The current Ethiopian political system has all the institutions of democratic regimes: a multiparty system, regular elections and an elected parliament, separation of powers and a liberal constitution. Indeed, the Constitution has more democratic elements than those of many recognized democratic countries. Not only does it guarantee the respect of human, economic, social, civic, cultural, and political rights, it also guarantees, and this is quite an innovation, “environmental rights”. Moreover, “An elected representative may be recalled if the electorate loses confidence in him,” a provision quite rare in democratic regimes. We have thus a regime cloaked in democratic institutions.
Despite this officially democratic context, the multiparty elections of 1992, 1995 and 2000 gave birth to and nurtured a state that “does not function as a democracy, does not serve its citizens, and does not safeguard human rights.”1 This is the conclusion a number of scholars have drawn in their studies of elections under the EPRDF regime. This metamorphosis of multiparty elections into harbingers of authoritarianism has to be explained, because the conditions that converted these multiparty elections into engines of authoritarianism are still in place and will affect the 2005 elections similarly. Since I have dealt with the political premises of the EPRDF regime at some length elsewhere2, I will limit myself here to a brief discussion of why multiparty elections under the EPRDF lead to what some social scientists call an “electoral authoritarian” or a “competitive authoritarian” regime, and consider some of the implications for the 2005 election.
Legally, the Ethiopian state is a federation where “All sovereign power resides in the nations, nationalities, and peoples of Ethiopia”. Each federated state is an ethnicstan – a state based uniquely on ethnic identity – and has its own legislature, judiciary and executive. Moreover, the Constitution reserves residual powers to the federated states and, indeed, stipulates that “Every nation, nationality and people in Ethiopia has an unconditional right to self-determination, including the right to secession”. When all these elements are taken together, each ethnicstan appears to be a quasi-sovereign state. The EPRDF, the national party, forms the federal government which has constitutionally limited powers. Legally then, the Ethiopian state has democracy-friendly structures.
But behind the façade of this legal structure, there is, as noted by a number of observers, a different political reality. The ethnic parties that rule the ethnicstans are organic members of the national ruling party – the EPRDF – created and run by the TPLF. The head of the TPLF, of the EPRDF, and of the government of Ethiopia is the same person: Meles Zenawi. In reality, the Ethiopian state is a centralized one-party state. Ethiopia has thus two parallel states, each with its own structures: there is the “legal state” and its democratic trappings enshrined in the Federal Constitution; parallel to it, there is the “real state” coterminous with the EPRDF. The “real state” is a one-party state with accountability flowing upward through the structures of the ruling party. The crucial question then is: under which “state” do multiparty elections take place?
If multiparty elections were to take place under the “legal state”, then the quasi-sovereign nature of each ethnicstan and the independence of each ethnic party will inevitably lead to the well-known “outbidding effect”. Since the appeal to the interests of the ethnic group is the usual mobilizing strategy of ethnic parties, multiparty elections under the “legal state” will lead to a spiral of bids that will lead to ethnic chaos if not disintegration. In other words, if the democratic features of the Constitution are respected, they will lead to the consummation of the logic of state-breakdown that is built into the very structure of the ethnic federation; that is, the “legal state” contradicts the “real state”. However, the apparent contradictions between the “legal state” and the “real state” give Meles and the EPRDF a wide range of political flexibility that allow them to use the democratic features of the “legal state” as a façade, while conducting multiparty elections under the “real state.”
But the context of the “real state” – the complete centralization of power – changes the meaning and practice of multiparty elections. Not surprisingly, multiparty elections in this context have a single purpose: to maintain Meles and his party in power. To this end, the government has regularly disregarded the democratic features it has included in its “legal state”. It has adopted an electoral law that is loaded in its favour, and it has transformed the judiciary, nominally independent, into a tool of political repression. The public space available to the opposition is reduced through political, economic and judicial coercive measures; the free press is under judicial and extra-judicial pressures to practice self-censorship; and, according to the various reports of the Ethiopian Human Rights Council and international human rights organizations, intimidation of voters and opposition candidates is a widespread practice.
In the context of the “real state”, the moral and political distinctiveness of elections – holding the incumbents accountable for their acts and sanctioning them – is eliminated, and multiparty elections are reduced to mere political participation. Multiparty elections in the “real state” are not meant to allow voters to judge the government on its record, to compare political programs and to choose freely representatives. Rather, voting is converted into an act of allegiance, leading to the typically “electoral authoritarian” situation where voting amounts to leaders choosing their subjects rather than citizens choosing their leaders. The result is a sort of decaffeinated democracy: a system that has the appearances of a democratic regime but is devoid of all democratic content, with accountability flowing upward.
It is within this context that one has to consider the 2005 election. Given that this election will be subject to the machinations of the “real state” as were the previous elections, it is a foregone conclusion that the EPRDF is set to win a landslide victory. But this need not happen. The opposition could in fact exploit the Meles-designed contradictions between the “legal state” and the “real state” to its own advantage. To do this in a way that advances the cause of democracy in the 2005 election, the opposition needs to differentiate itself from the EPRDF in terms of both ideology and concrete policies.
One of the sources of the perversion of multiparty elections is the current ideology of ethnicity as a master narrative that Ethiopians have to use in order to validate themselves as members of political organizations. This EPRDF ideology has cast its shadow even over one of the most significant opposition organizations on the Ethiopian political scene – the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF) – insofar as its constituent political parties validate their identity in terms of this master narrative. After all, UEDF is a grouping of ethnic parties, a sort of a mirror image of the EPRDF, though with a crucial difference. Whereas the ethnic parties of the EPRDF are held together by the iron grip of its leader, the UEDF is a voluntary coalition of independent ethnic parties, which has yet to develop an alternative master narrative and shared coherent policies on the issues that matter to Ethiopians.
Meles holds the EPRDF together through force and corruption. But what holds together the opposition? Since the opposition claims to espouse democracy, its source of unity cannot be force and corruption à la Meles, but shared principles and agreements on how to cope with the serious problems that Ethiopians confront now. This means that to be a credible alternative in the 2005 election, any opposition has to demonstrate to the electorate that its unity is deep and principled and not merely conjectural or electoral. This implies meeting at least two conditions: develop commonly agreed-upon feasible policies on the major issues that the electorate faces, and demonstrate that it has sufficient internal ideological and organizational cohesion to be able to govern. Whatever the country, whatever the opposition, these are two necessary conditions the electorate would like to see met before it throws out the incumbents in favour of the opposition.
In the current Ethiopian context, the ideological and organizational cohesion of the opposition could be attainable only if the opposition clarifies its stand on two questions that Ethiopians can no longer afford to ignore. First, is it the lack of democracy or the lack of ethnic sovereignty that kept Ethiopia backward? Note that the relation between democracy and ethnic sovereignty is not symmetrical. One could enjoy ethnic sovereignty without enjoying democracy; but if one has democracy, the question of ethnicity takes a different venue and makes itself amenable to a civic rather than to the kinship perspective adopted by the EPRDF. Second, is it because there are ethnic groups that we need decentralization or federalism, or is it because decentralization offers the most efficient method to achieve the goals of democracy, development and unity? If the latter is the case, it is incumbent on the opposition to tell Ethiopians what criterion (or criteria) of decentralization offers the most efficient method to achieve these goals.
Resolving these questions could offer an alternative master narrative that could facilitate the development and adoption of common policies in those areas of urgent importance to Ethiopians: land ownership, education, health, agriculture, industrialization, unemployment, urbanization, etc. The payoff of a common political stand on these issues is self-evident. In providing Ethiopians with alternative perspectives on the basic problems they confront, the unity and credibility of the opposition is enhanced, undermining by the same measure the hegemony of the EPRDF.
In May 2005, Meles Zenawi will once more serve Ethiopians decaffeinated democracy: a democracy whose substantive features are evacuated and are mimicked by the virtual forms of multiparty elections. Ethiopians expect the opposition to put the caffeine back into the coffee and serve them a political abol buna, as it were; for only the opposition can restore to multiparty elections the democratic vigour and properties that the EPRDF has drained from them. To achieve this, the opposition must be credible, that is, it must be seen by the electorate as a party that can govern. If the opposition rises up to this historic task, the 2005 election could mark the end of decaffeinated democracy and signal the beginning of Ethiopia’s transition to liberal democracy, the first step towards a socially responsible democracy that Ethiopians yearn for.
REFERENCES
1. Stiegfried Pausewang, Kjetil Tronvoll, Lovise Aalen, eds. Ethiopia Since the Derg: A Decade of Democratic Pretension and Performance. Zed Books, London, 2002 , p.243
2. For an extensive discussion of this issue, see: Maimire Mennasemay, “Federalism, Ethnicity, and the Transition to Democracy” Horn of Africa: Special Issue on Federation in the Horn. Volume 31, 2003, pp.88-114
