Before he was President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, leading a diplomatic charge that arguably came extremely close to reconciling the irreconcilable in the Middle East, Warren Christopher was lead author of the Christopher Report, an officially sanctioned investigation into the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. And despite hundreds of landmark legal decisions that changed the course of the United Sates, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren will forever be remembered for leading the Warren Report, the still undisputed conclusion on what brought upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
 

That is hardly the case in Ethiopia. If there is anything to be concluded from the release of a report by the Inquiry Commission created last year by Parliament, to investigate the riots and killings of last June and November 2005, it is that no one in particular can claim authorship. The report, it has come to be seen, is decidedly a mixed bag, where controversies begin very quickly.
 

The major source of angst has been human resources related. Opposition parties and wide swathes of the public at large were incensed that - as they perceived it - the ruling party was nominating its own supporters. The opposition complained that they were not allowed to name their own people to the Commission, leaving the Revolutionary Democrats to, de facto, investigate themselves.
 

It was later proved that that was not the case, when the second blow to the inquiry’s smooth sailing came when five of these alleged patsies to the government, including its chairperson, Frehiwot Samuel, quit the Commission, for what was reported as “personal reasons”, but was quickly rumoured to be differences with the government.

These rumours were capped by the failure of the Commission to meet its deadline in submitting the report before Parliament recess last Ethiopian budget year. Nothing has, however, compromised the credibility of the Commission, hence its report, more than the emergence of the Commission’s second chair, Woldemichael Meshesha, in Europe and the subsequent reporting of the Commission’s alleged findings by the Associated Press (AP), written up by a journalist who was evicted from Ethiopia last January.
 

Whether pushed along by the AP leak or not, in the end, a report was finally handed to Parliament on Monday, October 30, presented by five of the eight remaining members of the Commission, including Mekonnen Disasa (PhD), the third chairman only named a few months ago.
 

It is hard not to conclude that the Commission has hardly had a recommendable existence, at least on a procedural level.
 

When the investigation was first launched, there were three main thrusts to it. First, the Commission was to determine whether excessive use of force was employed by law enforcement agencies in their attempt to quell the violent protest that finally claimed the life of six of their own, some of killed with grenades. Second, the investigators were to determine whether international human rights standards and laws were observed when law enforcement agencies made arrests and during custody: Over 30,000 people were rounded up and put in various detention centres across the country. The third was to determine the loss of life and the extent in property damage.
 

In the end, the Commission more or less delivered on the latter two: yes, they said, there exists reasonable ground to say law enforcement agencies have failed to observe international human rights standards while doing their job. Now, we know that 193 people were killed as a result of the electoral dispute last year, and that over 4.45 million Br worth of property damage was incurred, led by the 190 destroyed buses at the Anbessa City Bus Service.
 

Expectedly, it is on the first, the question of ‘excessive use of force’ that still divides the country and, above all, sparked the most vehemence from opposition parliamentarians last Monday.

Were these deaths, the ones suffered by the public, excessive compared to not only what the situation was but also the degree of threat to the law enforcement establishment?
 

It does not take a panel of experts to determine that that many deaths by government bullets - and the death of six law enforcement officers - are an absolute tragedy for the country. It does not take much to claim that the kind of response given by law enforcement agents, particularly during the June 2005 violence, was excessive when one recalls that there were angry stone throwing protestors were met with a shower of bullets. There is no other way to explain the murder of family members in Arba Minch, a town 489Km south of Addis, by government soldiers while they were inside their own compound, and not even joining the crowd out on the streets.
 

Even the Commission members were not able to conceal this fact: they rather urged the public that everything has to be looked at within context, and in a manner that put into consideration what might have happened had the government stayed inactive.
 

This is very much subject to debate. But, more importantly, the debate on the ‘employment of excessive force’ is about something more than recognising the tragedy, as indeed, tragic.
 

It is about accountability. The report, by clearly stipulating that the response was not excessive, is clearly saying that the investigation stops here. In the report, the one released in Parliament anyway, the effects of those awful days are detailed. It is a result of interviewing over 600 witnesses and examination of 3,405 documents collected from the various hospitals and health centres around the country. It took the Commission members over 48 meetings with signed minutes; documents that have become sources of controversy themselves.
 

These are the elements that have been expertly brought out and exploited by the opposition, as it was observed during the lively debate on Monday. MPs from the opposition parties often complain of feeling like manipulated outsiders to government, being left very little to sink their teeth into - the sorry ‘debate’ over the budget last Spring was probably a good indication of this.
 

But for once, however, they shined. The opposition railed wholeheartedly against the report voicing their complete distrust of its genesis, and questioning its credibility. They have impressively used the report to score their points against the ruling party, whose presence was not even graced by the attendance of the Prime Minister, who incidentally was in personal command of the security establishment at the times of the violence. 
 

The opposition MPs – give a thumps up here for Lidetu Ayalew - insist on the excessive use of force argument because it then advances the accountability question. Those soldiers and police officers were under the specific instructions of the Prime Minister during those days and everyone knows that. If the officers were found to have acted excessively, then there could have been a good chance that might have pointed finger to someone way up. The report, in the end, nips that line of reasoning in the bud.

But, regardless of these undercurrents, there are several interesting – and positive - elements in the whole inquiry saga. Despite all the misgivings expressed by everyone, the report went to an unprecedented measure to expose controversial acts carried out by the government. Note here the most compelling statements made by Gemechu Megersa (PhD), one of the Commission members.
 

Who would have thought that the number of people killed during these periods would reach to 193, if it was not for this Commission?

Even the self-exiled deputy chairman does not dispute the facts of the report. The government has been forced to at least begin justifying its actions. It has brought the message home that even government cannot kill at will and avoid accountability at least at the court of public opinion, a rare occurrence in the political history of this country.
 

The other positive development is an opposition clearly coming into its own. Opposition MPs were tough, provocative, and strong worded when they addressed the Commission in Parliament. And the shouts of anger and political misgivings were largely broadcast for all to see on the state media, hardly being edited. The opposition was given an important opportunity to play their role and they delivered. Notwithstanding the Commission’s inability to pronounce government’s measure as excessive, the report and the subsequent debate in Parliament has exposed the government, while the latter should be acknowledged for its courage not to keep the proceeding away from the public, which it could easily have decided to do.  
 

But what are the lessons learned by the events and the subsequent report. No matter where you stand in the political spectrum, there can be absolutely no question that nothing is gained by violence, whether it comes from armed police or stone-throwing youth. Certainly, neither side has been able to capitalise on the events of last year. Confrontation and use-of-force only weakened the country, its institutions, and undermined hopes for a brightening future, a future that is now more uncertain than it might have been.
 

That said, there can be no doubt as well that the government has absolutely nothing to lose by reaching out to the victims of the June and November events, including with compensation to those who lost loved ones.

In a week when the South African government orders flags to fly at half-mast to commemorate a deceased ex-president who did everything he could to maintain white supremacy in South Africa, leaders of Ethiopia’s government can find little argument for not just saying - flat out and without ambiguity - that they are sorry for the mayhem and bloodshed of last year, even if some of those victims are young men who so desperately yearned for the EPRDF to leave power.
 

By making such a gesture, the inquiry report could then perhaps enter the annals of history’s great investigations, like those American ones. Less than a decade after the Los Angeles riots, a black American became head of the notorious Los Angeles Police Department, the historically bigoted institution that the Christopher Report insisted needed reforming. Maybe stranger, even grander things can happen in Ethiopia.