NES - The Role of the Opposition Inside and Outside Ethiopia
Friday July 1st, 2005.
Network of Ethiopian Scholars (NES) - Scandinavian Chapter

Press Release No. 6

The Role of the Opposition Inside and Outside Ethiopia: Together Untie the Political Knots Hindering Ethiopia's Democratic Future 

In a democracy we know there are many types of people who wish to stand for election, some of whom may be people we may not agree with or we may even have fought against in the past, but once these people submit for election through a free and fair voting procedure and system, it is not for us to judge them as fit or unfit, or bring up what we believe to be their past history to ridicule the democratic voice expression that legitimated them. Regardless of our individual reading of their character, the fact is that they have persuaded a portion of the public and got more votes than their competitors in what has been observed to be a free and fair election or, at any rate, an un-rigged election. This is the new fact that we have to live with. The old facts cannot be used to measure the new identities assumed by these people. 

A key component of democracy is also the toleration of dissent. The only condition is that the dissenters do not engage in violating the rights of others and use force, deception or fraud to pursue their interests and goals. As long as they express their dissenting voices with in the bounds of democratic ethos, there is no reason to bar them from playing active roles in public life. There is no reason to suppress dissent and create terror by unleashing military force against dissenting citizens. If indeed the regime believes its own rhetoric that it enjoys support, why is it necessary to unleash force against the people it claims to have support? Why was it not possible to use debate, dialogue and democratic freedom to those whom it thinks have not acknowledged the regime's self-validated and justified role as having contributed ' positive good' to Ethiopia? The action to suppress peaceful dissent by the regime's military force shows either lack of confidence or lack of support from the Ethiopian population or both. The regime cannot have the cake and eat it. It cannot claim the overwhelming support it says it has, and at the same time unleash military rule and threats to kill against those who may be willing to risk using dissent to express dissatisfaction with the regime. 

We find those who attack members of the opposition for all sorts of vices and past connections with discredited regimes to be simply diversionary. It is thirty-one years since the imperial regime passed away and nearly fifteen years since the military regime disintegrated following the footsteps of the larger disintegration of its chief allies the former Soviet Union Republics. These regimes have self-discredited themselves and will not return in any form or guise. There is a fundamental paradigm shift away from monarchy or military autocracy to democracy in the country. The Meles regime had the historical opportunity to facilitate the birth of sustainable democracy in Ethiopia. Its actions however, do not demonstrate commitment to democracy. It too seems to belong to the discredited regimes of yester year. It upholds the habit of authoritarian reflex to dissent and peaceful protest and engages in massive propaganda to intimidate the public with military show of force and psychological blackmail by constant reference and allusions to genocide and terror. It too is part of the problem like all the regimes of the past. It has imposed repression at the hour when Ethiopians manifested a democratic will to govern themselves, to define their issues and claim the right to deal with the many problems that have humiliated this old nation. The challenge remains to create a peoples government voted, peacefully, without compulsion and violence by the un-coerced voter and voting of the people. Only this popular will can put a curtain to autocratic and authoritarian history, to free Ethiopia from the prison of dictatorship, to make the people the central architects of their history, their democracy and their future. This is the task of the day that demands the uninterrupted continuation of the people's struggle, energy, dedication and intellect to bring to birth and nurture democracy and peace for the transformation of the country. 

It is thus significant we know where our attention must concentrate and learn to avoid secondary and diversionary issues. It is important to focus on the current challenges and dangers to the democracy the Ethiopian people are trying to give birth to, by defying the killing and intimidation thrown at them by the regime. Removing the danger to democracy posed by the regime is the task of tasks at the moment. This threat to democracy comes from the ruling elite challenging all Ethiopians, and indeed all who cherish values and visions of democratic governance, human rights, rule of law and peace by standing firmly against the arbitrary power of dictators. The world should support the collective imagination of the Ethiopian people to expunge dictatorship root and branch from Ethiopian soil forever. Let the people have the right to make their own mistakes through their democracy. Let them learn to govern and deal with their problems. Let them be allowed to try the democratic alternative to submission to hierarchical control. Let the elite step back and learn to desist from ignoring their voices and concerns, undermining them often as "ignorant" in order to ease its own conscience when it engages cynically to amass personal riches at their expense and continued humiliations. 

It is tasteless and pure sophistry to try to exonerate the vices of the current power holders and the danger to democracy that they pause by the self-understood claims of vices imputable to the earlier defunct regimes. It is also not wise to claim or assume that all people that may have served past regimes still remain loyal to those regimes forever. Times change and people also change and learn. They must be given opportunity to prove what they can do for themselves and the country and should not be condemned for eternity. A static view is not a useful approach to reality. We must apply a dynamic perspective to these issues. In fact a considerable number of people who used to serve the discredited regimes work with the current regime. The current regime did not shy away from using them just because they happened to have served the earlier regime that it fought. Equally important, we cannot say that people who may have been associated with earlier discredited regimes, but, who, nevertheless, have been willing to find new public roles and are willing to submit to the will of the people and become elected through democratic tests should be disqualified from playing active public lives in present day politics. 

As long as these newly elected public figures are Ethiopian citizens, and they have freely competed and come to be selected through a process of election that has not been rigged, (confirmed by independent observers and not necessarily the NEB), they should be eligible to play active public lives, hopefully, having learned the important virtue that one seeks power to discharge the high responsibility and ethics of public service, not to use power to steal, help oneself, ones own friends and family. The elected cannot be denied the right to represent the people, but under no condition should electoral confidence be turned into enriching ones pocket. Calling the elected names can only betray ulterior motives by the name caller unless there is evidence that the elected has been involved in misdeeds. 

Incidentally it is alarming to read a report about the loot accumulated by Meles, Bereket, Sebhat Nega, and even a fellow scholar Andreas Eshete, and a number of other top officials over the last fourteen years. If this report is true, there should be an explanation why looters will not give up the throne that made such loot so easy and possible. According to the report, these persons have become mega millionaires amassing riches and stashing it in American, German and Malaysian banks. If true, these fellows must have been steeped in the bottomless pit of corruption. The only way they can show the allegations are untrue is if they show openly and with verifiable transparency all their income under their name, their families and any one closely associated with their finances. They must show the world what they earn, how they earn what they earn. In fact in the future all public servants must pass through strong ethics test regarding the way they help themselves to public money or money that flows as grant and loans from outside. If true this money exists in foreign banks, Ethiopians all over the world must demand to return the money and use it to build schools, health clinics, water, electricity and sanitation services. If these persons wish to retain the alleged money in foreign banks like Mobutu and Abacha before, criminal proceedings must be open to recover the money. This allegation is the most serious we have read about so far, and we wonder whether there is any link between the corruptions in the loot with the corruption by rigging the votes in the election. One also puzzles on whether those that are said to be helping themselves so freely to loot can claim to be fighters for a clean or non-corrupt government. The onus is on Meles and Co. to come clean of this serious allegation. 

The notion of election to become a public master or to enable one to access and raid lawfully public finances is antithetical to the practice of democratic governance. If as it has been reported, the top brass of the regime is swimming in the ocean of millions of dollars that it has helped itself over nearly the last half a generation of its rule, there is no doubt in our minds that the current killings, riggings and emergency measures are tied to make sure that this vice is not to be exposed by any replacing authority of the current incumbent. How the regime responds to the growing call for the creation of a government of national concord- whether it is willing to listen or remain intransigent-will determine whether it is able to come clean of all these charges of corruption or true to form, live with the accusations by arrogantly defying them. 

The Role of Ethiopians from the Outside It is important that those of us who are outside know the role we should play in advancing the cause of justice and democracy in our country. It is not our business to behave as if we are elected members of parties. Elected, we are not. We act as concerned citizens to expose the injustices and proffer ideas that will facilitate a democratic achievement for the nation as a whole. We can support, we can demand, we can condemn, and we can call, but we must not interfere within the work of the parties. For example, the attempt to pry into the soul of the opposition and assume the role of choosing whom amongst the opposition should assume public office x or y, is not wise or useful. We should not indulge in such speculations and curiosities and still less engage with such idle talk at the risk of disrupting opposition unity and combined development to resist the injustices against the country by the current regime. This action by those from outside diverts attention and focus on the main target that has exacerbated the current climate, namely the Meles and Bereket power group that seek to perpetuate its divide and rule. The main contradiction remains: that between the Meles & Bereket duo on the one hand, and the rest of society on the other. The unity of the Ethiopian people and all those who support their aspiration must be directed to oblige the Meles & Bereket duo to accept a government of national concord and immediately stop from taking all the violent actions that have disrupted the country's extraordinary, peaceful and lawful journey to democracy. 

The appropriate role from the Ethiopians residing outside- the Ethiopian Diaspora if you will- should be support to the people and the elected representatives that came through the un-rigged free and fair election process from inside the country. It is a fundamental principle that the elected representatives alone should represent the people. Those from outside cannot represent the people because they have not run for election, nor have they been selected as elected representatives. It is critically important that those of us from the outside show strong solidarity to the people's choices regardless of our own preferences, remain steadfast on the side of justice, and draw clear boundary for ourselves from doing what elected representatives will, can and should do. Even if an elected representative offers his or her assignment to us, we should have the decency to say, no; this is your job and responsibility, not mine or ours. This sounds elementary or banal to say it, but it seems that some people who should know better are not aware of this simple distinction, and, quite unfortunately, by doing the work the elected should do, they seem to have given opportunity for regime acolytes to wax eloquent with barrages of diversionary attacks. It will be useful in the future that all opposition groups are aware of how not inadvertently to encourage such diversionary outbursts, that can potentially be divisive and may even waste useful energy that can be deployed to concentrate the struggle and put the heat on more and more on those regime elements that are unrepentant of their indulgence in continuous killings, riggings and enforcing military emergency rule by paying hardly any recognition to the votes and choices of the Ethiopian people. 

NES believes that those from outside- including first and foremost ourselves- must not use the current popular manifestation for change to try to sail through and entertain ambitions to do work that elected representatives are supposed to do. Our role from the outside is to support and suggest and pursue the paramount goal of always pointing at the bigger picture, for all to see beyond their narrow and selfish concerns, to translate power invested in them into duties and responsibilities of service to the people who elected them in the first place. It is to this standard that we must hold public office and public officials. Let the representation be done by those who are elected and legitimated. That makes it entirely those from inside the country. It will help hugely that those Ethiopians like us living abroad currently know how to intervene in our nation's affairs, comprehend how constructive we are in doing so, and above all how reflective and reflexive we become to contribute to the overall democratic throughput that the nation should create. Short of these attributes, it is easy to make mistakes. 

We call upon all those living outside who have not had the opportunity to be tested in the heat of election competition to refrain from assuming roles that are inappropriate and that do not assist the struggle to move forward and that give pretext to the regime and its acolytes to use diversionary tactics. We should look to the contribution we can make in re-gearing the country's collective energy to create a democratic transition, by suggesting ideas on how the people may be building predictable institutions capable of effecting the transfer of power from freely and fairly elected bodies to other similarly constituted bodies. We know there is an immense range of talented people from outside, mostly victims of exile from three regimes. This force scattered around the world can be deployed productively through material, knowledge and learning-driven support to make elected representatives to function in the service of the people that elected them. 

We in NES ourselves are not inside the country and we define our role primarily as supporters of the people, the country and the nation. We consider support of the people that have been elected, as part and parcel of our support of the people who have exercised their right to vote: We respect as a supreme good the verdict of the people. We must repeat everything is in the hands of the people. That is final. Our support to the parties is dependent on the fact that the people have elected their members. For NES, the people and their choices are sovereign. We cannot second -guess this sovereignty of the Ethiopian people. To do so is to be against both the people and the unforced expression of democratic freedom. We are also rebels against any form of injustice and should engage when power-mad rulers that privilege their power and comfort to public service and ethics abuse our people and country. We act like sensitive barometers that react to injustice and act on the side of the people with principles, values and visions to bring about profound changes for the betterment of the people of Ethiopia, and indeed Africa. 

NES humbly recognises that the contribution of those from the outside can be a double- edged sword. It is positive when it is predicated on supporting the struggle for democracy and justice waged by the people inside the country. Very often, it has gone awry when those from outside headed to play elite games and support local ruling elites that used authoritarian violence to murder our youth. We must learn from that difficult and unattractive history of losing one whole generation. On past reckoning in our country, the record of the external input to the internal political dynamics has not been as productive as is to be expected. That self-critical stance is very useful not to compound the nation's untold problems. 

Let us recapitulate history: When the military Government ascended to power in the early 70s, there were a number of persons from USA, France and other places that joined the military regime and offered their services. They did their job and were themselves targets by the regime. Most of them were fodder to murder by the hands of those whom they served to carry out other types of murders against the Ethiopian youth of the time. That memory is still fresh. When the current regime came to power with the active connivance and support of the then Governments of Britain and the USA, there were also Ethiopian collaborators especially from the USA and UK, and also from a number of European countries that joined it by forming instantaneously what are known popularly as "satellite parties or groups" made to fit the purpose of loyally working with Meles & Co. to convert ethnic and vernacular differences and diversities as rationing cards for political power allocations. 

There is no need for those from outside to repeat the above type of mistakes at this critical time, when the issue is for the Ethiopian people one of an attainment of a world historic turn away from autocracy to the opportunities of ushering an irreversible democratic epoch in Ethiopia. The stakes are so high, it will not do, not to learn to think, feel, act and speak in a coherent way, the better in order to contribute and add to the democratic renaissance of the ancient land. There is a lot we can do once the democratic environment is conducive using our knowledge and accumulated expertise, in health, education, investment, science, technology, engineering and infrastructure and other endeavours. Of course, we must remain vigilant and maintain a ready initiative to send warning signals against any injustice or when we sense coming an impending crisis. We must always be ready to take action and emerge always for the sake of the larger good of the people, nation and country as a community of commitment, a community of intelligence and a community of resistance against all forms of injustice. 

When the De-Elected Regime Insiders continue to harass the Elected The high brass seems rattled by the enormity of resistance to its killings, riggings and emergency military rule actions. Meles himself has begun to defend the indefensible action. Others are using various pseudo names to try to legitimise the illegitimate and arrogant actions of the regime. Some pass resolutions without any ownership or signature. This opens the space for fraud, lack of responsibility for the statements made, accusations against the opposition made. This is a practice that spoils democratic debate and accountability. People must be held accountable to what they claim and write. They cannot use Oromo sounding pseudo names to attack some of the opposition some of the time, and equally use Tigrayan sounding names to attack others. Some have even used names such as Holly Wood actors. Such is the sheer fear and lack of democratic culture that people resort to attacking others by hiding under nom de guerre, when in actual fact, what they are doing is open the environment for much abuse and irresponsibility. 

We see on the side of the current regime coming nothing but a lot of trouble for the people, the opposition and democracy particularly from the chief promulgator of the military emergency decree Meles, and equally from the chief propagandist and exaggerator, the de-elected propaganda minister Bereket Simon. Sad to admit it, the regime continues to arrest, beat, kidnap and intimidate, and even continues to engage in sporadic reported killings unabated to this day. The emergency rule is still on, and the riggings may not be cleared by the date announced the second time. Above all regime propaganda is obdurate and regime acolytes continue to use various tactics to confuse, mislead and threaten the public with force and violence if they do not do what the regime wants through the monopoly of media and information. The army and the police are ready to pounce at the people if ordered to use force to massacre the people ironically at a time when the nation was peacefully poised to change the course of history through the ballot box and not the barrel of the gun. Far from the political knots being untied, we seem to witness them to be tightening further, creating uncertainties for us to be assured regarding Ethiopia's political future in both the short term and long term. For the political knots to be untied, all concerned must learn to rise beyond selfishness and the dogged pursuit of narrow interests so characteristic of the behaviour of the regime today. 

It is now clear, to date, the regime has done all it could to dim the torch of freedom and democracy in the country. We ask this: must it continue to do this violation in the 21st century when Ethiopia should be enjoying the benefits of democratic self-governance? We have argued and said the main reason for the violence is the regime's action banning demonstrations. De-elected propaganda minister Bereket admits this in an interview with journalist Andrew Heavens by saying the regime has to "discharge its responsibility of maintaining law and order". He added the regime "�has taken the measures that were intended to make a stop to the violence� there was a ban on demonstrations and they (meaning opposition) have defied that." He thus justifies killing people and extinguishing the democratic spirit of freedom and choice of the people of Ethiopia by falsely accusing and charging the opposition as responsible for the violence and the regressive turn. Paradoxically the popular defiance has multiplied, and the repression far from stymieing it, is fuelling it. More and more people both inside and outside have vowed to resist in spite of or even because of the ban. Thus the simmering resentment is building up rather than abating as Meles & Bereket expected would be the outcome of their repression. 

The regime seems congenitally incapable of rising beyond its fear and seems to be gripped with a nightmare of Rwanda genocide and other disastrous scenarios. In the same interview quoted above, Bereket claims that if they have not taken action to kill the 36 students, the alternative would have been unthinkable: In his words, "The alternative was strife between the different nationalities of Ethiopia which might have made the Rwandan genocide look like Childs play." This is from a man who at the same breath in the same interview brags about the fourteen "golden "years of EPDRF rule with free market, federal administration, decentralisation of power, clean government and such like. How he can square his imaginary nightmare of Rwanda genocide taking place in a multi cultural and cosmopolitan Addis Ababa (where there is no condition for ethic conflict!), and where regime soldiers tried to ignite by the policy of shoot to kill, with such rosy achievements is beyond any semblance of rudimentary logic and thought. But characters like Bereket seem to have stopped thinking. 

One also wonders how they can imagine a Rwanda type of genocide in Ethiopia� a people who have never followed the anti-people agitation by any of the regimes in the country's modern history including the current regime. 

When Meles and Bereket threw out Eritreans from the cities and bussed them to Asmara, the people of Gojjam and Gondar on the road- (mind you, people Meles and Bereket & co have been routinely denouncing as "chauvinists" in their diatribes- passed water and food to their Eritrean brethren. The people of Gojjam and Gondar responded with a Christian spirit when Meles acted with criminal political calculation to exacerbate the contradiction and convert it between the people on either side of the Mereb River. At no time in the thirty years war has there been hatred between the people. Meles and Bereket & co tried to introduce this hatred and failed. The people have shown an infinite wisdom not to trust politicians that incite them to attack fellow citizens. The scenario of Rwanda genocide in Ethiopia is the delusion and dementia of a self-serving regime hell bent to cling to power by using cynically the ethnic card in Addis Ababa where people hardly pay attention to such issues by mingling freely with fellow Ethiopians and other people from all over the world. To this day there is no contradiction between the people in Ethiopia and Eritrea. That is why it is very sensible to permit democracy and the wisdom of the people to manifest and prevail in resolving this and many other issues. Meles & Co. have compounded the problem, let the people try to solve it with deliberative, dialogic and communicative democracy. We say keep everything in the hands of the people and all will turn out well. 

The key issue now is that Bereket and a number of the ministers of EPDRF have been de-elected, they too should stop from playing such negative roles in public life and should desist from doing all the havoc that they are continuing to do, as if their rejection paradoxically is a license to do more damage, and as if all the deplorable troubles they have caused until now is not enough. They want to go on and on causing further harm by exaggerating ethnic difference trying to woo one side to rise against another and polarising the political environment with hate rather than what it should be- saturate and fill it with democratic debate and public participation. They are trying to incite the Tigryan population by claiming that they are under attack when in actual fact it is Meles and Bereket and their likes that are under siege coming from their own anti-democratic behaviour. 

NES is alarmed that witnesses have reported that the writer and philosopher- activist Andargachew Tsige has been beaten and his whereabouts are still unknown. Independent journalists have been arrested. A large number of detainees have not been released. In the provinces in places such as Gondar and Bahr Dar reports of kidnapping and killing of young people have reached this part of the world. This cannot and must not be condoned or continued. The perpetrators of this insidious crime must be brought to book. Justice is still crying out to be redressed for the many people that have been killed, threatened, arrested and intimidated. 

NES demands: 
Immediate release of the writer and philosophy student Andargatchew Tsige and other prisoners. 
Condemnation of the regime for continuing intimidations, arrests, beatings, kidnappings and sporadic killings. 
Condemn the National Election Board for complicating the election process and demand that it apologises to the Ethiopian people for acting like a national rigging board. 
Call on the international community to put pressure to improve the climate by improving the situation for democratic debate against instincts and reactions to criminalise, intimidate, beat, threaten, kidnap and kill. 
Immediately normalise the democratic environment by lifting the state of emergency and certainly not extending it further by using one fabricated and exaggerated self-explicated factor or another. 
The parties enter into negotiations to create a genuine power-sharing arrangement for the next five years. 
Condemn Meles and Bereket for keeping carping about genocide and ethnic warfare and trying to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy. 
Calls on the international community never to tire from putting maximum pressure on Meles & Co to negotiate a national settlement by taking the broader national interest to turn quickly the situation of the country to normality. 

Concluding Remark NES has joined the worldwide outcry against the measures taken by the regime to engage in killings, riggings, declaring emergency military rulings, and generally narrowing the democratic dispensation in the country. Ours was perhaps a tiny fraction of the vast reaction that the killings, arrests, beatings and other violent actions by the regime against the citizens it should protect and (not kill) occasioned. It is the sheer injustice of the situation, the anger we felt once more at the needless killing ordered and justified by the arrogant power of Meles, Bereket and their likes, and the shock we continue to feel at the repression against the innocent and unarmed young civilians� that got us to act. As the clich� runs the last straw that broke the camels' back for us was the killing of the 36 young people and the denigration of the university once more by armed forces. We see our voice as one of the numerous voices that rejected the display of arrogant power to pass repression as necessary and right, and deny the moment of historical opportunity for Ethiopians to attain their full humanity as free citizens through the universal exercise of the franchise and civic expression. We believe that civic engagement is a necessary condition to solve all the key problems of the Ethiopian nation and people. All those who oppose civic engagement must be resisted and must be told that they have no clue how to go about solving the country's complex problems. 

We proceed from the conviction that it is high time Ethiopia must undergo a peaceful democratic transition. It is important that the delay in democratisation has been too long. Ethiopia must catch-up. We say the time is ripe and democracy for Ethiopia brooks no more delays through the various machinations of elite- driven self-centred tactics to postpone Ethiopia's democratic hour. Ethiopia's democratic time has come. Strike when the iron is hot. The steel glow of democracy is shining and warming Ethiopia with new historical possibilities and opportunities. 

We say: No other cure exists to undo all the accumulated political wrongs that the nation has to bear over the last one hundred years except to use democracy and peaceful debate to resolve them. 

We say again: No other remedy also exists to prevent future disasters without reference to and respect the democratic engagement of the people with each other, their manifold issues, challenges, problems and opportunities. 

We repeat the call we made earlier: Let the opposition and EPDRF enter into negotiations to form a Government of national concord based on the principle that all the outstanding or major issues and problems of the country should be solved through democratic deliberation by using peaceful methods. No issue can be solved in an enduring fashion without engaging civically and politically the Ethiopian people. Democratic methods must be tried and we believe they will do wonders after displacing rule sanctioned by autocracy legitimised by providence and divine election, military rule legitimised by reference to upholding supposedly proletarian interests, and the current farce of imposing authoritarian rule under democratic fa�ade of privileging ethnic rights over other rights. The people are the forces of hope, and hope is for Ethiopia an ontological need to make new history and undo all the forces of hate and despair. Ethiopia must prevail over the forces of despair and pessimism. The struggle must continue to inscribe democracy that endures and lives in all of us breathing fresh spirit, energy and vitality to this old nation. 

Professor Mammo Muchie, Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter 
Berhanu G. Balcha, Vice- Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter 
Tekola Worku, Secretary of NES-Scandinavian Chapter 

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