BY GIRMACHEW GASHAW
Over the last decades, Ethiopia has been one of the leading countries contributing greatly for the peace and stability of the horn of Africa. With over 100 million population and strategic geographic location, Ethiopia, at the forefront of regional power players, remains a strategic partner of super power and other regional players in political, economic and social affairs. Equally true, Ethiopia internally has gone through the thin and thick when it comes to democratization and political transitions.
Prof. Mohamed Hassen is a political analyst and special advisor to Somalia State President. Ethiopia’s 80 years of political history. He recently conveyed message in the horn of Africa TV and put his suggestion on ways of improving democratic culture in Ethiopia.
As he scrutinizes Ethiopian political history, Prof. Mohamed puts the youth at the center of Ethiopian politics and democratic culture while discussing their role in different political transitions and change of governments.
He recalled that the country had already lost a number of youth during the regime of Haile-Selassie and the country’s dream of being a democratic state was aborted.
Most parts of the country have no access to electric power, water, telecom and other social services. And a number of youths remained jobless for years and lost their life while they were illegally transferring to other countries.
Due to weak democratic insight of Emperor Haileselassie and its cohorts, the regime was overthrown by mass movement. In the meantime, ethnic based parties were created and Oromo Liberation Front(OLF) and Tigray People Liberation Front(TPLF) were the first two parties’ organized in ethnic lines.
During that time, the military junta was the only organized groups to assume power as there were no contending political parties efficient to do so. Later on, the strong revolutionary movement of student had greatly contributed for the formation of new political parties such as EPRP and Meisson.
Because they had no strong party culture, rich experience, they couldn’t resolve their internal quandary through dialogue. By and large, the military junta has governed the country with war, famine, drought etc right after it had dismantled the Haileselassie regime. Again the youth had found itself at the center of the struggle and Derge had been facing resistances both from students and armed groups.
During the struggle against the Derge regime, TPLF promulgated a political manifesto so as to establish the Republic of Tigray State instead of coming up with democratic approach taking lessons from previous regimes. At this point, it introduced the new political manifesto; Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) was the first party to object the political thought.
ELF instead suggested that as the major objective of the struggle is responding to public inquiries of the people, by overthrowing the Derge regime, it gave advice to put the manifesto aside and fight to overthrow the Derge regime first.
Accepting the advice, TPLF again came up with the idea of the right to self-determination after it took power. Through the process, they had rejected various views of political parties and forced parties like OLF and ONLF to leave the country.
Instead of widening the political space and allowing parties to operate freely, the coalition of four parties EPRDF has established its own media outlets and intensively propagated its ideology.
Had EPRDF allowed political parties such as OLF to operate peacefully in the country, the democratic culture would have flourished in the country. Through process the then regime marginalized some groups and labeled them by giving epithets.
The government led by TPLF party was not only in quarrel with national parties, it also fought with countries in the region. The imprisonment of human right activists, mass arrests, media crackdown and oppression triggered public resentment leading to protests and unrest. Here again, the youth came up with different political thought demanding reform and opposing the ruling group.
In 2014, the youth of different states intensifying the struggle then formed alliance and led to the demise of the ruling after being forced to reshuffle its leaders. Finally, the TPLF junta, which was the main actor within EPRDF, also run and hid in Mekele town.
This political change has brought young leaders to power. I saw this as good transformational governments which enhance democratic culture using local traditions as a tool.
“The new leadership could make a difference in terms of creating moderate democratic environment yet , we have to prepare a platform for the youth and discuss the pros and cons of political history of Ethiopia and convince them that all the inconveniences can be solved through peaceful dialogue.”
He said it was not clear for him why democratic culture was not cultivated and where the weakness of the country lied. Unless we learn from our mistakes made for the past 80 and so years, drought, famine, war and displacement will continue as it has been recurrently happened in earlier days instead of investing in the wealth of the country.
This time according to the scholar the youth should be an engine of change as the country works to democratize itself. And the government must put the youth at the epicenter of its socioeconomic and political agendas. In fact, a change in Ethiopia means a change in the Horn and beyond.
“When we are working in unison, we will come up with greater ideas that can change the Horn. Ethiopians should further strengthen their unity and cooperation to help develop the Horn of Africa getting the source of sponsored conflicts dried.”
When TPLF junta was in power, some conflict entrepreneurs in the region had been supporting it to orchestrate conflicts. Following the melting down of TPLF, they were confused by the unity and cooperation of Ethiopians that ended the law enforcement operation within 15 days.
They then lobbied the European Union and others to ban aid provided to Ethiopia instead of supporting the rehabilitation tasks in Tigray. “Here, the Ethiopian people and youth have to understand that there are some organizations which sponsor chaos in the name of aid to hit their own political target.
“We have to effectively discharge our respective responsibilities to make the Horn peaceful and create jobs for the youth by carefully understanding the aforesaid fact. After all, hatred and political conspiracy doesn’t help us sustain as a sovereign state,” he said
“Instead of involving ourselves into another cycle of chaos we have to focus on addressing the long-awaited socioeconomic problems. If we want to build the new Ethiopia, we have to think about the Horn. We have to create a platform that enables the people to deliberate, work, collaborate etc. together. For this to happen, we have to work with the youth first.”
There should be a governing attitude that makes the region united. This helps the country to encompass regional attitudes.
If there regional perception, democracy can be ensures at country level. Countries must allow the flow of ideas and let democracy take root and debate on various issues should continue instead repressing freedom. They have to devise a means to change this backward tradition.
The Ethiopian Herald February 6/2021
