Comment On Professor Clapham's Response To Dr. Tekeda

By Kassa Kebede(Ph.D) Dec 12, 2005 Professor Clapham, in your response to Dr. Tekeda you suggest your aim has been to explore weaknesses in the government's position that manifested themselves in the elections and their aftermath, and ask how there are to be explained. It might be easier if you were rather better informed. There are serious omissions and errors in your reply. Indeed, your uncritical dependence upon opposition claims is so great it would appear that you have not been in Ethiopia recently, and certainly not during the election period. Indeed, if I am not mistaken you haven't carried out any serious research here in Ethiopia since mid-2002- I have to say it shows. You claim that in commenting upon government failures you did not intend to express unqualified support for the opposition and/or the CUD. But this is exactly what you have done, especially in suggesting your three options: that the government should give up power peacefully, or violently or retain its hold on power by repression. There are surely other options, not least that the government might hold onto power peacefully. Given the attitude of the CUD (have you read the articles of its supporters on the Internet?) your alternatives can only be described as extraordinarily dangerous. And given your reputation it is ingenuous to think you would not have an impact. You apparently believe that there is no link between those in the Diaspora "with no need to adapt their comments to political realities "and those who engage "with great courage in democratic politics in Ethiopia ". This is hardly the case - the contracts, the links, the financing, and, yes the threats against those prepared to be brave enough to join parliament, are matters of public record. The comments from the diaspora, many of which would lead to prosecution for incitement to racial hatred in your own country relate very closely to opposition politics here in Ethiopia. If you are serious in suggesting you have no reason to believe that CUD leaders are so foolish as to want to reconstruct the "kind of relationship between government and nationalities existing under Haile Selassie or the Derg" then you clearly haven't read much of the material put out by the CUD, particularly that in Amharic or listened to their speeches. This is exactly why the CUD elements of the opposition could never have won the election. Their policies are aimed precisely at the minority who do look back to the Amhara-centric vision of the past. They want to see Article 39 removed, and changes made in the constitution that would radically change the current federation. These are people who claim that the whole purpose of the EPRDF's imaginative policy (your phrase) to deal with the problem of nationalities in Ethiopia was the destruction of the Ethiopian state. It is very clear you have failed to study the opposition, its leadership, its make-up, policies or aims in any detail. You claim that the EPRDF has failed to translate its achievements into electoral support. To some degree this is clearly true, but your analysis is based upon CUD claims of victory, not on electoral returns, and on a worryingly ignorant confusion of the CUD with the UEDF, OFDM and others. The CUD did not win electoral support outside certain specific areas. This is clear from the most superficial analysis of the returns and from the reports of the AU, Carter Center, ERIS and others, indeed even the EU. It is true that the EU observers were more numerous than others, but the numbers were still entirely insufficient. Any one who claims to give results of the election from the EU monitoring and observation reports can only be wholly mistaken. Certainly there was, as even the government admits, a considerable amount of fraud and intimidation. There was a massive protest vote, not surprisingly, as you note, against a government that has been in power for so long, and which has failed to solve the intractable problems of poverty, employment and food. But this certainly didn't translate into support for the CUD except in the urban areas and in the Amhara region. The CUD failed to gain any significant support in Oromia (with the exception of Addis Ababa where there was strong protest vote over the moving of the capital of Oromo region to Adama), or in much of the South, and in the Afar, Somali, Tigrai, Beni-Shangul Gumuz and Gambella regions. In the urban areas, including Dire Dawa, Harar and Addis Ababa, the CUD gained the protest vote, but as any analysis of the vote in Addis Ababa demonstrates it was UEDP-Medihn and Rainbow, particularly the former, which were the main architect of its success, not AEUP. This holds true for all the urban areas, though of course the substantial Amhara element in the cities made a significant difference in all of the main towns. Incidentally, you suggest that urban development has been limited to a very few cities. Actually, as you must be aware, we don't have very many cities, but there have certainly been some impressive changes in Gondar, Bahr Dar, Dire Dawa, Harar, Makelle, Adua, Dessie, Awassa, Shashemene, Dilla, Nazareth and Addis Ababa; almost all the main cities, in recent years. Jobs, of course, do remain at a premium, I agree. Nobody here would dispute that the main CUD support came from the Amhara and that its policies were designed to attract Amhara support. This is not enough to give, victory. The other main area of omission is your failure to look at the support for the EPRDF. This is far wider than opposition allegations would suggest or than you appear to think. There are significant number of reasons why people might vote for the EPRDF, whether in Oromia, despite the activities of the OLF (grossly exaggerated by the OLF outside Ethiopia), or in the Amhara region where there are all sorts of regional variations - and where the ANDM certainly does have strong support in some areas. Don't be misled by your own obvious dislike to Bereket Simon to assume this can necessarily be translated into widespread support for the AEUP. Your analysis would benefit if you could bring yourself to allow some skepticism of opposition claims, and were prepared to look at the EPRDF's claims with some degree of impartiality. I have to say that I do not see how you can regard Professor Levine in the US as an accurate source for the electoral process. And on this subject, the point about Ana Gomes' work is not whether she did brave work in East Timor but that she did not abide by the EU directives for monitors. She allowed herself to appear partial, making comments that were seized upon by the opposition and used in the political process. This is a matter of record, and by any standards she behaved in a highly unprofessional manner. Her subsequent remarks accord badly with her position as head of an EU's Electoral Monitoring Mission. To quote your analogy, the complaint is not against the referee's activity as a referee, but because she participated in the game and tried to score a goal. To continue the metaphor, I would also have to say that her job was not to be a referee in any case, but only a lineswoman, or an observer. By the way I doubt that you have seen the Memorandum, the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry sent to the EU in early September detailing point by point the violation by the EU-EOM of its own Code of Conduct and the Code of Conduct that was signed between the EU Commission's representative and the Ethiopian Government. It is a damning Memorandum which the EU has not yet responded to. It is an official document available in the public domain. Reading it would have made you less confident of Ana Gomes. The issue of the violence must be deplored, but, as promised, this is going to be subject to an investigation, and you, like most others, appear to forget that seven policemen were killed, as well as numerous civilians. I believe there was a very substantial outcry in the UK just recently when just one policewoman was killed in the line of duty. By the way, in your previous piece you claimed that the killings at Awassa in 2002 were never investigated. This is not true. There was an investigation and a number of police officers were dismissed and jailed and others disciplined. I have not space to go into other areas where I believe your absence from Ethiopia and your partiality for certain members of the opposition have led you into serious errors of fact and judgment. But I would correct one other point as this again may have a wider impact. The statistics you quote for business operations are certainly out-of-date. The US Embassy's latest Guide on How to Do Business in Ethiopia notes that there are no discriminatory or excessively onerous visas, residence or work permit requirements for foreign investors. The latest Ministry of Finance and Economic Development figures for a Business Registration trade License is 2 days with a similar time for industrial or company registration and for investment licenses. Certainly they may take a little longer if there are queues, but most trade licenses are issued well within a morning or afternoon, and customs permits and requirements for export/imports take a similar time. Professor Clapham, an academic of your reputation and experience should surely be more careful not to leap into print on the basis of insufficient and partial evidence. Your books display an impressive record of careful, accurate and detailed scholarship on Ethiopia. It is disappointing to see this thrown away so easily even on an ephemeral Internet exchange.

(c) Walta Information Center, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia