Ethnic federalism under one party rule in Ethiopia (Part 1)

 

By Ephrem Madebo ǀ March 15, 2010 

 

“What is this fake Nationalism? Is it not simply Amhara and to a certain extent Amhara-Tigre supremacy? Ask anybody what Ethiopian culture is? Ask anybody what Ethiopian language is? Ask anybody what Ethiopian music is? Ask anybody what the "national dress" is? It is either Amhara or Amhara-Tigre!!  To be a "genuine Ethiopian" one has to speak Amharic, to listen to Amharic music, to accept the Amhara-Tigre religion, Orthodox Christianity and to wear the Amhara-Tigre Shamma in international conferences. In some cases to be an "Ethiopian", you will even have to change your name. In short to be an Ethiopian, you will have to wear an Amhara mask”

 

Walleligne Mekonnen November 17, 1969

This paper is presented in two parts. The first part presents the historical account of federalism, i.e. its evolution and purpose, what federalism is and the different flavors of federalism. The second part of the paper uses its first part to examine Ethiopia’s ethnic federalism. I strongly advise readers to critically read all parts of the paper to see the pros and cons of federalism, and have an informed stand as to why one disagrees with Ethiopia’s ethnic federalism.

 

In his 1969 ground breaking paper, “On the Question of Nationalities in Ethiopia”, Walleligne Mekonnen stated that Ethiopia is the prison of nationalities. In deed,  as Walleligne eloquently said it some 40 years ago, Ethiopia has been an inexorable prison of nationalities, and the question of nationalities has been, and is the most contentious issue since Ethiopia took its current shape between the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Emperor Hailselassie, the man who ruled Ethiopia for 45 years, never acknowledged the existence of nationality problems in Ethiopia, and Colonel Mengistu, the military dictator who succeeded him; believed that the pathetic autonomous regions that he created would solve Ethiopia’s deep-seated nationality problems. 

 

The current rulers of Ethiopia are not outsiders to ethnic politics, in fact; their cerebral cortex is polluted by ethno-nationalist ideology from the get-go. They raised arms and fought a bitter war for 17 years seeking a lasting answer to what they believed is Ethiopia’s burning question which is- the question of nationalities. Today, the same people that claim to have given their youth life to a humble cause are ruling Ethiopia along ethnic lines creating a federal system [ethnic federalism] that has made them lords of the land, and everybody else a vassal.

 

The long history of Ethiopia is marked by power struggle between the Amhara and Tigre aristocracies. Ethiopian history clearly depicts the North-South movement of the three power houses [Axumaite Kingdom, and Zagwe and Solomonic dynasties] until Emperor Tewodros in the middle of the 1800s initiated the first effort to unify and modernize the state of Ethiopia. However, Ethiopia did not emerge as a modern nation-until the late 19th century when Emperor Minelik expanded to the South and annexed the Cushitic, the Omotic and the Nilotic people of the South, East and Western parts of Ethiopia.

 

By any standard, Emperor Haile Selassie was the primary architect of modern Ethiopia who guarded the sovereignty and independence of his country for 44 years. But, despite Haile Selassie‘s reputation as the father of the nation and Africa; drought, corruption, bad governance and failure to resolve the national question brought down his regime.

 

The military junta [aka Derg] that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie ruled Ethiopia with iron fist from 1974 to 1991. The Derg nationalized financial institutions and private enterprises, and took full control of markets and agricultural production. In one of its most celebrated radical move, the Military regime nationalized rural land and abolished feudalism in March 1975. However, poverty, drought, gross inequalities and the long standing ethnic tensions limited Colonel Mengistu’s Marxist regime to just 17 years.

 

Initiated, organized and led by an association of discontented Tigrayan elites, the TPLF started its liberation movement in rural Tigray in February 1975. In the next 17 years, the TPLF employed ethno-nationalist ideologies to mobilize Tigreans and disgruntled military service men to ultimately drive out the Marxist dictator in May 1991. Upon assuming political power, in 1991, the TPLF and its ragtag fighting force declared its allegiance to a clean break up with the past and the establishment of multi-ethnic democracy based on equality, the rule of law, and the right of nations to self-determination. Surprisingly, not that many Ethiopians knew the name TPLF when federalism was introduced in Ethiopia [in 1991], and officially sanctioned in the 1994 constitution.

 

It has been almost 19 years since Ethiopia embarked upon what many Ethiopians claim is a treacherous experiment in “Ethnic Federalism”. When ethnic federalism was introduced in the late 1990s, many feared that Ethiopia would cease to exist as a nation. Well, we must be happy that at least ethnic federalism did not disintegrate Ethiopia; but it did not avoid bloody ethnic conflicts either, or bring the much needed peace, prosperity, and regional stability that many expected form the introduction of federalism.

 

Ironically, today, the most prevalent political development in Ethiopia is the establishment of ethnic federalism and the consolidation of a centralized one party rule.  As a result, today, Ethiopia; a country of more than 70 ethnic groups, is a bonfire waiting to happen; and is a time bomb a heart beat away from blowing up.

 

What is Federalism?

Many scholars have defined the word “Federalism” in so many ways; therefore, any attempt to add to the already existing wide pool of definitions would be confusing the already confused laity. According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, federalism is the theory or advocacy of federal political orders, where final authority is divided between the sub-units and the center. Unlike a unitary state, sovereignty is constitutionally split between at least two territorial levels so that units at each level have final authority and can act independently of the others in some area. In countries where there is a federal arrangement of government, citizens have political obligations to two authorities; the federal authorities and the state or zone authorities.

 

Federalism is a political thought that evolved through the years. Great thinkers of the last six centuries such as L. Hugo, Hume, Rousseau, and Kant have contributed to the political theory of federalism, but most scholars agree that Johannes Althusius [1557, 1630] is the father of modern federalist thought.

 

In his 1603 book, Politica Methodice Digesta, Althusius argued for autonomy of his city Emden, both against its Lutheran provincial Lord and against the Catholic Emperor.

Althusius was a Calvinist, and Calvinists were minorities in Germany, hence, he developed a doctrine of resistance as the right of minority citizens to resist tyranny. Althusius and many Orthodox Calvinists insisted on sovereignty in the social circles and subordinate only to God's laws. The French Huguenots developed Althusius’ theory of legitimacy further arguing that people who live in a distinct community or territory have a God-granted right to resist rulers without rightful claim.

 

As it is clearly stated in the above paragraph, there is a strong cause and effect relationship between tyranny and federalism. Even at its inception, federalism was regarded as a solution to accommodate differences among populations divided by ethnic, religious, or cultural cleavages yet seeking a common political order that binds them together. Today, nations, ethnic minorities, or religious groups may invoke their right for federal arrangements of government for various reasons where many of the reasons can logically be summed up to two sets of arguments.

 

The first argument favors federalism than secession; and the 2nd argument supports federal arrangements than a centralized unitary state. Basically, in plural societies; federalism is the preferred method of government arrangement than unitary state or making a decision to secede.  Hence, it is no a coincidence that these two sets of arguments gave rise to two different starting points of federalism - “Coming Together” federalism, and “Holding Together” federalism, which will briefly be discussed next. The experience of the USSR in the 1920s and the Ethiopian experience of the 1990s gave rise to the third form of federalism known as “Put Together” federalism.

 

The sovereignty of a nation may reside in a unitary or federal form of government structures; and sovereign countries may form an association where member states delegate a certain amount of their competences to common institutions, in order to coordinate their policies in a number of areas without constituting a new state. The figure below shows unitary, federal, and the confederation forms of associations.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Federalism?

The objectives of establishing a federal state are deeply linked to the context of the individual countries. One of the natural benefits of federalism is the opportunity to create a larger state and enjoy greater access to economic and military resources. Besides, to a multiethnic nation like Ethiopia, there are many other compelling reasons to adopt a federal system. Federalism is a tool that helps nations like Ethiopia build a democratic republic by preventing tyranny of the majority. Moreover, liberty and the power of elected officials could be reconciled within a federal structure that would constrain the power of the government by balancing it in the institutional separation of powers of branches of government and the territorial division of power between the center and the states.

 

For example, instead of ‘putting together’ federation which is coercive, the formation of holding together federations [voluntary basis] could have been the ideal choice for Ethiopia. This is an obvious certainty because the need to reduce group conflict, demonstrate respect for diversity, and the commitment to protect the integrity of the culture of different groups is one of the utmost justifications given for entering into a federal arrangement.

 

Coming Together Federalism

Coming-together federations emerge when two or more than two existing sovereign countries agree to create a federal system for governmental efficiency, economic development, and security purposes. Federations can promote economic prosperity by removing internal trade barriers, and they may also foster peace by preventing wars and preventing fears of war, in several ways. Countries or nations that create federation become jointly powerful enough to dissuade external aggressors, and/or to prevent aggressive and preemptive wars among themselves. For example, the 1998-2000 Ethio-Eritrean war could have been avoided had Ethiopia and Eritrea solved their problems though federal arrangements. The most important aspect of ‘Coming-together’ federation is that the different sovereign units come together to form the federation on the voluntary basis.

 

Holding Together Federalism

In contrast to “coming together” federations, where sovereign states band together to create a common central government to which the states surrender some of their sovereignty, in a holding-together federation, an already existing large polity is subdivided into various sub-units that enjoy sovereignty over certain policy areas. Holding together federalism is an approach used to cope with ethnic divisions, or it is a strategy used to save a disintegrating unitary state. In most cases, 'Holding together' federations are the outgrowth of a consensual parliamentary decision to preserve a unitary state by creating a multi-ethnic federal system.

 

‘Putting Together’ Federalism

‘Putting together’ federations are identified as those federal states like the

USSR that are integrated non-voluntarily, i.e. by coercion; or as the recent Ethiopia experience says it all, ‘Putting together’ federalism is a forceful or fraudulent incorporation of different nationalities by an organized elite as in Kratocracy (Kratocracy = government by those who are strong enough to seize power through force or cunning). Both Ethiopia and the former USSR are typical examples of nominal federal entities with a very high level of centralization. As the name ‘Putting together’ clearly indicates, in ‘putting together’ federalism, there seems to be a coercive entity that forcefully puts units together.  In the case of Ethiopia, that coercive entity is TPLF.

 

 

Symmetric and Asymmetric Federalism

A federation could take the form of symmetric or asymmetric federalism in different countries for various reasons. However, regardless of what form federations take, the term federalism is used to describe a government system in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between the federal [central] authority and constituent political entities, or at a very fundamental level, federal principles involve a combination of self rule and shared rule.

 

Symmetric federalism is found in federations like the United States where the constitutional power divide between the constituent states is equal which basically means that every state in the union has the same power. This is in contrast to an asymmetric federation, where a distinction is made between constituent states. In Asymmetric federalism, the constituent entities of the federation have the same constitutional status, but one or more than one of the units may posses different powers. India is a typical example of Asymmetric federalism where states like Jammu, Kashmir and Andhra Pradesh enjoy more autonomy that the others.

 

Federalism in Ethiopia

When it ceased power in 1991, the TPLF regime decided to break form the past and have a different look at the question of nationalities. In its first two years as the ruling party of Ethiopia, the TPLF allowed the different ethnic groups to fully express their culture and language, and reorganized the country along administrative and political lines. Moreover, the Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE) introduced dualism and promised freedom and the rule of law in a country where absolute monarchs rambled for centuries. At the beginning, many Ethiopians gave the regime the benefit of the doubt when it enshrined democratic principles in the constitution, and implemented public policies that devolved administrative authority from the center to the zones.