Dr. Costantinos Berhutesfa has worked as Senior Policy Adviser to the UN in New York and Africa, extensively involved on streamlining government policies on private sector development and public private participation. Dr. Costantinos has also served as chairperson of the African Union Board on the Convention to Prevent and Combat Corruption.
He now works in private financial consultancy firm; teaches public policy at the School of Graduate Studies at Addis Ababa University and serves as chair of several civil society and youth organisations. He has published extensively on public policy and sustainable institutional reforms.
Herald: How do you see the current reform in Ethiopia?
Costantinos: Abiy’s recent speech at Davos indicated a major shift from his party’s ideological leanings. While the Ethiopian economy is growing remarkably, a shift in macroeconomic policy can decisively contribute to high growth rates and new margins of manoeuvre for sectoral and structural policies.
The glittery feature of such percentile growth is that the contribution of real cost reduction recorded is higher than in any of the well-performing emerging markets. Notwithstanding a state model that accords primacy to macroeconomic stability, Ethiopia’s growth potential is yet to be mobilised. Structural transformation will in effect involve unchaining self-reinforcing policy trajectories and a coordinated change in the composition and level of public and private sector investments.
While significant growth achievements have been recorded, it faces predictable armour of trials rife in poor nations with too few mechanism and wherewithal, while also wrestling with the perennial problem of sequencing policy reforms, all subject to doctrinal reins. Given the very slim boundaries for manoeuvre imposed by ideology and a complex interlace in its political fabric, getting the priorities right are the central issues to be addressed.
Herald: What do you think are the major changes brought about by the current government?
Costantinos: April 2018 – April 2019 was an eventful year for Ethiopia. PM Abiy has thrown a blowlamp into the heart of Horn of Africa and Ethiopian society and polity, nerve-wracking the terms of engagement of martial titans and thrown the centre of gravity of the Red Sea arena of war into unprecedented peace trajectory.
The way he deconstructed the power monsters of the Horn region is purely ontological. Under PM Abiy, his ruling party has widened the political space allowing opposition and opponents to operate legally (though some of them are not working so legally). The media has seen a renaissance. You can refer to The Economist, 16 March 2019, “Ink by the barrel in Addis Ababa – Press freedom in Ethiopia has blossomed. Will it last?” The Horn of Africa is moving towards peace (Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia…) moves towards peace and reconciliation have been started.
This strategy of conjectural rise of political liberalisation in a rough neighbourhood of the Horn is going to be a seminal lesson in international relations
and in political science. To reduce this action to some power mongering aim on behalf of the PM as constructed by his critics is too simplistic. There was a sense of aggravation among the citizens of the Horn that have not seen peace in decades and he seems to be tending to this vexation with gales that are fuelling the inferno of political transformation.
There are costs to be paid but as is usual with such change, it enters politics and society in relatively abstract and plain form, yet pundits expect it to land itself to the immediate and vital local polity’s socio-political experience. It suggests itself, and seems within reach, only to elude and appears readily practicable only to resist realisation.
Herald: Despite success stories, there are still challenges the country is facing. What is your view on this?
Costantinos: Ethiopia’s population is estimated by projection 107.5 million, while total fertility rate is (4) four in 2018. While population explosion could be a dividend, the economic carrying capacity has resulted in human insecurity. Ethiopia has seen the highest number of people forced to flee their homes within their country in the first half of 2018, according to the IDMC report on global displacement.
Despite the successes of the new charismatic Prime Minister Abiy, some regions are locked up in a round of violence. On the peace arena, according to Mehari Maru, Ethiopia’s five peace and security pillars have been under stress. These are a collective social psychology of uninterrupted statehood and martial potency; a consensus-based federalism of cultures; economic delivery that brought popular legitimacy; support from the international community and lastly, the threat posed by hostile forces.
Herald :What do you suggest so as to make the ongoing reforms fruitful and sustainable?
Costantinos: In1991, in the wake of the end of thirty years of civil war, an historic moment, ripe with challenges and opportunities, had emerged in Ethiopia.
It is a challenge, because, for a third time in a generation, we were faced with the daunting task of building up new and equitable relationships; and hence the litmus test to our ability to participate in reshaping the future of a nation. It was also an opportunity for Ethiopians to marshal their experience and knowledge to play a constructive role in national development.
Today, Ethiopians live in an era where the environment has been marginalised to a point where cultural make-up, community value and organisational sub-systems of a once robust civil society have been dismantled. This has bred a socio-entity that has wildly spun off their axis – bitterly compromising traditional latitudes of survival that civil society curved as niche for so long.
Spurred by the political space that has opened up in the past year, a growing number of people’s organisations and advocacy groups are springing up all over the country; their programme reaching across communities, helping mobilise an otherwise untapped human and material resources base and becoming increasingly influential actors and alternative conduits for channelling development assistance. The requisite commitment to participate in development – to ending poverty and promoting human dignity has never been more opportune and feasible.
Future development trends must be based on a negotiating trend that accords people’s organisations increased roles aimed at evolving a broad based consensus on availing a third dimension to government and the burgeoning private sector in the transformation to democracy, peace and development: a shift from the politics of indifference and denial to that of self-empowerment and self-assertion.
Nevertheless, are community-based groups prepared to appropriate this transformation? Do they have the social constitution that is basic to the new mission of a living vision we are grooming ourselves for? How far should the Government assist the growth of civic organisations to fulfil the dictates of this new vision?
The wave of grassroots movements that fought for justice against single-party self-declared ‘democracy’, a miscarriage of the legitimate role of governance, have won the battle. Nevertheless, the long road to sustainable democracy that would ensure sustainable livelihoods based on a conscious, organised and committed populace is far from us.
It is now widely acknowledged that the bloated bureaucratic machinery, which encouraged its encroachment of civic space in the name of a developmental state, thrived on graft and influence peddling for the benefit of the powerful elite, rendering the poor powerless, voiceless, and effectively disenfranchising people from participating in the decision-making processes.
Herald: How do you see the geopolitics in the Horn of Africa?
Costantinos: The Horn of Africa is one of the most geostrategic regions in the world due to its location along the Bab el Mandeb strait that connects the Gulf of Aden with the Red Sea. It is one of two maritime chokepoints (the other being the Suez Canals) that link Europe with South, Southeast, and East Asia. All sea bound trade between Europe and Eurasia must transit through its narrow passage.
As could be expected, this makes control over the strait a heightened prize for any power or combination thereof, and it is not for naught that most Great Powers scrambled their navies to the region ostensibly to combat piracy.
The Horn of Africa region, central to the world’s maritime trade, was indeed beginning to fall apart with wars in Yemen, Somalia, Ethio-Eritrea conflict, Djibouti-Eritrea conflict, etc. Indeed, until recently, the Horn nations adequately fulfilled the criteria of failing polities as the indicators of the Fund for Peace show– demographic ‘pressures, refugees and IDPs, vengeance-seeking group, human flight, uneven economic development, severe economic decline, de-legitimisation of the state, state within a state, public services deterioration, violation of human rights, factionalised elites rise, and external political actors.
These are states, which lacked viable institutional pillars and a robust meritocratic system consequential as a tried and tested route to success in constitutional self-governance.
Recently,
under Abiy’s initiative, leaders of Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea who have
never come face to face to build peace in the Horn have now been invited by the
charismatic Premier, Abiy.
Now that the Horn of Africa nations that share the same history have pledged to make peace and regional integration. Regional integration involves hard infrastructure – large physical networks necessary for the functioning of modern industrial nations and soft infrastructure refers to all the institutions, which are required to maintain the economic, health, and cultural and social standards of a sub-region.
Herald : What do you say on Ethiopia’s image the international arena?
Costantinos: While PM Abiy has successfully, transformed Ethiopia’s international relations and put it in the democratic map and the many heads of state and government visits Ethiopia has received. Nevertheless, serious allegations of neglect of internal clashes and the resulting displacement have become an Achilles hill for his government. This must be addressed immediately by enforcing law and order.
Herald: What is your judgment about the ruling party, EPRDF?
Costantinos: Obviously, the new Abiy administration has severe governance challenges both from within and from outside of the ruling coalition. It seems increasingly less likely that PM Abiy will manage to maneuver the ship under its current ‘reduced’ crew towards the promised land of free and fair election in May 2020. As the situation now stands, EPRDF under ODP/ADP is more in need of (the three coalition members of the EPRDF), than the other way around.
A restored, cohesive, and confident EPRDF would likely manage to impose a semblance of security and order prior to the elections. As such, most Ethiopians would welcome it. A consolidated and confident EPRDF, with a reinvigorated security apparatus, will on the other hand be a formidable opponent in the election process.
Whether this would be conducive to fostering genuine pluralism and allowing free and fair elections is doubtful. Comparative politics indicates that for genuine democracy to develop in post-revolutionary societies (as Ethiopia), the resistance movement needs to break down and fragment from within. In such a perspective to foster long-term pluralist democracy in Ethiopia, and keeping security and stability concerns aside, one may rather hope for an ending as the one in the old nursery rhythm: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.”
Herald: Any idea about the upcoming elections?
Costantinos: the single most important influence over how political devolution and democratic decentralisation has been conceived, initiated and is currently being constitutionally formalised is the politics of ethnic self-determination and self-government favoured by the transition rules and institutions.
The national liberation struggle and the particular form of political consciousness acquired at the inception and in the course of that struggle have made ethnic-based national self-determination the linchpin of the new political order strategy. Consistent with this strategy, the Front has undertaken a major restructuring of the state, cutting it up into regional governments based on ethnic identity. Nevertheless, this is not to suggest that the strategy is uncontroversial or uncontested. On the contrary, it has provoked a lot of controversy and criticism.
Today in Ethiopia, major political parties are organised along ethnic and regional lines arising the danger of mutual mistrust and polarisation. If the previous election is any indication, one must question whether there is unity and solidarity of the communities in Ethiopia, sufficiently strong to allow the free play of competitive interest, without endangering the unity of the country itself.
The democratic experiment so far tried has tended to reinforce the ethnic division in the society and has aggravated group polarisation. Having said this, however it does not mean that Ethiopia’s ethnic heterogeneity will inevitably lead to the breakdown of the pluralistic 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.
The empirical task in ensuring free and fair elections entails answering three electoral questions – electoral quantity, electoral quality and electoral meaning. But the main question that comes to mind is how could civil society empowerment and other democratic projects pursue their goals consistently in varying contexts, but do so without resorting to a self defeating, overly scripted and stage- managed political “play”?
The Ethiopian Herald April 14/2011
BY MEHARI BEYENE
