Most major political parties organized along ethnic and regional lines arouse the danger of mutual mistrust and polarization. A proper resolution through dialogue and education is not only decisive for deepening and broadening the democratic unity of Ethiopia; but also an agenda long overdue, so said by scholar.
Former United Nations Policy advisor in New York, Dr. Costantinos Berhutesfa said that if the recent elections and the compartmentalization of reaction to them is any indication, one must question whether there is unity and solidarity of our communities, sufficiently strong to allow the free play of competitive interests. The political experiment so far tried may have been seen to reinforce the ethnic division in the society and aggravate group polarization. As a result of this, there is nowdeep division and heated debate about the wisdom of ethnic based politicization of the country.
He went to say that some groups in the political system advocate and press for the regional administrative division of the country along ethnic lines as a realistic and lasting solution for the country›s ethnic problems. While many others fear and worry that, this would jeopardize the country’ unity and ignite centrifugal implosion of the nation.
He indicated that it does not mean that Ethiopias ethnic heterogeneity will inevitably lead to the breakdown of the democratic process. Multi-party democracy is not incompatible with national unity and in fact if it is well adhered to, might be a lasting remedy to the problem of ethnicity. Moreover, there are too many instances in the history of the country, which prove the transcendence of ethno-centrism, and narrow linguistic and religious affiliations, which could be quoted as examples.
For a lot of intellectuals that have grown to idolize our blood-soaked nation, a much tortured earth that is proud of its tenacity and strength of struggle against both internal and external tyranny, we see it as probably the only fair stamp of the varied trajectories of our Ethiopianness. For those compatriots that have paid in blood, their country speaks in tongues with its varied peoples, but its language is universal. It speaks against the cruelty of privilege, of intolerance, and that nation-consuming power-lust that has equally corroded the essence of leadership, he added.
According to him, it has brought to light that power cannot be negotiated: that it must be tamed. It is an acquired instinct to recognize differences between the rulers and ruled, between dominance and free will and between coercion and collaboration. It is to identify the correlation of all such polarities with the rights and responsibilities of the individual within the community; of which every individual is not simply a part, but a fundamental unit.
He capitalized that with a genuine and dedicated endeavor on the part of the political leadership, democratization process under one geographical entity and nationhood could be preserved. The political leadership can be said to have instituted a new paradigm of political discourse, agency and ideology; this is not to suggest that the strategy is uncontroversial or uncontested. For many, particularly but by no means exclusively the elite, the values, sentiments and symbols of our unity they cherished and took for granted have suddenly become objects of controversy and deconstruction. Many grumble that more than that it is our everyday social and economic life, which has come under stress and strain in the highly ethnicized political order.
He mentioned that the single most important influence over how political liberalisation in Ethiopia has been conceived, initiated and is being formalised is the politics of ethnicity. The urban and rural liberation war waged by the people of Ethiopia and the particular form of political consciousness acquired at the inception and in the course of that struggle has made ethnic-based self-determination the linchpin of the democratisation strategy.
He added said that consistent with this strategy, a major restructuring of the Ethiopian polity has been undertaken, setting the foundation for and cutting it up into a score of regional governments based on linguistic, ethnic and cultural identity. Although swiftly executed, the strategy appears to have been effective not only in allowing to carry out a specific political agenda and ideological goal; but also in setting the tone for institutionalising political agency and activities of alternative and opposition groups.
As to him, we also need to be alive to the fact that Ethiopia is not a newly coined lingo. It traces its history back more than three thousand years; though the territory and the ethnic groups it embraced have varied from time to time depending upon the outcome of battles fought among internal rivalry kingdoms and against external invaders. It is a populist minority of elite that have mouths wider than the majority of the oppressed. It is a populist minority that requires a specific distancing from the very vulnerable society for their own egoistic complication and safe livelihoods abroad and in country.
“It is a populist minority that requires the mystification, the dogmatic complication of the relationship of the individual to community, in order to magnify their own individual sense of being. In other words, the ruled, that is, the majority, constantly find themselves confronted by the deliberate, purely opportunistic paradox of being castigated as victims of the very disease with which that power-hungry minority is incurably afflicted — a heightened anti-social individualism, indeed, Solipsism he noted.
He indicated that because the idea of self-determination has radically transformed the old image of Ethiopia and replaced it with a completely new vision of national unity, it may have raised worries and fears among certain social strata in the country and very prominently among the Diaspora. The response from the populist elite has been, for most that radiate from the multi-ethnic, multilingual and multi-religious nature of the formation of our nation. This is a threat to the lingering ambition of hitherto dominant groups to impose their wills by way of coerced unity and uniformity. This has resulted in deep ethnic hostility and national division varying in degrees ranging from self-determination to outright secession.
He remarked that notwithstanding the doubts and worries it has raised, ethnocentric nationalism remains the bedrock of the democratisation strategy; representing a larger issue having to do with the restructuring of the polity as a whole. It is not one of simply changing or improving the position and status of nationalities, or, in simpler terms, ethnic groups; but the radical transformation of the values, traditions and institutions of the Ethiopian state itself in its historic and contemporary forms. It is wrestling at once with the question of the self determination of nationalities and the vision our unity based on equality, connected with it.
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition 24/2020
BY MEHARI BEYENE
