If there are controversial bills Ethiopia’s Parliament is expected to ratify before it goes into recession, it is the draft law on the press and the one meant to regulate the powerful sector of civil society organizations.

Alas, the draft Press Law could be considered as good as done, for it has passed the table of Council of Ministers; if experience gives any lesson, hardly any bill was turned down by Parliament in the past after being endorsed by the Council. There is no reason now why those worried about the state of freedom of speech and of the press in Ethiopia hope that there could be a change in Parliament on the thorniest issues that created conflict between the policymakers and the industry.

A meeting chaired by the Minister of Information a few months ago at the Hilton, attended by those who authored the document as well as discontented members of the media, produced no significant result. It was, however, a fine moment for the Minister and Shimeles Kemal, one of the lawyers whose fingerprints are all over the document, to lecture media practitioners on their brand of journalism. Even more so, they dwelt at length in their attempt to challenge some of the assertions from participants that the draft Press Law has indeed incorporated some elements they argued are “unconstitutional”.

Well, do not blame them; Revolutionary Democrats are often in a lecturing mood when talking to groups that feel their interests are at stake as a result of the ruling party’s doing. Their chief priest is no different.

Some at gossip corridors attribute his affection for lecturing - often taking the risk of repeating himself - to his experiences in the field as a political commissar. He had to lecture the peasantry in a simple manner, at length and often had to be repetitive so as to stress points for the purpose of clarity.

Ironically, delegates of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the majority of them indigenous, strongly felt they had been mistaken for the peasantry when they came out from a meeting with the Prime Minister and his Minister of Justice, Assefa Kessito, held inside a conference hall up at Arat Kilo, on May 24, 2008.

Unlike the media community, the civil society guys are very influential; that the Prime Minister took the time to talk to their representatives shows how much of a force they are to be reckoned with, claims gossip. Not only do they manage foreign funds, estimated to reach one billion dollars, according to Justice Minister Assefa, they also relay the powerful lobby of western ambassadors and key diplomats stationed in Addis. 

In a striking pattern to what happened during the “dialogue” on the draft Press Law, where the officials were seen responding to written observations, reservations, and questions submitted from members of the media days before the meeting took place, the Prime Minister addressed the written document submitted to him days earlier from networks of the NGO community.

They, too, seemed to have fallen in the same trap the media fell into, according to gossip. They claim that the draft law meant to regulate how civil society organizations conduct their business violates individual rights to association, thus should be deemed unconstitutional. The result was a lecture of an estimated two and half hours by the Chief Priest on how constitutional the draft law is, gossip said. The whole meeting, during which the Justice Minister uttered not a single word (some even wondered whether he was still breathing), took about three hours, according to gossip.

The gist of the Prime Minister’s argument was that the right to association is granted to any Ethiopian national by the constitution. But for foreigners, it is a privilege that gives the government the prerogative not to register them. For many of the NGOs representatives, this was fair enough.

The bone of contention was the issue on financing: Any NGO that fails to raise 90pc of its finance from domestic sources would be considered as foreign. For a civil society community that generates almost all of its money from foreign sources, this policy would totally change the status this NGO would have in the eyes of the Ethiopian government. As much as the civil society community wanted the government to change its view on this issue, it would not budge.

During all these discussion, there were a few foreign nationals representing international NGOs; none of them were provided with simultaneous interpretations of the proceedings, claims gossip. Neither did they take any of their local staff members for a “whispered translation”; the significance of their presence was a puzzle to gossip corridor.