The burden of the public intellectual of Ethiopia

The public intellectual is the person who by years of education (self-taught or formal) and relevant experience enters the public square largely for the purpose of defending truth and justice. As the late famous intellectual personification of the Palestinian cause for justice and homeland, Edward Said, said “the role of the intellectual is to speak truth to power”.

The first martyr (the road treaded by the public intellectual is not all roses) in this project was said to be Socrates who was distinguished for speaking truth to power that eventually resulted in his being killed. During his life time, Socrates railed against rhetoric and what is now called the gimmick of Public Relations, “PR”, and spin doctors. He argued that philosophers need to speak truth, that only they have the courage to face facts, and that their influence rests entirely on their capacity to present rational, empirical and logical deductions based on their observations.

The fact that such a high premium is expected from philosophers more than any other professionals should be no surprise. The focus of their craft is the study of justice and truth.

Public intellectuals contribute to either political domination or to resistance. The role of the intellectual has taken immense significance from time to time, especially during momentous historical events. Examples include the rise of Hitler and the Nazi era; during the Vietnam War in the US, and following the events of September 2001. For instance in 1933, as Hitler was coming to power, Martin Heidegger, a famous philosopher known for his existential and phenomenology works, sided with the Nazis and disappointed many friends and scholars.

From December 12-16, 2010, Addis Ababa hosted the 5th International Conference on Federalism. Meles gave the keynote address (and later the closing statement), and about 45 papers were presented at the Conference. The similarity between Meles’s keynote address and Professor Andreas Eshete’s paper is eye-catching. Both are notable for what they did not say in their otherwise glorifying narrative of federalism. They missed to mention:

1. The hasty decision made by Meles and EPRDF to facilitate Eritrean separation, Meles by pleading with the UN to arrange and observe the referendum, and Andreas by being an emissary to Asmara to apologize “on behalf of Ethiopians” for alleged atrocities perpetrated against Eritreans by Ethiopians. The repercussions of these decisions have and continue to cost Ethiopia from being a landlocked nation to fighting two disastrous wars with Eritrea, with no solution to the problem in sight.
2. Both Meles and Andreas did not mention, explain or justify why ethnic federalism was the preferred form of federalism for Ethiopia. Other than stating the mundane and least controversial facts of the benefits of federalism, one would expect from them (as architects of ethnic federalism) to prescribe the medicine they imposed on Ethiopia to their international audience.

3. Also curiously, their deafening silence on bringing up Article 39 (the article of secession) of their constitution was a major gaping hole. As this has been one of the milestones that EPRDF claims to be its achievement and legacy, one would expect its leader and ideologue to again mention it at the least, and try to justify it at best. This was not to be.

Instead, the two men dealt at length on why federalism was a preferred system of governance in contrast to a centralist, unitary system ( a notion no longer novel, and about which there is near-unanimity among Ethiopia’s political elite in both government and the opposition).

While Meles opined in his trademark listen-to-me-only-as-I have-only-a-mouth-and-no-ears attitude, Andreas at least asked the participants to provide ideas to Ethiopia so that “we can surely benefit from wise counsel”. What did Meles say in this regard? “…while we are eager to learn from the participants…we nevertheless feel that this is about learning to further improve and perfect our system and not about a completely new start”, thus foreclosing any intellectual curiosity and fruitful discussion.

The tragedy (and some might see it as comedy) is that both Meles and Andreas strenuously harped on the mendacity that federalism has enabled Ethiopia to be a democratic nation. Meles said “our federalism is based on a system of multi-party democracy”. Andreas added, “Federalism has lent support to political pluralism as well as to the cause of greater political and social equality”.

While it would be boring the reader to start explaining why there is no political pluralism in EPRDF’s Ethiopia, it may be appropriate to recall the reports of neutral entities, such as the International Crisis Group (2009), Human Rights Watch (2010), and even the recent European Union Election Observers Report (2010), that have sufficiently document evidence – for lack of a more fitting word- on the dictatorship of Meles’s EPRDF.

The issue that might be of more interest by comparison is why intellectuals like Professor Andreas Eshete, and technocrats that have served the last three regimes, like Fassil Nahoum, bat no eyelash (no pun intended) in the unqualified endorsement of the dictatorship. In the interest of fairness, one may have to single out for partial credit regime supporters like Professor Desta Asayehegne , who at least have the courage and conscience, to rebuke the regime in the mildest tones. Says Desta on the subject of federalism”…the writer of this article[self-referential] holds the opinion that the type of ethnic and regional federalism created in Ethiopia in 1995 was not carefully worked out and is too cumbersome to facilitate adequate communication among the constraints of the New Age. The 1995 constitution was too haphazardly designed to appeal to some of the disgruntled and powerful Oromo groups at the time. It is further argued that confining …Peoples of Ethiopia into watertight compartments was not wisely strategized….”

Whereas mainstream Ethiopian opposition politics both inside and outside the country agree on federalism, but reject EPRDF’s heavy-handed and undemocratic approach of ethnic federalism, what Meles and Andreas chose to do was to bark at the wrong tree: blame those who believe in unitary centralist rule (even here, thanks to this minority view, it would help showing some of the weaknesses of federalism and the proponents’ right to continue to express it must be respected).

In his customary top-to-bottom politics, Meles says the weaknesses of his project are that on one hand he has yet to convince those too scared to believe in his magic (whom out of the earshot of conference participants, he calls narrow nationalists), and on the other, those who still cling to the ideas of the old order (a.k.a. chauvinists).

Public intellectuals, especially philosophers, must stop trimming their sails to benefit from Revolutionary Democracy’s winds blowing from the palace. Thankfully, a few philosophers could be cited as examples of defenders of the requirements of justice as was demonstrated in the stands they took during the prison ordeal of Judge Bertukan Mideksa: A.A. University Associate Professor Dagnachew Assefa, and in the Diaspora Messay Kebede and Teodros Kiros.

Prior to them, especially in the early years of EPRDF rule, young Ethiopian Orthodox Church deacons and monks were the public intellectuals leading the fight for truth and justice. Some of them, such as Aba Gebreselassie, were killed by the regime as a result of their activism. Now, we hear that leaders of the four big religions in Ethiopia are slated to mediate to get out of prison Dirgue officials serving terms for crimes committed during the Red Terror. While this is a benevolent act, a true measure of the religious leaders credibility is not only on what they do to close the gap of the past, but what they plan to do to close the yawning gap of the present. They surely are not participants in the propaganda of the dictatorial regime’s 99.6% victory. They more than anyone else see every day the hatred citizens harbor for the dictatorial regime. They more than anyone else visit the prisons teeming with thousands of political prisoners who are routinely victims of torture. They certainly see the regime and the legitimate opposition are “hodina jerba” in EPRDF’s Ethiopia. How about launching a reconciliation project in the face of all these ills, and how about defending the tenets of justice as the teachings of major religions require to make the past congruent with the present?