GENENEW ASSEFA
I
In the first installment of
this serialized reaction paper, we have tried to capture the underlying dynamics
that crowned the EPRDF with a landslide victory. In broad strokes, we attempted
to identify four interrelated factors which we believe
cogently explain the incumbent’s brilliant success. With varying degrees of emphases, we probed
these closely-related explanatory factors under the following sub-headings: A) Visibility
of the impressive developmental changes. B) Effective incumbent campaign
strategy. C) Greater voter’s awareness of the constitutional and electoral process.
And, D) steep decline in public confidence in the opposition.
II
In hindsight, however, a no
less weighty element must be added to this cluster of factors that conspired to
produce a virtual electoral meltdown in the ranks of the opposition. We are
referring here to the shift in public-interest issues and the discursive mode
of their political articulation that seem to have caught the opposition
unawares. In other words, in the time
span leading up to the commencement of the election campaign, a veritable change
occurred in the set of political questions that command greater public
attention. Almost unnoticed by the
opposition, the change was paralleled by a new mode of political conversation
replete with new terms of references by which parties and their ideo-poltical
orientations are interrogated. As it can
be surmised from the debacle it suffered at the polls, this proved an
unanticipated daunting challenge to the opposition. For it seems to have been
caught off guard by the new prism through which politics is perceived and the
corollary reconfiguration of the medium of its expression. In consequence, the
old slogan ‘One Nation: One People!’ with which the opposition sought to
dispatch the incumbent failed to resonate with the voting public. Once these
explosive watchwords were diffused, the opposition devolved into a pale and toothless
replica of its former self. None of its leaders could cut an impressive figure as
they previously did by wrapping themselves in the mantle of Ethiopian unity. Nor
could they dazzle urban voters by parading themselves as the torchbearers of
national continuity. Much less shine as they did a few years ago in the refracted
light of their own rhetorical firework. No doubt the object of their inflammatory
propaganda has always been to create a public imagery that recasts the EPRDF in a diminutive light or a spineless pawn bent
on doing Issayas’ anti-Ethiopian biding. Lost was also the political profit
that the opposition used to effortlessly amass often by a cheap but malicious spinning
of the constitutional principle of self-determination.
III
This time around, the scare tactic of churning
out alarmist warnings about the specter of national disunity that ostensibly lurked
behind Article 39 could not turn the tide. Unlike five years back, the much
maligned secession clause could not frighten even susceptible urban voters into
throwing their lot with the opposition. Equally useless was the latest ploy
designed to disgrace the EPRDF, particularly by the Diaspora fire-spiting
extremist wing. The voting public, however, was not to be mislead into denying
the incumbent even a few votes on the Diaspora’s prompting. Much less turn its back as it would on any
treacherous government that recklessly cedes
IV
Logically, under this scenario, the unnerving
array of scurrilous jargons, metaphors, shibboleth, insinuations, and innuendos
that modulated the language of political opposition lost its appeal. Indeed,
proof that the sting was taken out of the opposition’s demonization press, is
that no public outrage exploded following the recent allegation of vote fraud. Unrecognizable
as the electoral setting has become, the opposition found itself in a
precarious bind. It was neither able to wield the flood of political lexicon
that fittingly express the tone, inflexion and timber of the new political
temperament. Nor was it creative enough to refashion a competing genre to rearticulate
its riotous political line and generate an election tidal wave in the urban
centers. Understandably, resistance to abandon its archaic political idioms
rendered obsolete long before the 2010 election compounded the opposition’s
predicament. For all the boastful self-adulation
as an assemblage of impressively affluent elite with matchless educational
credentials, few of its top leaders could grasp that times have changed. Not
many among them, therefore, is able to hold their own in any sharp political
exchange mediated through the new mode of political discourse.
V
This is not surprising. For many of these men
are more interested in grandstanding than keeping abreast with expansion of
voters’ political horizon. Lacking in mental inquisitiveness as most do, it is
no wonder that they are unfamiliar with the master conceptual referents of the
contemporary medium of political communication. None of these throwbacks to the
bygone era of stagnation is conversant in public-interest subjects of, say,
affordable housing, business process reengineering, micro-financing,
small-scale business enterprise, etc. What proved more vexatious to the
supporters of these old-timers was that the EPRDF could wax eloquent in all
these issues. In fact, most in leadership positions could, on the spur of the
moment, cite an impressive array of facts and figures to illustrate the
country’s upward trajectory as measured by these unfamiliar yet reliable
indices. The party chairman, in
particular could in an instant deliver a lucid impromptu lecture in a broad-ranged
subjects of voters’ concern. Including, of course, in the areas of sustainable
development, accelerated pro-poor growth, poverty-reduction or food security.
Not least expansion of infrastructural coverage, increased healthcare,
educational provisions as well as on environmental protection. One is hard-pressed
to think of any opposition figure with a comparable command of knowledge in these
pertinent matters that often loom large during elections. Let alone one who
could expound with equal gusto on matters of devolution of political decision-making
or gender mainstreaming, to mention only two vital agenda-items that attract huge blocks of single-issue voters. In a nutshell, none of the opposition leaders
seem to have any inkling that mastering these globally accepted
multidimensional methodological constructs is a necessary precondition to do
well at the polls.
VI
To the contrary, the bulk of
the opposition leadership seems to think of these constructs as irrelevant
academic taxonomies. It appears to be
clueless that these are subsumed in a veritable compendium of
empirical-cum-theoretical nomenclatures with a built-in terminological regime conjoined
by calibrated matrices for evaluating mostly aid-recipient governments. A quick
review of the recorded televised election debate demonstrates how the
opposition is blasé about these matters. Indeed, there is scarcely a more comical
sight than to watch the designated opposition debaters’ make their case. Throughout the debate, they seem to be more
interested in outdoing each other in terms of who could deliver the most
tear-jerking jeremiads they can possibly imagine. They go into sentimental
tirade, lamenting the impoverishments, deprivations, indignities and injustices
the Ethiopian people have been forced to endure under EPRDF’s oppressive
regime. By design or otherwise, however, none of
their debating briefs seem to be grounded on a shred of evidence. Yet they
thoughtlessly try to incriminate the incumbent and simultaneously move voters
into tears and rage without providing independently verifiable objective
argumentation. Much less proof that can be cross-cheeked against available data
or easily accessible factual information.
VII
Even worse is the colloquialism
of their unreconstructed terminology they rely on to deliver their combative
admonishments of the status quo. Their
barrage of accusations is still couched in self-referential and axiomatic
register impossible to prove or disprove by universally shared rational rules
of probing. None of it, in fact, lends
itself to widely-accepted objective criteria of determining sound and unsound,
valid and invalid, viable and unviable, let alone accurate and inaccurate
claims. Adept at wrapping their political contentions in self-evident sounding sound-bits,
which their firebrand spokesmen immediately echo, the opposition parties have
no use for numbers. No need to temper their unbridled polemical fury by
balanced research-based findings or underpin their promises by defensible
statistical data or quantifiable indicators expressed in percentages, ratios
etc. It is not woeful intellectual deficiency alone that explains why these
naysayers are waded to nebulous, vague, blurry and unverifiable blanket
assertions often uttered in self-righteous moralistic tone. Clever by half as they
are, they reckon that indeterminacy would shield them from empirically-grounded
rational scrutiny. In this, for once at
least, they are right. For if they were
to submit what they have to offer in measurable terms, they know that any
impartial analytical breakdown of their alternative proposal would expose them
for the fraud they are. Theirs can only be likened to the inscrutable ways of a
rainmaker or a quack village medicine man. May be this analogy is unfair to
pre-Enlightenment physicians.
VIII
A voodoo doctor is at least
exempt from any obligation to provide explanation as to how and why his panacea
works. No patient of his expects instruction on the dosage of the potions he is
to take, much less a cautionary advice about the possible side-effects. An apt metaphor
that starkly captures the opposition’s mambo-jumbo political recipe rather lies
in the present. Indeed a better analogy
is the histrionic sprit-conjuring ramblings of a 21st century
bible-belt American faith-healer. Devout Americans with permanent physical
disabilities or terminal illness may have nothing to lose by a sacral
experiment in faith healing. Ethiopians, however, cannot afford a secular
functional equivalent of such an experiment. In other words, they don’t have
the luxury to indulge in a manifestly risky exercise and jeopardize their
fledgling democracy and unprecedented chance to insure food security. By, that
is, voting for an opposition party that by its own admission is unsure of its
own continuity. Let alone, for one whose very existence is a hindrance to the
country’s promising developmental progress. And, a threat, in fact, to the democratic
nexus that the multiethnic peoples of
IX
At a more substantial level,
fraught as it is with tension, none of the opposition’s core ideo-poltical platform
could fly in the face of the country’s political reality and election logic.
For instance, as Berket Simon recently pointed out, the opposition makes
boastful pledges to scrap Article 39 of the constitution. Yet it expects the
peoples of Somali, Gambella, Benshangule, or Oromia
regions to vote for it. This is not to
suggest that citizens in these regions are eternally wedded to the incumbent.
Without question, most would vote for any party provided it has a better offer
than what is currently available. However, one thing is certain. As the 4th
round general election proved, these regions would punish any party with a
minus-secession clause in its program. This is reinforced by another paradox that
Zerihune Teshome observed
in a new work in progress. The opposition certainly vows to fold the EPRDF’s
Agricultural-led Development Strategy. Yet again it hopes to win majority vote.
Logically, this implies redirecting limited state funding away from rural
agriculture. This policy option might warrant debate among development economists.
But it is clear that it would adversely affect the overwhelming majority of the
voting population. As everyone knows, save the opposition, this segment of the
enfranchised citizenry happens to be a huge beneficiary of the current
pro-peasant policy. It is a mystery, therefore, given its present political
awareness level, how it could swing to the anti-rural development opposition
and forfeit its advantages.
X
Understandably, then, in such
massively altered context in which election politics has to be conducted, it is
not terribly shocking that the opposition took a trashhing at the polls. In
fact, once its emotionally-charged slogans i.e., national emblems, cultural
uniformity, territorial indivisibility, historical antiquity, access to sea,
ceased to mobilize the public, the opposition was virtually emasculated. One
simple indictor of the shift in public interest is that even in casual Keble-level
discussions the state of
XI
By way of summation, therefore,
it has to be said that at its key coordinates, the zone of engagement where the
2010 election bout played itself out was tilted against the opposition. Thus,
we contend that this factor must be included in the list of causes responsible
for EPRDF’s landslide victory. Now that we have rounded up our discussion of
this subject, it is apt to turn our gaze to the topic that must follow. Those
who went through the trouble of reading our first piece would remember that it
ended by suggesting one profitable way of continuing the discussion. And, this
is, as stated in the text, scanning the main thrust of the responses offered by
the key political actors of the election. In the next sequel, therefore, that
is precisely what we shall attempt to do.
June 2010