Part I
1 . Introduction
(Ajeb New) –Election fever is gaining momentum in Ethiopia. It is ‘Election 2015’,
the 5th
general election since Ethiopia’s formal adoption of the more (or less)
liberal constitution of 1995 that ended the hesitant ‘transition’ from
the Derg’s military rule to a western-style representative democracy[1].
The projected aim of the transition was to liberalize and pluralize the
politics, to reform and resuscitate the economy, to restructure the
state (through democratization and decentralization), and to transform
the hitherto tenuous state-society relations. Through the constitution,
the regime provided itself the legal edifice on which to ensure that
transitional project is attained and a liberal democracy (expressed
through representative and participatory institutions) is formally
instituted. In a gesture of transforming the state, the constitution
recognized national diversity, legalized collective rights such as the
right to self-determination[2], and institutionalized federal
non-centralization. Having ostensibly demilitarized politics [3],
electoral contestation became the formal mode of contending for
political power. The election fever that is steadily gripping the nation
now is the symptom of that contention.
Over the last few weeks,
controversy has progressively raged over the politics and the logistics
of the upcoming election. Decisions pertaining to recognition by the
National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) of political parties with
the ‘right’ leadership [4],
registration
of ‘qualified’ candidates [5], and ensuring the proper adherence to the
relevant rules of constitutional, electoral, and political party
registration laws have provoked a lot of ire among some of the parties
seeking to partake in the election. Rulings over who is qualified as a
candidate and which party is qualified as a contestant have unleashed a
conversation over the process and speculations over the outcome of the
election. In the first election debate conducted live on public
television, the major ideological fault lines between the three major
political parties were outlined. In the same week, we heard that some of
the parties (such as the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Unity Forum,
alias Medrek in Amharic) were denied access to the state media
(Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation, EBC) on the pretext that the
parties’ criticism of the media’s bias towards the incumbent is an
attempt to undermine the impartiality of the media. Their petition to
the NEBE has not found a response yet. Not entirely unexpectedly,
tension has started to build up.
As anyone
familiar with Ethiopia and its histories knows, the tension around
elections is only symptomatic of deeper issues that have roots in—but
never contained by—the political contestations of the past. In this
piece, I offer a reflection on what election means to the various
sectors of the population in the Ethiopian polity in the light of that
past. I will thus reflect on what election means to the incumbent, the
opposition political parties, and to the electorate, north and south.
Along the way, I will also reflect on the mood in the context of which
the election takes place. By drawing historical parallels between 2015
and 1915 (historical moments when two dead leaders—Meles Zenawi and
Menelik II, respectively -rule from the grave
in spite of the place holders whose genealogies make them unlikely
successors, namely Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Emperor Eyasu
II, alias Lij/Abeto Eyasu, respectively), I will point to the
continuity in the nature of the State in which the election takes place,
irrespective of the appearance of change. Lastly, I will offer my
points on what is beyond winning and losing this particular election, and how it affects the nature of the Ethiopian state.
The
starting point of this reflection is that election is a language. It is
the new language one speaks in order to secure democratic legitimacy.
Posited within the confines of liberal constitutionalism, it is a
particular language with the idiom and vernacular of modern
representative democracy. Whoever is proficient in this language
technically ‘wins’ the election. In this piece, in a rather iterative
manner, I reflect on the ‘facility’ or ‘proficiency’ of the contestants
in this language within the context of Ethiopia in order to imagine what
is beyond winning (orlosing) this election.
The
thrust of my argument is that there is much more work to do about the
state than partaking in the motion of election. There is more to
Ethiopia than mastering the language of election. I suggest that to
EPRDF election is a mode of securing a technical legitimacy. To its
adversaries, it is a mode of resistance to hegemonic oppression. Some of
its adversaries resist its hegemonic position if only to replace it
with their own. Others resist it and the State form it embodies and
represents. For this latter group, the election is, more than anything
else, a gesture of negating the status quo, it is a talking back to
power, an utterance of societal pain long suppressed and contained. It
is a way of sustaining a lamentation. It is yet another moment of
reminding Ethiopia that all is not well. For the protagonists in this
election saga, especially for the ruling EPRDF, the election is merely
war by other means. As such, for EPRDF, it is a mode of entrenching its
power by eliminating its opponents through the technology of election.
Consequently, the election has little to do with the desired
transformation of the state-society relations in Ethiopia.
As
a result, I argue, there is little the election can do to tackle
outstanding political issues that are contained in the unfinished
business of state-building. In particular, there is little it can do to
expand citizenship to the subject peoples of the wider South. EPRDF’s
anti-democratic posture to disallow a political space where deeply
political issues can be discussed (by reducing everything down to the
technicalities of law and economic governance) is a proclamation of
closure of politics by relegating the discussion to the realm of
techniques. Election is thus reduced to a mode of enhancing what the
French philosopher Michel Foucault calls ‘governmentality’, a
technical-ideological apparatus of controlling and regulating the
population by eliciting acquiescence in their own control and
regulation. EPRDF’s adversaries, especially the north-central
ethio-political class, also play their own role in this proclamation and
enactment of closure of politics by aestheticizing a heavily contested
political issue. As I shall argue in subsequent sections, they engage in
exoticizing and aestheticizing an essentially political issue of the
past and thefuture. They engage
in a double movement that also politically demonizes – and excludes –
the essentially political questions (such as the question of diversity
[sameness and difference], historical political violence/injustice,
misrecognition, inclusion-in-citizenship, and co-equal (re)founding of
the polity. They thus aestheticize the inaugural violence by iconizing the leaders
of the past through a raft of artistic products (images and lyrics,
pictures and songs, etc) thereby rehabilitating them from the tyranny
and oppression they represented, the tyranny and oppression they were
once criticized for. At the same time, they demonize what could probably
be the most important political question of modern Ethiopia—the
question of diversity—by presenting it rather negatively as “politicized
ethnicity.”
By so doing, i.e., by removing the important issues
from the realm of the political to that of the aesthetic, they do their
own bit of closing the political space for discussing the irreducibly
political questions politically. The combined effect of these closures
(by both groups)—born chiefly out of insecurity of EPRDF as a
Government, only symptomatic of the greater insecurity of the ever more
fragile Ethiopian State it runs, manages, and embodies—causes our
judgement of the process and consequence of the election to be
pessimistic. The insecurity of the ‘eternal kingdom’ assumed to have
been established by Menelik, Haileselassie, and Mengistu; the insecurity
born out of the incomplete nation-building project, prompts EPRDF’s
opponents of the Amhara constituency to aspire for similar closure of
the political space through aestheticization and exoticization of the
infinitely political questions.
2. The Mood: Hope and Anticipation, or Angst and Despair?
Election
is time-bound. Its temporality is its essence. The intensity or lack
thereof is the function of its being limited in time. As a result, its
process, outcome, and significance are dependent on the ‘political
ecology’ of the time. It is dependent on what is ‘in the air’, what is
troubling the polity, and what is exercising the large majority of the
electorate. This is because election needs a particular kind of
‘democratic ambience’, as it were, a (more or less) festive atmosphere
imbued with hope and anticipation (the subtext of which is fear and
anxiety). Election has its own ‘mood’, sort of a national ‘political
labor’. Understanding the mood – capturing the pulse of the polity in
the electoral moment – helps us situate the election (the process, the
result, and the context) in proper perspective. This underscores the
supreme importance of a ‘right’ ‘political ecology’ that can engender
hope (of winning) and of security (in the event of losing).
Hope
and anxiety attend to all elections, the hope of winning and the angst
of losing. However, in as much as possible, it is important that a
proper balance is stricken between hope and fear, anticipation and
despair. After all, the hope of renewal – the promise of exercising
creative agency among the electorate – is an important ingredient of a
healthy electoral democracy.
What attends
Election 2015 in Ethiopia? Two areas of the public life of Ethiopia must
be considered in order to map the electoral mood, namely the
civic-political space for active citizens who can engage in politics on
the one hand and the ‘nature’ of the state and its relation with the
society on the other.
2.1 Civic-Political Space in Decline
The
civic-political space has been a subject of controversy, especially
since the 2005 election, the election that revealed not only the outer
limits of the public sphere but also the foundational cracks in the
State form in Ethiopia. In the wake of the 2005 election, the regime
started to stiffen the rules of procedure in the parliament thereby
limiting the discursive space even within the EPRDF-dominated
parliament. That was followed by a raft of legislations on the
civic/public space available for dissent, or its discursive and
institutional articulation. These legislations constrained freedoms that
are instrumental for, and constitutive of, democracy at a time. The
Freedom of Mass Media and Access to Information Proclamation
(Proclamation N0. 590/2008), the Anti-terrorism Proclamation
(Proclamation No. 652/2009), and the Charities and Societies
Proclamation (Proclamation No. 621.2009) were the three major
legislative acts deployed by the Ethiopian government to (re)occupy the
already limited space for political dissent and consequent pluralism.
These laws, for all their preambular commitment to expand and implement
constitutional right to freedom of expression, press and association
rationalized and perfected the pre-existing streak noticed in the
regime’s intolerance of expressed dissent. Self-censorship has become a
way of being, a way of life, among journalists and other writers as a
result. The prohibitive punishment/fines in the media and press laws and
the expansion of the anti-terrorism law to press products (art 6 of
Proc. 652/2009) [vi] have effectively muted an overt criticism. The
extensive use of surveillance [vii], the blocking of several websites
(perceived to be in opposition to the regime in power), jamming of other
press/media outlets has contributed to the increasing undermining of
the expression of robust dissent.
The challenge
of financial self-sustenance faced by civil society organizations
working on causes related to human rights, democracy, and conflict,
among otbers, owing to the prohibition of external funding above the 10 %
maximum has not only forced such bodies to close or re-organize
themselves as purely humanitarian organizations or relocate themselves
as foreign or ‘resident’ NGOs, it also severely limited their voice as
an alternative articulation of socio-economic challenges of the people
from the perspective of daily lived experience [viii]. The government
increasingly became the only source of information on vital
socio-economic and political issues of various sectors of the society.
The
invocation of the anti-terrorism law for trivial reasons such as having
a contact with foreign journalists, international non-governmental
human rights organizations (such as Amnesty International and the Human
Rights Watch), or foreign diplomats and embassies has effectively
smothered people into watching their contacts and relationships. People
feel that their relationships and exchanges (physical and electronic)
are monitored. The invocation of the anti-terrorism law in relation to
the Muslim activists protesting government intervention in religious
affairs [ix]and the ‘Zone 9’ [x] bloggers and journalists jailed and
currently standing trial has unveiled to us how the law can be
strategically deployed against those the government perceives as
opponents. This and other cases have shown the extent to which one can
freely and peacefully express dissent without harassment, intimidation,
and the terror of standing trial under the anti-terrorism law.
The
pattern of government denial of the right of assembly and peaceful
political demonstrations, especially when organized by political
groupings perceived as fierce opponents of the regime (such as the
Semayawi Party), selective permission of such meetings to factions of
parties the government seeks to weaken (e.g. the faction within Unity
for Democracy and Justice, UDJ), denial of meetings even within the
premises of private organizations such as hotels to some groups (e.g.
UDJ at the Imperial Hotel, 2009), the constant outlawing of meetings and
demonstrations by unreasonably exploiting the “notification” duty under
the Freedom of Assembly Proclamation (Proclamation No-3/1991) – where
the duty to notify the municipality is interpreted as the duty to seek
and secure prior permission – have all contributed to the practical
stifling of freedom of assembly and peaceful demonstration. Through this
strategy – and the rhetoric of averting “street action” and “color
revolutions” [xi] – the government has effectively silenced political
protest to its decisions, policies, and laws. This in turn has weakened
and subverted participatory democracy envisaged in the constitution (art
8(3)). In practice, such violation of the right to assembly and
peaceful demonstration has been repeatedly witnessed in the Muslim
protest to the government’s unconstitutional intervention in the choice
of leadership of, and doctrines for, the Muslim population (since 2011).
Freedom
of association of political parties has repeatedly been violated in the
process of political party registration by the NEBE. The recent
intervention by the NEBE to ‘recognize’ the leadership of factions
within the UDJ and the All Ethiopian Unity Party (AEUP) is not only
meddling with the internal issues of political parties, but also
unconstitutionally limiting the freedom of association of members and
their right to a choice of the leaders they deem fit to lead them.
Apart
from this, one can say that there is a healthy ‘electoral climate’ only
when – in addition to the right to vote and be elected – citizens have
the right to administrative justice, i.e., the right of access to
justice in a free, fair, and impartial court or tribunal, in the event
that these rights are violated or threatened. The voter intimidation
historically observed in the process of voter-registration by the
kebeles (often suggesting possible deprivation of vital social and
public services sought from local offices) are violative of the very
basic political rights that are constitutive of the very essence of
democratic practice. At times such intimidations tend to forget that
their right to elect includes the freedom not to vote. They forget that
in Ethiopia, voting is a right, not a duty.
The
enhanced developmentalist gestures of the incumbent which views
individual civil and political rights as less important in the face of
the colossal “war on poverty”; the unabashed emphasis on growth (even in
the Growth and Transformation Plan, GTP); its increasing turning away
from its ‘original’ (1991) commitment to liberal policies (also charted
out in the constitution); its continued neglect, or deliberate
weakening, and strategic and manipulative use of democratic institutions
(i.e., institutions of representation [House of Peoples’
Representatives, HPR, and House of Federation, HOF], empowerment [NEBE,
Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, Ombudsman], and of accountability and
monitoring [e.g. the judiciary, Anti-corruption Commission, Auditor
General] are not helping to create an environment conducive for a free
and fair election. To that extent, there are complaints, grumblings, and
disaffection among most of the opposition political actors who have a
stake in the election. So, the rules and rulings around the process
suggest that the mood is less than ideal. But a more complete account of
the mood is revealed only when we examine the contradictions that come
from the state form in Ethiopia. In the next sub-section [which will
come in the form of a second instalment in this series of reflection
around Elections 2015], I will turn to considering these contradictions
that emanate from the state form and the constraints they impose on
electoral democracy.
Endnote
*Tsegaye
R Ararssa is a Constitutional lawyer currently in the process of
completing his PhD studies at the University of Melbourne Law School. He
can be contacted at tsegayer@gmail.com.
[1]
The Transitional Charter of July 1991 starts with recognition of the
supreme importance of the UDHR, especially civil and political rights
such as freedom of expression, assembly, association. It explicitly made
assertions about the need for comprehensive restructuring of the state
by ensuring equality and sovereignty of the ‘nations, nationalities, and
peoples” of Ethiopia and by foregrounding the right to
self-determination as an organizing principle. It was negotiated
principally among ethno-national liberation fronts (most centrally TPLF,
OLF, EPLF but also others) who referred to themselves as “the
peace-loving forces of Ethiopia”. See, Provisional Government of
Ethiopia, ‘Transitional Period Charter,’ Negarit Gazetta, Proclamation
No. 1/1991.
[2]
Art 39 (1-3) entitles every “nation, nationality, and people” to the
right to political, cultural, and economic self-determination.
[3]
EPRDF was quick to work on disarming the army of the Derg and the
fighters of the other liberation fronts that negotiated the Transition
with it. It also proclaimed its TPLF fighters to serve as the Ethiopian
Defence Force of the transitional period. The demobilization of some of
the soldiers came later after the formal inauguration of the FDRE as per
the Constitution. It is interesting that the first government-like
institution set up everywhere immediately after the arrival of EPRDF on
the scene was the “Peace and Stability Committees”. Most meetings it
held in its attempt to build rapport with the people was invariably
called “Peace and Democracy Conference”. The people who negotiated the
Transitional Charter referred to themselves as “the peace Loving Forces
of Ethiopia.” There was a rhetoric that privileged peace even in the
leaders’ speeches/interviews on why relinquish Ethiopia’s right/interest
over Eritrea without a fight. The climactic moment in this series of
peace-venerating rhetoric came when a line is inserted even in the
preamble of the FDRE Constitution to the effect that the
constitution-makers are “determined to consolidate, as a lasting legacy,
the peace and the prospect of a democratic order…” This flourish in
rhetoric never matched with reality. The fact that TPLF’s army became
the State’s national army and substantially remained to be so to date
indicates not only the partisan nature of the army but also the
fundamentally militarized nature of EPRDF’s politics that keeps a
politicized guerilla fighters for a national army. Obviously, the needed
separation of politics from (military) force in a democracy is absent
in Ethiopia.
[4]
The NEBE made a blunder around the election of the leadership of the
All Ethiopian Unity p party (AEUP), the Unity for Democracy and Justice
(UDJ).
[5]
Some candidates of parties such as the UDJ and Semayawi (notably its
leader Engineer Getinet Yilikal) were excluded allegedly because of the
overcrowding of candidates that are running for elections in one
electoral district.
[vi]
Art 6 entitled “Encouragement of terrorism” reads as follows: “Whoever
publishes or causes the publication of a statement that is likely to be
understood by some or all of the members of the public to whom it is
published as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to
them to the commission or preparation or instigation of an act of
terrorism stipulated under article 3 of this proclamation is punishable
with rigorous imprisonment from 10 to 20 years.” This article has been
almost routinely (ab) used to arrest persons who run photocopy shops
both in Addis Ababa and other towns.
[viii]
The law on Charities and Societies limits the amount of foreign money
that goes into the budget of an Ethiopian (activist) NGO to a maximum of
10 % of the total. The reason given is to limit an external influence
on the local organization’s agenda of promoting human rights, democracy,
peace and security, etc. In principle, the argument goes, these issues
of governance are a matter under the sovereign jurisdiction of the
government of Ethiopia and are not items to be shaped by financing
external forces. In order to get more funding, one should be registered
as a ‘resident’ or a foreign/international NGO who, if it seeks to work
on issues of political governance (e.g. elections, democracy, human
rights, conflict resolution, constitutionalism and rule of law, prisons,
access to justice, minorities etc), should get a specific permission
from the government. This has made it necessary for many of the NGOs to
recast the focus of their work shifting mostly from human rights to
humanitarian causes and their approach from human rights based approach
(HRBA) to needs-based approach (NBA).
[ix]
The Muslim activists have been protesting peacefully against the
government’s interference in their religious affairs. They particularly
called on the government to desist from assigning teachers and
determining the content of the teachings to be delivered in Mosques.
They also sought to exercise their right to select their own religious
leaders without any influence by the government. After the arrest and
indictment of the leaders of these protests (and those government claims
are associated with them), the protestors continued to demonstrate
demanding the release of their leaders. Their peaceful protest has been
met by a series of violence, arrests, and various forms of intimidation
by the government’s police and security forces. The arrested leaders
have been tried for terrorism since. Their case has gone has been
debated before regular and constitutional tribunals (CCI/HOF) and is
even presented to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
The Muslim protestors relentlessly insisted on a peaceful resistance
throughout; when they are unlawfully forced to face trial, they tried to
exhaust all the possible legal remedies both national and international
with a hope that the government will have no excuse in accusing them of
any form of violence let alone terrorism. By so doing, they are in
effect putting the entire system on trial.
[x]
In March 2014, six bloggers (whose blog is known as Zone 9) and three
journalists were suddenly arrested and are now being tried for
terrorism.
[xi]
The term “Color Revolution” is often mockingly used in Ethiopia to
invoke the memory of the Rose Revolution (of Georgia) and Orange
Revolution (of Ukraine) and deny their possibility in Ethiopia. It is
also used by EPRDF to suggest that, unlike the regimes in Georgia and
Ukraine, they are too strong to be unseated by such street actions and
unarmed/civilian struggles
The flawlessly organised election robbery that took place in Ethiopia on May 24 is now concluded with the unpopular ruling EPRDF party wining by a landslide. Over 37 million registered voters out of the 96 million people reportedly cast their ballots in the said parliamentary and regional election. Based on preliminary results that was released by the country’s electoral board, the highly unpopular ruling EPRDF and its affiliate parties so far won all of the 442 declared seats, leaving the opposition empty-handed.
