“At the end of the day, myth will not get the EPRDF very far. Its potency is limited to the extent that it is believed by the opposition and the public.”

Medrek announced plans to transform its loose coalition to the
elevated status of a “front” at the end of last week. Its constituent
members dipped to six from the original eight, after dropping one of
its two pan-Ethiopian groupings and its lone Somali-based
organization. The rotating presidency has now gone to UDJ’s deputy,
Gizatchew Shiferaw; a position he will hold for four months.

“There is a discernable class within the Ethiopian opposition that has internalized helplessness. That much is certain. The question is: has it been allowed to hold Medrek hostage?” – Eskinder Nega

Few of the opposition’s even most ardent supporters clamored to
celebrate, though. The painful delay notwithstanding, the public was
still aching to hear about plans for resistance against this year’s
vile “election results.” Anything else was unavoidably an anti-climax.

But the announcement was deliberate for the leaders of Medrek. Having
decided against resistance, news of an impending restructured
alliance, which the public has long supported, seemed a fitting
surrogate to placate public mood. “The election was stolen. But we
will not engage in a scuffle with (the) muggers,” said Dr Beyene
Petros, Medrek’s new spokesperson. The opposition’s response is to
acquiesce to the new reality, not lead a peaceful heroic resistance as
many of its supporters — and some in the international community,
too — had anticipated and hoped. The opposition is in fact already
looking ahead. As one of the leaders of Medrek informed local media
this week: “We would like to negotiate with the EPRDF about the
upcoming election.” (Local elections are due in about two years time.
The last time they were held, the EPRDF “won” 100 % of the seats.) And
thus, the spirit of resistance, which attained its apex in 2005 when
the CUD, Press and Diaspora trio challenged the election results, has
been bluntly rejected by all political parties in 2010. Not a single
party has opted — and dared — to carry the mantle of resistance.

What happened? Is this really a strategic retreat warranted by lack of
preparedness? Or does it denote a state of psychological vulnerability
that is incapacitating Ethiopia’s opposition?

Ethiopia’s opposition is no match to the EPRDF. Even absent the
opposition’s conspicuous military muscle deficit, EPRDF’s discipline,
grassroots presence, and quality of middle rankers gives it a decided
advantage. In sharp contrast, the opposition is undermined by a
variety of inadequacies: lax discipline, weak grassroots, lack of
finance, and more seriously, the stigma of recurring failures. But it
is exactly the need to beat these shortfalls and save the legal
opposition that the inspiring weight of its leaders is now much in
demand. Only one election season has elapsed since the inspirational
power of few opposition leaders was able to score a seemingly
impossible electoral victory. They were constrained by the very same
limitations that hamper the opposition now. Resisting a fraudulent
election by the same means is no more difficult, nor any less
achievable.

No mass mobilization relies exclusively — or even mostly — on party
machine in modern times. As has become of modern politics itself, mass
mobilizations are focally media-driven in this age of satellite radio
and television and the Internet. It is the preserve of the best
politicians to know how to use them. The tide of Nazi victory at the
beginning of the Second World War, for example, was reversed by the
ardor of Churchill’s rhetoric and the allure of Roosevelt’s fire — side
chats, both conveyed to the people over the radio, not by the military
prowess of the UK, the US or any of the other democracies. None of
them were prepared for the brutal efficiency of the Nazi war machine.
Resistance seemed futile, and the cries to give up were strident and
seemed more attune to the rapidly unraveling reality. But Roosevelt
and Churchill eloquently differed, and went on to famously win the
century for democracy. The lesson they left behind for future
generations reverberates till the end of time: An inspired people will
always beat the odds. Lack of preparedness is an obvious disadvantage
but it does not necessarily have to be an incapacitating one.

We know from the 2005 election that a sizable segment of the
opposition — even within the CUD, including some who were
imprisoned — had already been rendered motionless by a state of
psychological defeat. To this group, any altercation with the EPRDF is
perceived as an overwhelming encumbrance. In its mythologized world
the EPRDF is invincible, positioned always to win. All attempts to
successfully face up to it is deemed as impractical and emotional. The
imprisonment and subsequent implosion of CUD’s leaders is the
irrefutable evidence for the veracity of its conviction. Such
helplessness dominates its every calculation. And in its state of
psychological melancholy, it is temperamentally unable to comprehend
the merits of resistance. Its despondency is hostile to every precept
of resistance. There is, in other words, a discernable class within
the Ethiopian opposition that has internalized helplessness. That much
is certain. The question is: has it been allowed to hold
Medrek — whose working ethos is the impractical consensus rather than
the practical majority vote — hostage?

One could not help but suspect so. There is no other plausible
explanation for the paralysis that has afflicted the opposition. It is
high time to address the problem of defeatism within the opposition.
Such defeatism has cloaked the EPRDF with a myth of invincibility.
Such myth is already being energetically expressed by many of EPRDF’s
supporters amidst the public. The series of events in which “the EPRDF
triumphed over the Derg, defeated the Eritreans in the border war, and
cleverly maneuvered the collapse of the CUD” are promoted as
confirmation of EPRDF’s irrefutable superiority. And when the
opposition demanded re-run of the election, EPRDF supporters could not
help but mock it for daring to flirt with resistance when all
evidences, as they see it, caution against it. But what is troubling
is not that gullible grassroots believe the myth, but that its leaders
have also come to believe in it. Their intransigence is now
intertwined with this self-perception.

At the end of the day, myth will not get the EPRDF very far. Its
potency is limited to the extent that it is believed by the opposition
and the public. This is where the role of opposition leaders becomes
critical. The admixture of the opposition’s perceived helplessness and
the EPRDF’s aura of invincibility has suddenly crowded public
discourse after this year’s election. And it is threatening to grow in
to a mortal threat to the legal opposition. This is no problem for a
party machine. It could only be overcome by a lucid inspirational
display of will to resist — peacefully and legally — by the
opposition. It is necessary and possible.