Troublesome 9’s: Article 39 and Article 49 of the Ethiopian Constitution

Two of the six major goals of the US constitution are to form a more perfect union and
ensure domestic tranquility. Are they attained? Yes, they are! If democracy is claimed to
be the foundation, the goals of the Ethiopian Constitution should be nothing different.
Are they attained? Seemingly not! What is stressed in Ethiopia is that unity should not
come at the expense of diversity. Unity should not come at the cost of the loss of liberty
for some groups of people and to the advantage of other groups of people. This is
absolutely true and just. It has to be noted, however, that the unionist US Constitution
also excellently caters for diversity. Which nation in the world could be more diverse
than the USA into which the entire humanity has been flocking and melting willingly in
the American mainstream? The United States could have constituted 5000+ states rather
than only 50 if it had an article 39 in its Constitution. No one could have seen a sustained
super power in the nation of USA; no one could have seen an uninterrupted lineage of
presidencies, peaceful and enthusiastic elections for the last 200 years. The main reason
for this success of keeping people, who have come from all corners of the world, together
as Americans is that the core of the US constitution lies on protecting the rights of the
individual. It is the individual which is concrete. A group changes according to context
and is, thus, not tangible.

You cannot have a water-tight ethnic, religious or racial group. A constitution founded on
group rather than individual rights is bound to be abused by elite groups within the
groups for their own personal ends. This has been proved beyond doubt for instance in
Eritrea and in Ethiopia too. Are the Tigrean, Amara, and Oromo political elites sharing
happiness and as well as miseries with their fellow “ethnic kins”? Was Hailesellasie more
sympathetic to a farmer in Bulga than he was to a farmer in Kobo? No! It is only a myth
created by political and economic elites to help them enjoy a niche for their businesses
and political ambitions. Eritreans as a group got their independence (because it was
wrongly felt that they were oppressed as Eritreans); but this “group” is being abused by
the elite group led by Mr. Esayas. Now individual Eritreans have lost the sense about
what that freedom meant to each one of them in the first place. Eritrea is there in the
same geologic position, but tens of thousands of individual Eritreans are scattered
everywhere and suffering. The squabbles between two South Sudan leaders, which cost
the lives and property of thousands is the result of group rights to secede of “southern
Sudanese” from Sudan. No one was asking questions like: are we sure that the Sudanese
government was violating the rights of southern Sudanese as a group rather than as
individuals? Were we sure that the Sudanese government was not violating the individual
rights of the people it considers “its own”? Is it really kinder to a northern Sudanese than
it was to a southern Sudanese? The best solution in both cases was to install governments
that work based on individual merits rather than belongingness to a particular group.
Separation is not a solution; it only changes rulers from those who don’t speak your
language to those who speak your language. Everything else remains the same or gets
even worse than it was before independence. One Eritrean woman, who was
unfortunately deported during the “Badme War”, once said “Esayas is a Tigrigna
speaking Derg”.

The worst part of separation is that it has no end. The ‘mitosis’ continues. There are still
groups within groups. The case of South Sudan and Ukraine could be revealing. It was
thought that the separation of Ukraine from Russia was the end of it; but time has proved
that it was not the case. Ukraine is falling apart again because no group is a discrete
entity; it is only a nested-hierarchy where every level reveals itself every time the one
above it is removed. Who says that Oromia, Tigray, Amhara are monolithic entities? Are
we sure that the demand for separation would not come from within each one of these
“ethnic regions”? As there are many “sub-Ukraines” there are many “sub-Oromias”,
“sub-Tigrays”, “sub-Amharas” which claim uncompromising identities of their own as
different from the “Umbrella” group. So, what article 39 of the Ethiopian Constitution
will help to accomplish is to press the start button for an endless division and re-division.
One would not need to be a prophet that, later on, everyone will be nostalgic about the
“old days” which in most probability will never come back.

Article 39(1) reads “Every Nation, Nationality and Peoples in Ethiopia has the
unconditional right to self determination, including the right to secession”. The problem
with this sub-article is in how it is to be operationalized. Any legislation has got
operational definitions of terms used in its first article. How terms are interpreted in the
law ensures the legality and modality of implementation. It is well known that terms are
interpreted according to contexts, perceptions, attitudes, etc. The Ethiopian Constitution
does not have operational definitions for the terms “Nation”, “Nationalities” and
“Peoples”. In the absence of these definitions who has the right to secede has no limits.
Any group that claims to be either nation or nationality or people has the right to secede.
So, there is no way of knowing into how many new states Ethiopia will disintegrate. The
other problem is the term “Unconditional”. What does it mean? Literally unconditional
means complete or guaranteed. In the absence of an operational definition secession can
be done anytime based on the will and whim of political elites based in any group. The
separation of Croatia was a single and simple act of the regional parliament. There was
no way the Belgrade government can do to reverse it. God forbid! If the Oromia regional
parliament once upon a time decides by majority vote to separate from Ethiopia. Is there
a power in Ethiopia to reverse it? Tragically, not at all! Will the break be a clean one?
Never! Can the Federal Government rely only on what it thinks is a loyal Oromo party in
its coalition as the only way to keep the claim for secession down? You cannot create a
monster and then try to control it by tying its hands with a thin rope. The best solution is
not to create the monster in the first place. The monster is the article that creates the
destructive monster of secession.

Another problematic article in the Ethiopian Constitution is Article 49. The reason for
this article to be problematic is that it is contradictory. Sub-article 1 states that “Addis
Ababa shall be the capital city of the Federal State”. Well and good! But, sub-article 5
states about a “…special interest of the State of Oromia in Addis Ababa…”. By any logic
on Earth a federal capital city belongs to the all citizens of the federal state regardless of
its location. All benefits to be equally shared by all Ethiopian residing in Addis Ababa.
The phrase “special interest for Oromia” has no place in conventional wisdom. It is also a
violation of Article 49, sub-article 1 of the Constitution to call Addis Ababa by any other
name. It is OK for a city to have several names. It is a beloved child that will have several
names. However, when it comes to having a legal birth certificate the child can take only
one! Addis Ababa has several names (Addis Ababa, Sheger, Adu-genet, Finfine, etc.).
People who love its beauty, hospitality, diversity, motherly love give it different names.
There is nothing wrong with that. However, like the birth certificate, legality never allows
multiple names. Courts do not allow multiple names, etc. The Government of Ethiopia,
which bears the responsibility to protect the Constitution, is the one that is violating it.
State-run media in its official news and communications uses Addis Ababa and Finfine as
alternatives or as translation (?) from Amharic to Oromifa. I did not have the chance to
see the translation of the Constitution into Oromifa; but I can be sure that Article 49 (1)
must have written “Finfine” as the name of the Federal capital (I can be corrected if I am
wrong). In language science proper names are not translated. They should remain the
same in any language translations. The only acceptable change may be the alphabet.

If the reason why Addis Ababa is being given the name “Finfine”, formally and “legally”
by Oromo official media, is based on a claim that the urban phenomena of this sprawling
metropolis belongs to Oromos I will be obliged to write a little further. Does the claim
that “Addis Ababa is an Amharic misnomer of an Oromo city called Finfine” hold any
water? The answer is: It holds as much water as the claim that ‘New York’ is an English
misnomer for a Red-Indian city. The later claim about New York may hold a little bit
more water than the claim on Addis Ababa because the Red-Indians were living for
thousands of years in the particular location where that global megalopolis is now
sprawling. It is not only the fact that the land on which Addis Ababa is built did not
belong to the Oromos 4-5 centuries before. They also pushed other natives from the area
and claimed ownership. There should be no hard feelings when pusher is pushed by
another pusher. Actually, we cannot reduce the urban phenomena of Addis Ababa on a
“formerly Oromo land” as a matter of push and counter push. It is much more
complicated and grand than that. Millions of people originating from the 80 linguistic
groups of Ethiopia, including various tribes of the Oromos, feel Addis Ababa as their
home, home of their children and grand children. They built it, with their blood and
sweat, into such a huge city. Addis Ababans, a sweet mixture of all Ethiopians, embody
the strong bondage and aspirations of the entire Ethiopian Nationhood, that is not based
on the supremacy of any of the ethic or linguistic groups in Ethiopia.

It is the normal process of urbanization worldwide that cities expand into their immediate
hinterlands. Urban phenomena is the most powerful of all demographic phenomena that
no limits or bounds. The motive power that drives it is the unrestrained national and
global economic growth. Urban areas now account for 60% of the world population and
this will continue to rise. Humans will be “urban species” in the future. This is a normal
process of human cultural evolution that no power on Earth can stop. It is really
contradictory to rightly assign Addis Ababa as the Capital of the Federal State and expect
it to grow and expand, and at the same time to wrongly put a barrier to its growth and
expansion. Sub-article 5’s provision for special benefits for the Oromo linguistic group is
violating the right of the rest of the Addis Ababans to which Addis Ababa equally
belongs. There is always a piece of land, inhabited by natives, on which the urban
phenomena occurs. New York is built on land that was before a century or more
inhabited by a few Red-Indian tribes-men. It would be the most irrational claim of the
millennium if the descendants of the Red-Indian tribes-men start demonstrating and
chanting: “Give us back New York City!!” There is no way that the natives of that
sparsely inhabited piece of land could claim the urban phenomena built by the life time
efforts and money of the urbanites (people of the entire Globe). Is it similar to the
situation in Addis Ababa? Absolutely!