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It seemed like organisers of the eighth convention
of the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary
Democratic Front (EPRDF) made a conscious decision
to portray the scene in the Aba Geda Hall in Adama,
99km east of the capital, in full colour. All 1,030
delegates were told on the second day of the
convention to clad themselves glittery yellow
T-shirts and red hats. Those invited to observe the
convention but reluctant to dress accordingly were
reminded, in no uncertain terms, to comply or leave
the hall.
Held for the first time in the town of Adama since
the ruling coalition had its first congress in
Tenbien, in Tigray Regional State, in 1991, the
three-day convention was vibrant in its form. It was
as if this commercial town was about to explode from
the cruising of hundreds of four-wheeled vehicles,
mainly Toyotas, transporting the “who-is-who” of the
country – from politics and business to
entertainment and leaders of various groups in
Ethiopian society.
“This town reminds me of Asmara in 1981, as
described in Beálu Girma’s book, “Oromai,”
observed a popular actor, one of the many invited
from the entertainment industry to observe the
convention, held from September 15 to 17, 2010.
In substance, though, delegates of the ruling
coalition had little intensity in debating the
policies of their party; neither did they reflect
sharp differences over the 64-page report that their
leadership presented for discussion and approval.
It seems, rather, to be a tradition in the party to
tow its lines, for among the delegates none
registered opposition or reservation but accepted
the report in its entirety, incorporating comments
and suggestions made during the three-day
deliberations. This was also the tradition of the
national parties during their conventions, held in
Bahir Dar and Hawassa over the past two weeks.
Chairman of the EPRDF, Meles Zenawi, reiterated to
his rank and file the achievements that he believes
his party has made over the past decade, ever since
the major split within the leadership that led to
the ousting of many of its founders. Such was a
political evolution that steered the party off
“ideological confusion.” It positioned the ruling
coalition to lead the country in a “growth
trajectory,” according to Meles.
The country is now on a “fast, sustainable, and
equitable growth” path, and this has reached an
irreversible stage, proclaimed the ruling party in
its slogans.
“Our party has proved to be the author and pioneer
of Ethiopia’s renaissance,” Meles told delegates and
invited guests, including representatives of ruling
parties from 12 countries.
Developing this country further and completing the
“foundation to put [Ethiopia] in the ranks of the
middle-income group of nations” ought to be the aims
of the convention, Meles reminded his followers.
Much of the deliberations were thus focused on what
the party leaders say is a “growth and
transformation” plan, whose launching was
symbolically made on the last day of the convention,
after Meles put a foundation stone in the town of
Gelan, for the construction of an eight-lane
expressway from Addis Abeba to Adama, financed by
loans from China, a country Meles paid special
tribute to, alongside India, for their generosity in
helping his country develop while they have their
own gaps to fill.
It is one of the many dazzling projects the ruling
party hopes to accomplish in the next five years, as
part of its “growth and transformation plan.”
The transformation plan was developed following the
unprecedented electoral gains that appear to have
flattered leaders of the ruling coalition, after
their party took control of all but two of the
parliamentary seats and one in all the regional
councils across the country. Addressing a rally at
Meskel Square a few days after the polling date,
back in May 2010, Meles promised to revise his plan
originally made for the current Ethiopian fiscal
year.
“[The fact that] voters elected us overwhelmingly
does not mean that all of them are pleased with the
EPRDF,” Meles reminded his delegates. “The EPRDF has
not done enough in creating jobs and responding to
unemployment, [as] voters across the country feel.”
And revise the plan he did.
However, it is still at the stage of a sketch, while
macroeconomic experts, led by Mekonnen Manyazewal,
state minister for Finance and Economic Development
(MoFED), are still working on the final touches. At
the centre of the plan is job creation for the
youth, with massive public expenditures in
education, health, and the promotion of small and
micro enterprises (SMEs), as well as the nation’s
infrastructure development.
“We should have centred on the creation of jobs in
our policies,” admitted Meles.
The plan envisages to interconnect all the
kebeles in the country with all-weather roads,
provide one health centre for every 25,000 people,
enhance power generation capacity to 8,000MW, supply
power to 75pc of rural kebeles, build close
to 2,000km of railroad, add 10 more universities to
the 23 that are already built or underway, double
agricultural productivity from the current 16
million tonnes, and boost the nation’s export
revenues fivefold to 10 billion dollars.
At the end of the five-year period, Meles hopes to
see the industrial sector take the lead in the
economy, while he hopes to see productivity in
agriculture continue.
It is the first time that the EPRDF government has
authored its own development plan, in a complete
departure from its history where policies were
either prescribed by international financial
organisations, in the case of the structural
adjustment programme of the 1990s, or developed in
consultation with donors on successive poverty
reduction and alleviation plans over the past 10
years.
The plan is very ambitious and daring, many
recognise, including those in the ruling coalition.
“I would rather see them plan big [than small],”
said a senior manager at one of the international
finance institutions based in Addis Abeba. “It will
be an enormous success if they are to achieve 70pc
or 80pc of their plan.”
The possibility of the ruling party achieving at
least 80pc of its growth and transformation plan is
real, according to a macroeconomic analyst working
for the government. Unlike in the past, when the
economy was too small and its structure
underdeveloped, the changes over the past seven
years have enabled the country to sprint in its
growth bid, said the analyst.
At the heart of the debate on whether it will be
realised or not was resources and the quality of
leadership. These were questions that resonated
among delegates and participants during group
discussions held on Wednesday
afternoon and in the larger group the following day.
Many raise the issue of leadership in the ruling
party and the competence of its leaders to deliver.
However, that was what the Revolutionary Democrats
pulled the rug out from under during the past few
weeks, putting forward new and younger faces at the
helm of the respective parties in the coalition. It
was also symbolic to see noncombatant leaders of the
EPRDF sit alongside Meles, chairing the convention
last week for the first time, in a manner a
participant from Addis Abeba University (AAU)
described as more of “a process of succession than
an end in its own [right].”
“I am the only one, among those who led the armed
struggle, to sit here,” Meles quipped to delegates,
re-emphasising the comment from the university
professor. “And I will be gone, come five years.”
Those seated alongside him included Hailemariam
Desalegn, chairman of the Southern Ethiopian Peoples
Democratic Movement (SEPDM), the younger party in
the coalition, formed in December 1992. It is an
offspring of the Rift Valley Peoples Democratic
Association (RVPDA), one of the military platforms
used by the EPRDF when its forces advanced to the
rest of the country from their historical base in
Tigray and Amhara regional states.
Subsequent to the takeover of the capital from the
military government, the association gave way to the
formation of 21 political parties, formed along
national lines in the South, including the Welayita
Peoples Democratic Movement (WPDM), with Hailemariam
as one of its founders.
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Meles Zenawi
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Hailemariam Desalegn |
Demeke Mekonnen |
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Alemayehu Atomsa |
It took two years of political manoeuvring to form a
coalition from these parties, partly in response to
the formation of an opposition coalition led by
Beyene Petros (Prof). Hence, the creation of SEPDM
under the leadership of Abate Kisho, once the
regional president expelled from the party in the
aftermath of the leadership crises within the EPRDF
a decade ago.
Hailemariam, 45, took the region’s leadership, while
the party’s chair was given to Kassu Illala (PhD),
one of the trusted allies of Prime Minister Meles
Zenawi. In the mid-2000s, Hailemariam took over the
position of party chair and was transferred to Addis
Abeba to advise the Prime Minister on social affairs
and civic organisation.
A father of three daughters, Hailemariam now serves
as the chief whip of government in Parliament,
replacing Shiferaw Jarso, in 2008.
Described by collogues as humble, Hailemariam’s
background is in academia.
He taught at the Arbaminch Water Technology
Institute for 12 years beginning in 1989, after his
graduation from AAU in civil engineering. Half of
these years, he served as dean of the institute. He
also did his postgraduate studies specialising in
water supply and environmental engineering,
graduating with honours from Finland’s Tampere
University of Technology, in 1992.
In 2006, Hailemariam graduated from the University
of Azusa Pacific, in California, with a degree in
organisational leadership.
Nonetheless, his ascendance to the second highest
position of the ruling EPRDF was unexpected,
although not surprising, according to a senior
Western diplomat based in Addis Abeba.
“I didn’t expect it; I’m happy,” Hailemariam told
Fortune, after he won the majority votes from
the 180 council members of the EPRDF. “I knew that
it was a possibility.”
Demeke Mekonnen, a young politician elected two
weeks ago to chair the Amhara National Democratic
Movement (ANDM), one of the two senior members of
the coalition, was highly anticipated for the
position.
“I gladly accept the result,” Demeke told Fortune,
immediately after the announcements were made on
Friday. “It is a division of labour within the
party. The culture of position reserved along party
lines should not continue.”
Indeed, it is the first time that the ANDM has
surrendered the deputy chairmanship place for
another party since the EPRDF’s creation in 1989. It
was Tamrat Layne and Addisu Legesse who have reigned
in this position for two decades.
Tamrat had fallen from grace, charged with
corruption and subsequently jailed in the mid-1990s,
while Addisu was praised by Meles last week for his
“key role in the leadership of the EPRDF during the
armed struggle and thereafter.”
During Addisu’s farewell from leadership, Meles
credited him, reciting verbatim the ANDM’s
historical song of his unwavering stand through the
thick and thin of the party’s life. It is a
metaphoric expression used in ANDM’s lyrics,
authored by Hilawe Yoseph during the field years,
that illustrates how many had given up the fight,
while it highlights the hopes and dreams of the few
determined ones to stay the course and see
themselves reproduced in tens of thousands.
The few who soldiered on included Addisu.
“He will continue until he is buried two to three
metres down in his grave,” said Meles to the
delegates. “I wish to see the new leadership
continue [in the same manner] without sinking in the
swamps.”
Part of the new breed of leadership, the third
person seated at the presidium was Alemayehu Atomsa,
in his mid 40s, recently elected to chair the Oromo
People’s Democratic Organisation (OPDO), from
Abadulla Gemeda. A relatively younger member in the
coalition, compared with the others that had roles
in the armed struggle, it was a complete surprise
even to some in the ruling party that the executive
committee of the OPDO picked Alemayehu to chair
their party.
“He is a man of integrity,” said an executive
committee member of the OPDO.
For a political party, some of whose leadership are
blamed for involvement in corruption, installing a
man considered to be clean means a lot, according to
this member.
A father of two, Alemayehu was born in Jimma but
brought up in Nekemt, both in Oromia Regional State.
He first joined the EPRDF a few months before the
fall of the military government, when EPRDF forces
were making an incursion of the capital via the
southwest. He is credited with having a major role
in supporting Meles’s group during the leadership
crisis in early 2000.
Sent to school, together with Muktar Kemal, now head
of the EPRDF’s secretariat, he studied law at a
Civil Service College. After graduation, he was
given a position at Ethiopian Television, from which
he later departed of his own freewill, according to
reliable sources in the OPDO.
Alemayehu’s ascendance to his current position is
owed to his popularity in the eyes of the rank and
file which he developed while serving as head of
OPDO’s party affairs.
However, Alemayehu was not nominated as a candidate
for the deputy chair; it was Demeke who ran against
Hailemariam.
“We do not vote as a [party] bloc,” said a member of
the EPRDF’s executive committee, the highest
decision-making body in the ruling party. “When it
comes to elections here, we all vote as
individuals.”
And vote they did to reinstall Meles Zenawi as their
chairman for the eighth time and to select
Hailemariam, with no history in the armed struggle,
as their deputy.
Political pundits and Western diplomats have
different takes on this unprecedented political
development within the ruling party. The deputy has
not only gone from its historical domain of the ANDM,
but also from veterans of the armed struggle to a
person known among the combatants as a “civilian.”
This should not be surprising, Hailemariam, who had
served as a team member studying party’s succession
plan, told
Fortune.
The succession plan has been worked out for the past
two years, and leaders have debated on the merit of
transferring leadership from those with the history
of armed struggle to those joined later on,
according to him.
“It has been obvious,” Hailemariam told Fortune.
“No one among us was surprised.”
Nonetheless, why he was selected from two other
leaders with similar background is not clear,
although open for speculation.
“It is based on merit,” a senior member of SEDPM
told Fortune. “He has the experience and the
seniority.”
Others in the ruling coalition argue there are other
considerations.
“Politicians in the South should be given a chance,
we have agreed,” said a senior leader in the EPRDF.
“Doing this, we would like to see whether or not the
slogan of ‘unity in diversity’ in the South among
the 53 nationalities is real or artificially
stitched.”
A senior Western diplomat agrees. The veteran
leaders of the EPRDF do recognise the tide of
change, according to him. With uncertain political
prospects in Southern Sudan, which may have spill
over effects in Ethiopia, it is time to show the
political inclusion of the South amidst the
mainstream political history of Northern Ethiopia,
said this diplomat.
Yet, it is not clear if Hailemariam will be
responsible for both party and government duties as
his predecessors have
been. He may be put in charge of handling the
party’s affairs, while the second most senior
position in the government will go to someone else,
some in the ruling party suggest. But others claim
his appointment to the position is a matter of
default.
The political dynamics within the ruling party
remain in the making, it appears. |
