The Charter: The way forward for Ethiopians
By Agere Aleme
Oct 19, 2006 — If one rationally considers designing a policy for democratic development of Ethiopia, this nation has the most needed resources and vital ingredients necessary for change and rapid progress. In essence Ethnic pluralism, if handled in the right direction is an asset to the well-being of a nation that considers diversity as its beauty and bounty of wealth. As each of the nearly eighty or so ethnic groups has its own unique features rooted in its language, culture, rituals and value systems that provide a basis for great diversity in the Ethiopian society.
Obviously, the Ethiopian population is a large social group integrated by a combination of several kinds of objective relationships (economic, political, linguistic, cultural, religious, geographical, historical), and their subjective reflections in collective consciousness. Many of the Ethiopian peoples’ ties could be mutually substitutable, but, among them, three basic factors stand out as irreplaceable:
(i) Memories of certain common episodes of the past treated as the destiny of the Ethiopian people – a case in point is the collective reaction of the Ethiopian people against foreign aggressions.
(ii) (A density of linguistic or cultural ties enabling a higher degree of social communication within the group than beyond it; – that our people are inter-mixed by marriage, religion and by professional ties to stand as one people, under one flag, and one national assembly – either Federal or Central in context.
(iii) A conception of the equality of all members of the Ethiopian people organized as a civil society under one entity – Ethiopia.
The ethnic based self-determination agenda that is being propagated by each of the liberation fronts is not Ethiopia’s most acute problem as each ethnic group is free since the late 1970s to exercise its language, culture, rituals and value systems more openly.
However, the ethnic-led divisive politics followed by various liberation fronts remains as a stumbling block and as a fear factor that may eventually result in great sufferings, havoc and violence. The Separatist political activists devote their energy and time to disseminate awareness of their respective ethnic group’s linguistic, cultural, social and sometime historical attributes that may help them lay the basis for the subsequent formation of a “national identity”. These activists further attempt to win as many of their ethnic group as possible by agitating their respective ethnic groups to join the project of creating a future nation through mass-movement in which the major part of the ethnic population stores their special national identity. They even go to the extent of heralding for the birth of an imagined nation state within “Horn of Africa” – by intentionally avoiding indicating the actual geographical entity – Ethiopia; and by down playing the Ethiopian national dignity. These ethnically fueled fronts claim their respective nationhood based on theory of colonialism and colonial history. Particularly, the OLF, lead by Tilahun Gemta – a one time teacher at Haile Selassie / Addis Ababa University, introduced Latin alphabet in the Oromo language, it considered this Latin alphabet (Qubee) as its asset.
As Professor Mesfin Wolde Mariam reiterated in his recent manifesto against TPLF, ethnicity is a poisonous scheme designed to tear Ethiopian apart and atomize and confine each ethnic group within the bounds of its isolated communities.
Actually, Ethnic liberation philosophy begs for development of Ethiopia’s underdevelopment. If left- in liaise faire for long – Ethiopia will eventually turn into similar bloodbath that we observe today in Iraq; it will disintegrate as a nation and disappear as an old civilization site and as a geopolitical entity. In spreading this poisonous ethnic-focused politics Ethiopia’s main enemy is Shaabia, the mother of all ethnic based troubles as it spearheaded and created several ethnic groups inside its training camps in Eritrea including: TPLF, OLF, ONLF, and other ethnic or religiously founded fronts. These days we even hear of EPPF, AFD and others that have clearly linked themselves to Shaabia – the mother of all tribal troubles in Ethiopia.
Tribalism and isolationist ideology is a sign of development of under-development. A society that attempts to go the underdevelopment direction is doomed to its failure. Tribalism emanates from philosophy of poverty. It pushes the country to weakness. As it is the product of poverty, it is based on poverty of philosophy. Let us follow the wide world way and establish democracy on a non-ethnic, non-religious, non-linguistic preference based on universal suffrage. Let us focus on philosophy that helps remedy poverty and ignorance. To do so we have to unlearn what we have learnt from the poisonous tribal fronts like Shaabia, TPLF, OLF, ONLF, and the likes and march towards the affluent society line.
In essence Ethiopians of all ethnic groups and all walks of life should strive to unite under a central or a federal government on an equal basis with mutual respect and recognition of each other’s languages, cultures, civil rights and with regional, local application of genuine democracy, equality, market economy and privatization of the economy. Each individual should go for a more democratic principled unity based on genuine equality in every aspect, contrary to what the separatist, secessionist, liberation fronts like the TPLF, OLF, and others keep on preaching.
In order to bring genuine democracy to Ethiopia, we should reform and devise a charter and a framework of democratic policy that can allow each of the opposition political groups to freely participate in politics, solve the Ethiopian problem to the collective satisfaction of the Ethiopian people, resolve the residues of ethnic conflicts immediately, reform the economy to encourage investment, and maintain law and order through a professional police force that respects the human and civil rights of all Ethiopian peoples in the country.
In affluent societies where you have a high level of political culture and experience, conflicts of interests are often articulated in political terms not in ethnic terms. Issues of human and civil right are, therefore, important for national integration, progress and national development.
To conclude, theoretically speaking, the basic precondition of all ethnic based national movements is based on philosophical short-sightedness where underdevelopment is appreciated as opposed to progress. It perpetuates havoc, regression and segregation; it preaches isolationism by separating the ethnic group from its neighboring ethnic groups; it eventually creates deep crisis on the national political order, with the breakdown of its legitimacy, and of the values and sentiments that sustained and cemented the peoples of Ethiopia for centuries. This crisis is further combined with economic depression and wide spread poverty, illiteracy, social decline, generating increasing popular fear factors and national distress. Ethnic-led politics is the outcome of poverty based on narrow-minded outlook into national matters. It is both philosophy of poverty and poverty of philosophy.
A crucial element of the ethnic led movement is the prevalence of low level of political culture and experience particularly among the narrow-minded ethnic elite. The coincidence of these above mentioned factors unleashes ethnic movements to carry out terrorist attacks on peaceful communities as it happened in recent years at Assossa, Arba Guggu and several other places. The remedy against this danger is prevalence of unconditional democracy and economic prosperity in Ethiopia. We can start this homework by further working in depth on the Charter that is under circulation at the moment in this Forum.
* The author is a freelance Consultant on Conflict Resolution, Good Governance and Humanitarian Support issues. He can be reached at [email protected]