The two great ideals that Lincoln emphasized must be preserved are currently endangered and the two factors he identified as threats have converged on Ethiopia. In just four years, the country moved from a hopeful moment of democratic transition to the precipice of a violent dissolution. The leadership derailed the political transition, mismanaged the political space, engendered conflicts, and launched a devastating war. The combined effect of failed leadership has left the government drifting and the country teetering, shocked by foreign invasion and internal anarchy typified by a collapsing economy, a hollowed-out military, and escalating incendiary political rhetoric.
In this article, I argue that the specter of dissolution that now haunts Ethiopia resulted from the choices that Abiy Ahmed made among the real alternatives that were available to him. I contend that Ethiopia’s chance of democratization was scuttled and a devastating civil war was set in motion when the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) selected him as its leader. In conclusion, the solution to Ethiopia’s current predicament cannot come from within. The international community must work out a negotiated settlement to avert more bloodshed.
In the last two years, it has become clear that Ethiopia cannot defend its territory along the Sudanese border. On November 1, 2020, three days before the start of the Tigray war, Abiy Ahmed requested the Sudanese leader to close the border to deny an escape route to Tigray fighters fleeing the war Ethiopia was preparing to launch. The Sudanese leader welcomed the invitation as an opportunity to recover his country’s disputed land. Accordingly, Sudanese forces seized the land known as the Fashaga Triangle and drove out Ethiopian farmers from the land.
Because both the federal military and Amhara regional forces were busy ethnically cleansing Tigrayans in Western Tigray, as evidenced in the June 16, 2022 joint Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International report, the Ethiopian farmers in the Fashaga Triangle were left to fend for themselves. In the subsequent months, Sudanese forces seized more land and dislodged many more Ethiopians. Unable to respond to the violation of the country’s territorial integrity and displacement of its citizens, Abiy was left with no choice but to accept Sudan’s action as a fait accompli. Though Ethiopia came out from the Sudan saga looking impotent, it did not matter to the prime minister who reckoned that the internal threat to his power was more ominous than the welfare of citizens and the borders of the country.
When he assumed office, Abiy Ahmed was entrusted with two mandates: manage the delivery of routine government services and prepare the country for free, fair, and competitive elections. In effect, he was a leader of a transitional government. He made a conscious, albeit ill-advised, choice to reorient the country’s direction and transform state institutions to suit his vision for the country. This decision, in effect, betrayed the popular protest’s cause of democratization of politics, genuine federalization of governance, economic justice, and cultural autonomy.
No sooner had Abiy Ahmed assumed office than he and his political allies mounted an incendiary campaign against the Ethiopian constitution of 1995 and the multinational federal system. Their goal was to restore a unitary state ruled by an all-powerful autocrat. To begin the process, the ideology of Medemer, a euphemism for unity without diversity, was launched as an indigenous ideology that would supersede Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, rendering EPRDF’s revolutionary democracy irrelevant, and supplanting the imported “politics of national self-determination.” Abiy promised that his unifying ideology of Medemer would obviate the danger of conflict and set Ethiopia on a course to prosperity.
Then Abiy dismantled the EPRDF and replaced it with a superficially unified Prosperity Party. He did so to avoid EPRDF’s periodic gimgema (evaluation), which could have resulted in his removal as party leader. A unitary party was meant to ensure that the prime minister would wield supreme power and remain in office indefinitely. More importantly, the destruction of the EPRDF presaged Abiy’s ultimate goal of undermining the federal division of power, political pluralism, and respect for the right of nations and nationalities. The party’s constitutive documents made it clear that the party envisions the restoration of the pre-1991 unitary system.
After securing his position within the party, Abiy embarked on removing what he considered obstacles to his restorationist vision. His regime imprisoned ethnonationalist opponents, refused to obey a court order to release them, and closed down independent media outlets. Next, he declared war on the multinational forces, commencing with the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) in western and southern Oromia. In Sidama, security forces massacred more than 150 people demanding a referendum for statehood.
The cost of realizing Abiy’s vision is high. Civil war, grave humanitarian crisis, allegations of war crimes, ethnic cleansing, public insecurity, displacement, administrative paralysis, and malfeasance of politicians now characterize the country’s body politic. Pivotal national institutions are dismantled and the country is isolated regionally and internationally. The specter of dissolution is a real possibility today than at any time in the past.
The 2021 election was supposed to be the final act of the democratic transition and the first step to a more open, participatory, and accountable politics. As such, the election was expected to be free, fair, and competitive. With the Prosperity Party controlling nearly all media outlets, no independent media was left for dissenting voices to make their voices heard. The election was not free.
The government regularly spied on the activities of its opponents or used myriad levers to coerce voters to cast their vote in its favor. The party commands an inexhaustible source of finance to fund its campaign. It uses law enforcement to prosecute and imprison its political opponents. Even the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) was not an autonomous and independent electoral institution. The elections were not fair.
The elections were held after the Prosperity Party had suppressed all legitimate voices, cleared the electoral arena of serious competitors, and exacerbated existing political contradictions. The elections were not competitive. What happened in June was not a democratic election but a coronation. In the end, the election failed to resolve the existing political issues.
The Oromia region has endured the depredations of command post rule and economic stagnation. The Oromia Prosperity Party has inflicted indescribable atrocities against Oromo youth alleging collusion with the OLA. The political sentiment among Oromo is that they have been betrayed at every moment of political change, in 1974, in 1991 and most recently in 2018. The failure of democratization and reversal of the multinational federation has solidified the belief that an empire cannot be democratized even under Oromo leadership. Oromos will not abandon their quest for self-rule.
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