BY FITSUM GATACHEW
The temperature may be still low but many people in Ethiopia do know by now that the country is going to enter an active phase of an election period in just less than six months. 2013 Ethiopian Calendar year could be labeled election year.
We all know the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia has already decided that the election which was scheduled for last Ethiopian year has been postponed for this year.
A few weeks ago the election board has declared the exact schedule and preliminary preparations are underway. Chairperson Bertukan Midekssa has presented the schedule and made several recommendations and passed directions to all stakeholders of the election. Clearly, this is a busy period for all those who are bent to take part in the polls.
Now many issues are raised when we think of elections. Who are the stakeholders in this round of elections besides of course the most prominent one which is the National Electoral Board itself? Most of the activities that have to do with the election naturally begins and ends with the Board. It is the one which sets the rules regarding who is eligible to take part in the elections and under what conditions.
It supervises over the fulfillment of all the pre-requisites and preconditions that contending parties must meet. But the Board itself will be accountable to the parliament which in a democracy is the supreme body entrusted with public trust.
The other main protagonists are of course the ones who are vying for office or power by winning the votes of the public. These are the political parties besides those personalities who may take part in the elections in personal capacity as independent candidates. Which political parties will take part in the polls and when shall each party seek votes, in which constituency?
We all know that there are now two types of parties in Ethiopia and that is parties that contest elections at regional level and those taking part at federal level. Since the introduction of the current constitution which has divided the country into ethnic based or language based regional states, the issue of ethnic representation has dominated the political discourse in the country.
For almost thirty years the country was ‘made to think’ in terms of ethnic group rather than one citizenship under the banner of Ethiopia. This has given rise to a number of issues which have turned out to be very volatile paving the way for some extremist elements who have begun to think in terms of ethnic group and language. We have had reports of attacks on those people who happen to live in an area where their mother tongue or ethnic origin seems to be the wrong one!
The idea of dividing the country in various ethnic based regions was promoted in the name of a narrative that Ethiopians have been mistreated by their governors or political elite who were perceived to be of only one language group and one faith.
The political group that was in power after the fall of the military regime that substituted the monarchy has been actively promoting ethnic based politics.
It is natural that it not only undermined the unity and integrity of the country but has also encouraged suspicions if not outright animosities among communities who had been living together harmoniously independently of who the leadership or aristocracy or elites may have been. History has taught us that in general peaceful cohabitation among various communities has always been the rule rather than the exception in our country irrespective of differences in origin or language.
Frankly speaking, it was clear that such arrangement was a result of a long term strategy aimed at eternally ruling the country by playing one ethnic group against the others.
That was the way devised to control unscrupulously all expressions of power such as the armed forces, the security apparatus, the economy and the resources in the most systematic of ways.
In fact, for three decades Ethiopia has experienced the most ruthless types of administration that seemed to enjoy playing one ethnic group against another, one region against another one so that the upper hand is controlled firmly by those in the leadership circle.
Ethnic politics has forced the country into severe unnecessary rivalries and everything that is carried out in the country has been considered only from the perspective of ethnic affiliation. Rivalries and animosities have been deliberately exploited by fanning more and more differences and enmity.
Several vicious and venomous narrations have been peddled by those who were in power and now that the basis itself of the country is seriously challenged we must be advised to sit back and reconsider things from a fresh perspective.
Over the past years, we have seen in black and white what sort of atrocities have been committed against innocent people in various so-called regional states and the very existence of the country as one sovereign entity has been put in serious doubt. And it was such reality that has exposed us to various forms of attacks by alien forces!
Ethiopians were treated to the most heinous of crimes just because a few self righteous and dangerous extremists, a few so called activists of a certain ethnic group, a language group or faith group believed or were led to believe that those Ethiopian nationals were living in the wrong side of the country! And yet these people do not have any other place to go and live. We all know today that there are millions of Ethiopians living abroad ‘feeling at home’ because they have been adopted by the place where they have been living for years.
The simplest instance would be the US. There we find hundreds of thousands of second and third generation Ethiopians who are living there undisturbed as they are now full-fledged Americans.
No one even dreams of attacking them to force them to return to where they came from. And yet this is what is being demanded here in our own backyard with Ethiopians living in their own land, in a place where they were born and raised!
What we have been experiencing during the past years has been a manifestation of such dreadful mentality which has tried to divide the country into linguistic and ethnic origins and treating people who are not considered ‘native’ with violence.
It has been a result of a certain narrative politically exploited to seek and gain cheap approval, motivated by emotional appeals rather than reason.
Now, there seems now to emerge a general trend to reach a certain consensus on reviewing such system. There is no doubt that it must be the first thing to change now that a new constitution seems imperative and indispensable. Obviously, the country cannot afford to entertain such false narrative that was created and advanced by the nefarious forces in power for three decades.
Today, we must realize that the premises for the ethnic arrangement were not only false but we were also deliberately pushed to the extreme tarnishing the history of the country with only invented stories and narratives motivated by grudge and revenge.
The old order has tried to rewrite history glorifying its own deeds and dismissing the glorious past of Ethiopia as a myth or pure legend. And yet there is ample scientific evidence which can corroborate what these extremists sustained was all false and only politically motivated and engineered.
Now that the EPRDF TPLF system is done and dusted people have begun to think of a country that needs a fresh start. For that to happen it needs to discredit and dismiss the old narrative and promote a new spirit of nationhood, not of division along ethnic or religious lines.
Many observers suspect that the incumbent being an offshoot of the old system, it must now show that it has reached the stage where it should come out totally of the shell of EPRDF TPLF inspired existence and help give birth to a new Ethiopia based on a multiplicity of ethnically diverse people, on the basis of equality and justice. Many assert beside the rhetoric we constantly hear about a fresh start, we really need to put into practice what we preach.
Unity needs a fresh beginning and the election could give us the best occasion for such overture. We need to abandon the old mentality once and for all and adopt a new one where all citizens will be accepted in a new country, living wherever they feel like, and not be confined to certain ‘regions’ prescribed to them.
Administrative units must be a reflection of administrative convenience and not one of ethnicity or language. Ideas must be given the chance to prevail and not belonging to this or that origin which is in truth rudimentary and disrespectful of human dignity.
We are now living in an epoch when people cannot any more be weighed based on their origin or what language they speak. It is now common practice that they are weighed by their knowledge, their wisdom, their qualifications, their merit and the ideas or thoughts they create, through their mentality.
If we cannot achieve such attitude readily and make of it our guideline for the future, we may risk to enter a cycle of endless and futile disagreements and disputes over zones, woredas or regions and a quantity of other issues alleging ownership or possession rights which are all impractical for the kind of challenges we face on a daily basis. Hence as we move into the election period we need to straighten certain records for the benefit and good of all.
The Ethiopian Herald January 31/2021
