History will always remember British PM Neville Chamberlain waving a
piece of paper, on which rested the signatures of Hitler and himself,
as he proclaimed to an eager world, “peace for our time.” The setting
was September 1938, a mere nineteen years after the horrors of the
First World War had finally ended, and when Europe faced the dreaded
prospect of yet another round of cataclysmic continental war. But only
six months later, in March 1939, the greatest war the world has ever
seen engulfed Europe. The “peace for our time” was no more than a
mirage despite numerous concessions to Europe’s dictatorships. Ever
since then, Chamberlain’s policy of avoiding war at any cost—to buy
temporary peace—has been universally vilified.
Truth to be told though, the policy of appeasement, which insisted on
peace at any cost, and was an outgrowth of mass hysteria induced by
the horrors of the First World War, was very popular in Europe and
North America between 1918 and 1939. In fact, when Chamberlain
returned to Britain from Munich in 1938 with the peace agreement
between Britain and Fascist Germany that he waved to the world (at the
expense of Czechoslovakia’s annihilation, by the way), he was greeted
as a hero. He was even invited to Buckingham’s Palace, in an unusual
gesture of royal approval, before he reported to Parliament. Only
Winston Churchill, who was to replace Chamberlain as British PM in
1940, after the outbreak of war in 1939, was a notable dissenter. And
indeed, as Churchill had feared, the policy of appeasement only made
things worse by leading the Nazis to believe that their belligerence
will always be met by further concessions. In the end, it needed a
world war to put an end to this vicious circle in which aggression was
always mollified by concession.
The parallel between the two decades liaison between the EPRDF and the
legal opposition; and Nazi Germany and Europe’s democracies in the
run-up to the Second World War is salient. There is much to be learned
from this history.
Of course, this is by no means a call to arms against the EPRDF, as
Churchill did against Fascist Germany. I am thinking of what is
possible, appropriate and desirable strictly within the confines of
the peaceful and constitutional parameters. But this is a protest
against the sentiment of appeasement, in the aftermath of EPRDF’s 99.6
% election “victory”, which is threatening to overwhelm the legal
opposition because it is on the verge of surrendering all peaceful and
legal protests beyond mere electoral engagement—be it in the guise
of lack of preparedness or moderation.
EPRDF’s 99.6% electoral “victory” is the upshot of a two decades war
of aggression against the peaceful opposition. This campaign stirred
circumspectly in the early and mid-90s; achieved some level of
confidence and comfort in the late 90’s and early 2000’s; gained
trajectory in the aftermath of the 2005 elections; and finally peaked(
hopefully!) in the 2010 elections. It was the same with the Nazis.
They tasted the water with an illegal rearmament and push into the
Rhine; achieved comfort with the Austrian Anschluss; gained trajectory
with Czechoslovakia’s demise; and finally peaked with the invasion of
Poland when they were finally resisted.
EPRDF first explored how far it could go with a series of clever ploys
against its coalition partners in the transitional government of the
early 90s, against which opposition parties were disastrously unable
to react in unison. When the EPRDF was able to see how much it was
able to get away with, it acquired enough audacity to orchestrate a
blatantly farce constitutional enactment process. Its dubious outcome
was not to be earnestly challenged both locally and internationally
and was appeased with cynical resignation. The motion of aggression
went on to achieve a level of cruise comfort when the nation’s first
“multi-party” election was held absent major opposition groups; only
to be hailed for its “historic achievement” by the international
community. The opposition, for its part, could muster no more stamina
than to look ahead to 2000, when the second round of elections were
scheduled to be held, to score some victories. (Not to win the
election, mind you. No one dared to hope that much.) In 1998, however,
war broke out with Eritrea, and the quest for national unity, not
democratic reforms, took precedence; to which the legal opposition
patriotically acquiesced. And thus passed the 2000 elections dominated
by the EPRDF’s unchallenged sense of entitlement.
By 2005, a few years after the end of the Ethio-Eritrean war, and
fourteen years after EPRDF’s rule, both the opposition and the public
were ready for change. A crisis ridden EPRDF, undermined by the
implosion of its core leadership, in the TPLF, its strongest
constituent member, was unsure of its intent and direction and
loosened its grip briefly; which led to its swift trashing at the
polls. Its reaction was instinctive, overt and merciless.
The legal opposition was divided on how to react. Part of it
calculated that the time to resist had come, that this was EPRDF’s
Rubicon, which if it is allowed to cross by stealing an election it
had lost, will be the point of no return for it. But a sizable element
of the opposition, along with the entirety of the international
community, felt that the aggression of the EPRDF, though outrageous,
had to be placated by appeasement yet one more time. And this was all
the opening that the EPRDF needed to maximize what it had began
intuitively—it progressively decimated the opposition, the free
press and the civil society in 2005 and subsequent years. And sadly
for the appeasers, just as each act of appeasement had only increased
the appetite of the Nazis for more belligerence; so had the
appeasement of 2005 only augmented the craving of the EPRDF for more
repression and power. In other words, just as the annihilation of
Czechoslovakia was not enough to pacify the Nazis and only led to
further aggression against Poland; the concession of 2005’s election
to the EPRDF only begot its determination—by what ever means
necessary—to trash the opposition in the 2010 elections.(Though the
99.6 % “victory” was attained inadvertently.) Appeasement bred
aggression.
The Nazis thought they could get away with Poland, too. They sued for
peace after instigating their invasion, but Chamberlain could not
oblige them. Both the public and the bulk of his party were against
additional concessions. But it is not clear whether he really had
change of heart. His Foreign Minister, Lord Halifax, was urging the
Poles to accept the Nazis’ demand up to the last minute. The Poles, of
course, rejected his advice and plunged the Nazis in to a world war
before they had become too strong to be defeated.
The lesson form this tale is clear for Ethiopia’s opposition. Each
concession to the EPRDF’s belligerence had made it progressively
stronger and more aggressive, as was the case with the Nazis in the
1930s. But war and violence are not an option for the legal
opposition, as it was for Europe’s democracies. Out of necessity, and
to realize a very necessary break with the nation’s deeply ingrained
heritage of political violence, the only suitable option for the legal
opposition is within the peaceful and constitutional framework. But
participating in elections is not the only means of political
engagement in democracies, and even the Ethiopian constitution
acknowledges that much. Election participation has become the veil
under which lie a debilitating culture of inertia and appeasement in
the opposition camp. The legal opposition needs to be saved for the
sake of the country, and for that to happen the veil must be lifted
and the problems that lies underneath resolved.
