By Messay Kebede
I understand Fekade Shewakena’s impatience with my article urging for dialogue rather than mutual incrimination. I also understand his appeal to substitute outrage for dialogue so long as he really believes that the crisis within Kinijit is “anything but salvageable.” What is less intelligible to me is the benefit expected from a reaction controlled by outrage. Does it help advance the cause of unity and reconciliation even by one iota? Does it not, rather, solidify the split to the point of making it irreversible?
Indeed, outrage expresses itself in one single and definitive way: it condemns one faction and entirely exonerates the other faction. In so doing, it forces Ethiopians to take side, thereby turning them into prosecutors even as their status as citizens and voters require them to be the judge by considering all sides. Clearly, arbitration evades us when we judge without listening to all sides and this conforms more to the position of a partisan than to that of a person seeking the truth.
Yet the effort to know the truth is necessary more than ever before if only because an outright condemnation of one faction puts us in an incongruous situation. If Hailu Shawl is as evil and dictatorial as he is portrayed now by many people, we are faced with the question of knowing how he was able to fool so many people for so long? I remember hearing many people and readings numerous articles praising his leadership and his contributions, first in transforming the All Amhara People’s Organization into the multi-ethnic All Ethiopia Unity Party, and then in working for the generation of a united and democratic organization such as the CUD.
Far from me to condemn one faction in favor of the other faction: I don’t have enough information to make any categorical judgment, all the more so as I have now become very suspicious of the partisan discourses that are posted here and there. By contrast, I know that all the CUD leaders, without exception, are heroes. They have achieved a lot more than defying the TPLF regime, they have created a democratic hope; nay, they have shown us the readiness of the Ethiopian people for a democratic government. I will be eternally grateful for the images of the huge rally in favor of democracy that took place in Meskel Square.
That said, I urge some of my critics to reconsider the main message of my previous article. I asked to move our critical inquiry into the breakup from individuals to organizational issues because individuals make mistakes or are able to thwart expectations when structural fissures allow them to do so. My belief now is that the leadership crisis within Kinijit could have been predictable had we paid more attention to structural issues. Hence my appeal: we will never be able to reflect on organizational matters so long as we make one individual responsible for the whole debacle. It is one or the other: either Kinijit was not a democratic organization from the start, since one man can absolutely prevail, or the dissenting man represents a reaction of a disappointed party. In both cases, the crisis originates from a flaw in democratic form of organization.
From Haile Shawl’s declarations and the complaints of his supporters one gets the clear idea that the main problem emanates from the fact that his party, although otherwise the core organization in the alliance both in terms of popular mobilization and material assets, was yet overshadowed by individuals representing far less important organizations. This core organization especially attributes the victory of the May 2005 election to its mobilization of rural population to the great dismay of the ruling party which had wrongly counted on peasant support to retain its absolute majority.
Add to this frustration the unfortunate situation of the leader of the core party diminished by disease. Imagine the frustration that can arouse when at the very time the leader is incapacitated, top CUD leaders decide to travel to the US where they are enthusiastically welcomed and cheered by the Ethiopian diaspora and received by American Congress people as the representatives of the legitimate opposition. My question is: seeing the importance of the Ethiopian diaspora and American involvement in Ethiopia, was it wise to come to the US without the legitimate President of the movement? Was there any urgency that justified the decision, all the more so as Hailu Shawl––I heard him on the radio––expressed his opposition to the trip? I am not raising this issue to exonerate Hailu, but to point out that the attribution of the split to power conflict is not without foundation.
Let us go further: leadership split is by no means new in the political history of Ethiopia. Recall how the split between the EPRP and the MEISON laid the ground for the victory of the Derg. The split had no ideological cause, since both parties firmly espoused the Marxist-Leninist version of social change. Dig as deep as you want, you will only find the Ethiopian vision of political hegemony through the elimination of rival groups. The Derg, too, will soon be torn by bloody factional rivalries, even though all its members publicly adhered to the same ideology. More recently, the TPLF itself has become victim of exclusive rivalries.
Another recent expression of the inability to accommodate political rivalry is found in the events that led to the imprisonment of the CUD leaders and the massacre of peaceful demonstrators. Instead of leading to the recognition of the CUD as a political force, the electoral outcome advised the ruling party to opt for a policy of repression of the opposition. Yet, nothing was against a political accommodation, even a government of national unity except the propensity of seeing politics as a zero sum game.
The ethnicization of Ethiopian politics is itself rooted in the inability to compromise between rising elites. Already, Haile Selassie regime had expressed its utter incapacity to accommodate the Eritrean elite by dismantling the federal structure. To the extent that the federal arrangement allowed autonomy to local elites, the interpretation of politics as a game of exclusion could not rest until it converted autonomy into subordination. The marginalization of the Tigrean elite under Haile Selassie largely explains the radicalization of Tigrean intellectuals and students and their subsequent conversion to ethnonationalism. Likewise, elite exclusion is responsible for the shift of Oromo intellectuals and students to ethnonationalist forms of struggle.
When one problem repeats itself with such determination and damaging implications, it loudly asks us to go beyond the easy game of blaming individuals. One must look for deeper causes, both structural and cultural. What individuals do is nothing but the expression of a deeper flaw that we need to identify and eliminate. That is why I called for dialogue rather than incrimination. The betrayal of individuals is just a symptom of a sickness that requires critical awareness and far more elaborate measures than the blaming of individuals. By the way, I ask the reader to glance at Genet Mersha’s interesting article titled “Plea for Common Sense & Decorum.” It refers, among other things, to a cultural explanation of the Ethiopian bent to political intolerance. See
Democracy is the institutional ability to accommodate disparate, even antagonistic interests through compromises and give-and-take arrangements. It does not operate with unanimity; instead, it recognizes discordant interests, thereby expressly rejecting the recourse to subordination or elimination. If the CUD leadership is unable to solve this crisis democratically, that is, through the method of achieving compromises by surpassing the old practice of demanding subordination under pain of elimination, then its democratic nomenclature is nothing but a fraud. What is more, if the leadership fails to operate a democratic reorganization, I do not see how it could promote a democratic order as a government. This perception is most damaging since the only way by which we can ideologically and practically curb the separatist tendency of the various ethnonationalist parties in Ethiopia is through the assurance of a democratic order that accommodates their concern and legitimate interests.
To sum up, the leadership crisis within the CUD is a challenge testing its ability to resolve conflicts democratically. The failure to resolve this crisis democratically either by returning to pre-unity formations or by creating new parties simply testifies to its inherent lack of democratic spirit from the start. If the CUD is not able to act democratically while in opposition, one cannot help but wonder about what would have happened if the May election had led to its enthronement as a ruling party. Would we have seen one faction throwing the dissident faction in jail? What a scary thought! Indeed, what fill my mind is not outrage, but dismay and apprehension.
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Dr Messay Kebede can be reached at [email protected]
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