2005 elections, the voters
hardly have a proper choice that promises change in
the country. The last national election was a rarity
when voters turned out en mass, not just
because of negative feelings about the EPRDF, but
because able leaders were on the horizon. That
feeling, like a comet with a very long orbit, will
take a long time before it visits our share of
planet earth again.
Surely, it is difficult to argue that voters have
much of a choice this time around. And seeing how
proud Bereket and Hailemariam are with the outcomes
of the laws and codes they have produced over the
past five years, things may not be much better, if
not worse, in 2015. |
