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The Gloomy Future in the Ethiopian Political Economic Arena
Emanuel Brook & Ztseat Saveadna 07-27-18
The Ethiopian political reality has entered an era of change that is characterized by a new leadership that is trying to survive a complex make of political blend. At personal glance level, it is feasible to conclude that the new leadership rested contemporary at four life support ingredients. 1. The popular mass support which heavily relies on major cities of the country and few regions which is largely sensational and of populist constituency 2. The control of major federal institutional apparatus that include the security, defense, police and overall bureaucratic channels at federal level 3. The support of western major international actors and some Arab nations 4. The support of Eritrean government’s new friendship the trade of which is yet remaining unknown quantity
All the above said, the federal government seems largely struggling to elicit the support of regional ethnic parties and politicians most of which resemble skeptical of the true color of the political ideology and economic narratives of the new turn. With all this in mind, it is apparent that foreign policy changes are yet not visible to policy declaration level while foreign alliances makeups seemingly appear taking a swayof comradeship from Chinese-Sudanese-Turkish-Quatari axis to Saudi-Emirate-USA-Eritrean sphere of influence. The more liberal exercise of the leadership in making decisions and media usage can be perceived as signals of a major drift from the democratic centralist approach to a more of defacto-presidential approach amid to realities that ethnic patrician constituting multicultural reality being increasingly overshadowed by citizenship based nationhood. These narratives, all of which seem to be reversal steps to the ethnic federalism and group leadership exercise, are overturning to the previous features of Ethiopian political exercise in the last three decades. Furthermore, the political ground has got messier even, as all sorts of political actors are released into the ground having diverse, conflicting and irreconcilable shapes. This can be expected to have an effect of making the playing field of each EPRDF parties crowded exposing them, to more competition and strained exercise increasing the likelihood that EPRDF gets weaker than it used to be. Added to the mix of a more liberal political exercise could be expected to isolate the new leadership, compelling himdepend on security, federal and foreign supper power actors while nationalistic oriented political actors are likely to emerge hostile or challenging increasingly. As this reliance goes on rising, the influence on regional and international actors is likely to collide with domestic national interests, all of which can be anticipated to likely place the new leadership in a difficult position. However, taking the unusual experience that more socialist constituting party gets assembled to new leadership that aims to blend few steps for gradual change of basic features; it is far from exaggerating it to expect the course is not likely to be peaceful or easy. The most complex turning points are likely to occur due to the following important steps which will bring important collusion with internal strong political actors by the time: 1. The new leadership tries to change the political and economic ideologies of EPRDF to the strong resistance of the establishment parties 2. At a point where the likely intended constitutional changes undermine ethnic federalism and self-rule in-favor of more likely presidential and liberal political exercise all of which will push self-rule and decentralized political mentality 3. If the implementation of Ethio-Eritrean border conflict resolution and its impacts turn to the wrong evaluation of the Afar and Tigrai regions and the Ethiopian people at large 4. The political exercise of overshadowing coalition nature of the party, which will likely tend push the coalition parties, starts to generate a counter reaction either in the form of direct s from second line political sphere to third line political sphere 5. When the intended privatization and liberalization measures start to be perceived as a threat to the long over-held strong sense of endogenous socio-economic and independent socio-historic mentalities all of which were reinforced by strong anti-colonial narratives. 6. If the new foreign regional alliances meet a more likely imminent challenge from pushed former alliances factors like Sudan, Qatar and Turkey, all of which have vested interest in the Red Sea and Yemen war politics. 7. If the new leadership fails to complete GERD, facing the critical foreign currency setback and the diplomatic-political challenges from the Egyptian government. 8. When the new leadership fails to convince the new reality to the effect of creating political and economic harmony in the nation by reconciling the centralist and federalist nation make-up strictures. Taking into account the above likely geopolitical and geo-economic realities, it can safely be concluded the Ethiopian political economic reality is likely to be gloomy and full of hit and misses far from being rosy encounter.
Thus, it is time where wisdom necessitates the actors in the Ethiopian political-economic arena to understand the forthcoming challenges and define their roles to the best outcome of the national interest and not leave intended realities decide a possible ugly reality alone.
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