The defeat in the victory

In Ethiopia, history has mostly marched at a slow pace, and it is in this historical perspective that one could find the silver lining in the massive defeat of the democratic opposition in the 2010 elections. Indeed, considering the loss of the democratic opposition as a defeat is misreading as a “victory” the TPLF/EPRDF’s hoarding of parliamentary seats. There are reasons that indicate that Meles’s victory is a house of cards built of fraud, incoherent ideas and incompatible interests. Let’s first consider the facts.

First, according to the National Election Board, 31, 926, 520 Ethiopians registered for the elections. How many of them voted is not yet known, but it appears that participation in the election was quite high. Note that Meles claimed in his “victory” speech at Meskel Square that the EPRDF has “ over five million members”. A short calculation indicates that there is one EPRDF member for every five non-EPDRF registered voter. This is a ratio of party members to registered voters unheard of outside communist regimes.

Given the violent origin and authoritarian character of the EPRDF, as well as its track- record of using its members as the eyes, ears and enforcers of the regime, the ratio of one EPRDF member to five voters signals the political suffocation of Ethiopians by the EPRDF machinery. It gives the regime powerful tools to track voters individually and submit them to physical threats, economic hazards, and civil insecurities in order to subjugate them to its will. It is inevitable that such forced voting aggregates incoherent ideas and incompatible interests. Moreover, the ratio of EPRDF members to registered voters makes it clear that the EPRDF dominates the tabulation and counting of votes. This means that in ridings where the voting could go against the EPRDF, the vote counters could easily falsify the results in favour of the EPRDF. The fraud, the incompatible interest and incoherent ideas that made the 2010 elections “victory” possible inexorably sow the seeds of defeat in the very womb of Meles’s victory.

Second, the National Election Board indicates that 2205 candidates registered for the 547 constituencies. The major opposition parties fielded candidates in all the major regions: Oromia, Amhara, SNNP, Tigray, Addis Ababa, and DireDawa. In all of these regions, the EPDRF won 100% of the seats. A brief probability calculation shows that the likelihood that the EPDRF will garner all the seats without committing fraud is nil if one were to factor in: (a) the important support on the ground that some of the opposition parties seem to have received during the campaign, (b) the resistance to the TPLF’s monopoly of power as an ethnic party that represents only 6% of the population, (c) the increasing resentment created by the rapidly expanding gap between the wealth of a tiny elite and the impoverished mass of the Ethiopian population despite the government’s claim of double digit economic growth, and (d) the political opposition to the EPDRF that has been building up in, among others, Oromia, SNNP, Amhara, Addis Ababa, and Tigray, symbolized by the defection of prominent members of the TPLF to the democratic opposition. If the history of fraudulent elections is a guide, the EPRDF’s victory, gained through deceit, is perhaps not more than a defeat postponed, provided the “democratic opposition” takes these two terms seriously and wears its mantle responsibly.

Third, in his “victory” speech, Meles stated that “We will work day and night to obtain your support in the next election.” His blatant reference to the “next election” is a very strong indication that the 2010 election was designed not to promote democracy but to completely penetrate all state and non-state institutions and civil society organizations in order to transform Ethiopia into a one-party state. Meles’s illegitimate imprisonment of judge Bourtukan, his systematic assault on civil, political and human rights, his deceptive cooptation of the gullible Swedish Institution—IDEA—to use it for snaring the apparently credulous opposition into signing a Code of Conduct that rendered it politically impotent, his eagerness to keep millions of dollars flowing into his coffers by playing the role of America’s sheriff in Somalia, all now appear in retrospect as feverish preparations for using the 2010 elections for successfully completing the edifice of the one-party dictatorship he has been building since 1991.

That Meles knows that his goal is not acceptable to Ethiopians could be surmised from his fear of popular reaction to his design to shove Ethiopia into the procrustean bed of a one party state. To wit, although he was delivering his “victory” speech to his own EPRDF cadres and members assembled at the Meskel Square, he did so behind a bulletproof screen. That Meles has to protect himself from his own followers symbolizes the worry and defeat that are germinating in the very heart of his victory.

The struggle for democracy has now become a matter of nurturing the incoherent ideas and incompatible interests that inhabit the EPRDF so that they will destabilize it from within, and of giving life to the anxiety and defeat that the massive use of fraud and threat has planted in the very womb of Meles’s victory. One cannot deny that the struggle for democracy has become even more difficult and complicated, now that the TPLF/EPDRF has a total control of the political space. This new situation requires imagining new methods of democratic struggles and considering the suitability, in the context created by the 2010 elections, of the various ways that led to the emergence of democracy on the world-historical stage. It is also certain that the flagrant crime against democracy that 2010 election embodies henceforth is sure to strengthen the desire to act more responsibly among the democratic opposition. Indeed, this desire for democracy will also be strengthened among those members — few as they may be — of the TPLF/EPDRF who sincerely believe that democracy is the only road that could lead Ethiopia to freedom, prosperity and social justice. However, what can the democratic opposition do in the suffocating conditions created by the 2010 elections?

The democratic opposition must recognize an important principle: One cannot learn from an experience that one refuses to examine. The democratic opposition must stop engaging in what some philosophers call “interpassive activities”—activities in which one engages feverishly, even though these activities do not change anything. Since readers could identify loads of such interpassive activities by some members of the democratic opposition, I need not give examples. To escape the trap of interpassive activities, it is essential for the democratic opposition to step back from the events of 2010, reflect on why the democratic potential that manifested itself in the 2005 elections was left untapped and let to deflate itself in the lead-up to the 2010 elections, and come up with ways and methods for the future that clearly avoid the snares and errors of the last five years.

Some of these issues have been discussed in essays published on this website in the months leading to the 2010 elections. However, ideas committed to democracy will not have palpable effects unless members of the democratic opposition assume the responsibility to avoid interpassive activities and to reflect on the “whys” and “hows” of their failures in the 2010 elections before taking further steps. In his “victory” speech, Meles showed his desire to rewrite the history of the 2005 elections, betraying therefore his fear of what the 2005 elections stand for. He claimed that the “EPRDF accepted the verdict of the electorate” when it lost the 23 Addis Ababa seats in 2005. It is as if the massive man-hunt he launched to arrest opposition politicians and citizens who voiced their support for democracy, of whom his forces killed more than 200, has never taken place. Such an effort to erase from our collective memory a universally recognized event indicates that Meles is determined to prevent the resurgence of the democratic potential that lurks under the political space he has now completely invested. To engage in interpassive activities now is to help Meles bury the spirit of 2005 so that it will not buffet his 2010 elections victory and undermine, to use his words, “the next election.”

Some engage in interpassive activities with the sincere belief that Ethiopian history can be forced to hurry. Our past amply shows that this is not possible. However, Ethiopian history also shows that when Ethiopians step back, reflect on their actions and their consequences, and take stock of their situation in light of these reflections, they make Ethiopian history accelerate. It is only if members of the democratic opposition examine what they did and what they omitted to do and the consequences of these since 2005 that they could avoid interpassive activities and accelerate Ethiopia’s history towards democracy.

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The writer can be reached at [email protected]