(Part two)

P O L I T I C A L P A R T I E S

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T H E 2010 E T H I O P I A N E L E C T I O N R E S U L T

GENENEW ASSEFA

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AEUP

As well known, this party morphed into what it is now – the All Ethiopian Unity Party - from the ashes of the All Amhara People Organization, under the leadership of the somewhat enigmatic Engineer Hailu Shawel. Like its predecessor, the AEUP was formed and continues to be sustained by elite Amhara backlash against the post-Derg reconstruction of Ethiopia along an-all-inclusive ethno-linguistic federal lines. But, better endowed with organizational skills than the old grandees, Hailu Shawel rebranded and repositioned the organization in ways that somehow surprised the other opposition parties. Under his guidance, the AUP turned into a functioning election party with a multinational veneer. And, became open and willing to network and coalesce with other likeminded opposition parties. Without, however, having to moderate the party’s intensely held unitary political platform. Despite its hidebound agenda, the AEUP, nevertheless, reached a peak during the build-up to the 2005 general election. Chiefly by dominating, as it turned out, a shaky political coalition that took the unsuspecting urban population by storm. This coalition i.e. --- the CUD— principally consisted of the AEUP, the EDP and two other tiny NGO-like political groupings. Led, among others, by those who made a name for themselves wearing several hats and who alternately promote themselves as academic, civil-society activists and politician.

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As it will be recalled, the CUD did very well at the polls. It swept the entire vote in Addis Ababa, including in almost all the urban centers with large concentration of Amharic-speaking residents. The AEUP, in particular, did exceptionally well in Amhara Region where it almost unseated the regional incumbent. Nevertheless, in the welter of the euphoric excitement, dispute arose within the coalition over the issue of accepting the election result and the attendant step that inevitably had to be taken. Sadly this needles discoed dragged the ruling party into the fray and locked the national politics in an intractable impasse. After weeks of bickering, the rift in the coalition actually widened as did the tension between the CUD and the state. Those who were content with the election results, notably CUD’s electors themselves and the EDP chose to end the impasse. They, therefore, took up their seats in parliament and stayed clear of any confrontational politics. Intoxicated by their urban fans’ uproar of approval, the remaining CUD leaders, nonetheless, wanted much more than the sum total of the national ballot tally could possibly warrant. All the same, the coalition leaders would not budge. Even if it meant a showdown with the state whose power they reckoned was seriously weakened. In fact, the CUD hardliners calculated that any head on collusion with the state would explode into something akin to a color-coded revolution. In which the EPDRF, they figured, would finally collapse under the mounting urban mob pressure which they planned to lead from the rear. Sure enough, these CUD leaders got what they bargained for. And landed behind bars from which they were only released after submitting a written pardon plea. Pardoned they certainly were, though it did not save them from yet another round of political fallout that brought the coalition to the brink of collapse.

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The final blow that cut the CUD to its present sorry diminutive size came from Hailu Shawel. After he lost the legal battle to retain the coalition’s acronym, he announced his party’s severance of all ties with what was left of the CUD. His decision seems to have been fueled by disappointment at making the mistake of forging an alliance with what he, in so many words, described as untrustworthy spineless entities. Naturally, given the intolerance level in the Ethiopian opposition, he was not to get away with such a pointed indictment. Hailu Shawel was quickly vilified by his former CUD colleagues as an undemocratic overbearing character who cannot march with the times. The vilification campaign reached a peak when, like the EDP, the AEUP signed the 2010 Election Code of Conduct agreement with the EPRDF. The fact that Hailu Shawel was seen shaking hands with Meles Zenawi at the signing ceremony of the agreement was too much for the Diaspora extremists. The now defunct US-based CUD Support Group was particularly incensed. Forgetting that it once addressed Hailu Shawel as the legitimate prime minster of Ethiopia, the Diaspora CUD denounced the AEUP president as an unpardonable sellout. Unperturbed by the shrillness of the attack against it, the AEUP, nonetheless, stayed on course to the very end of the 2010 general election.

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Strangely, however, in the initial stages the AEUP absented itself from the televised election debate. In hindsight perhaps that might not have been a terrible idea. For when it decided to participate in the debate, all it did was expose itself for what it is, a throwback to a bygone era. On every agenda item, be it healthcare, education or basic infrastructure, the AEUP’s debating team appeared clueless about the basic points at issue. Neither was it familiar with the jargons by which the contentious issues were argued. Bewildered by the array of statistical references in the debate, the AEUP failed to notice that what was largely contested was the pace of the country’s development. It had no sense that the debate was won by whichever party offered a sound and viable development package in clear and quantifiable terms. Instead, the AEUD wasted its time lamenting the moral decline of the times. Wrought, as it tried to have the audience believe, by EPRDF’s ethnic politics, which according to the party, is increasingly pushing the country towards frightening disunity.

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It is clear that the AEUP harped on this theme because that is what its core constituency likes to hear. The overwhelming majority of which are, Amharic-speaking urban geriatrics, decommissioned army officers, retired technocrats, clerical pensioners, remnants of Mengistu’s aging EWP operatives. As well as disbanded EWP-affiliated youth, women and peasant association members and exiled high-ranking bureaucrats. No doubt, during the 2005 election the AEUP had a huge success among rural voters in Amhara Region. This is probably the reason why the AEUP reckoned that, with its core constituency and voters in Amhara Region, it would again do well even better in the 4^th general election. Nonetheless, it turned out that this was a deeply flawed projection. Epitomizing, as it does, AEUP’s cluelessness that times have changed. It did not occur to AEUP leaders that ANDM-EPDRF would regroup and tirelessly work to reclaim the ground lost to its rival. And, avoid another election scenario in which neither its incumbency would ever hang on the balance. Nor, thereby the changes it brought in the lives of the Amhara people would be jeopardized. Indeed the 2005 election returns in the Region was a wakeup call to the leadership that otherwise is rarely caught off guard by any serious threat. Revanchist as it political mission is, AEUP’s inroads into Amhara Region alerted ANDM-EPDRF about the depth and scope of the simmering dissatisfaction under its administration. Never daunted by adversarial challenges, the leadership promptly embarked on a comprehensive reform initiative backed by unwavering political will. First, with feed-back from the aggrieved farming communities themselves, it indentified the root causes of the dissatisfaction that coasted it huge votes. Subsequently, it devised a realistic set of corrective measures with the participation of the agrarian population on whose consent ANDM’s legitimacy rests. Needless to say, as all reforms with popular backing do, ANDM’s rectification policy was successful in addressing the underlying causes of the discontent. The reform also accelerated the pace of development in the Region, raising ANDMS approval rating to new heights along with widespread hope in the party’s future program. As it can be expected, under such circumstances there was no way the AEUP could have duplicated the previous result in this year’s election. To the contrary, it was trashed at the polls by ANDM like all the other parties that competed in the Amhara Region.

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Apparently, the AEUP appears to be the most jolted by the rout it suffered along with all the candidates of the opposition parties at the national level. To this day, it alone has yet to produce a written statement on EPRDF’s landslide victory. The only source that allows us to gauge the party’s reaction to EPRDF’s phenomenal electoral success is Hailu Shawel’s erratic and conflicting forging and local media utterances. As it will be recalled, as soon as the provisional ballot result was released, Hailu Shawel went on record denouncing the election result to a foreign media as a total sham which he followed by a demand for a rerun. In a subsequent interview with a local media, however, he lowered his tone and the substance of his complaint to minor issues pertaining to, for instance, the inconvenience cussed by the narrowness of the ballot booth facilities. Yet, he again called for a rerun but with a curious proviso that excludes Addis Ababa, where ironically the opposition did relatively better. Nonetheless, unlike Medrek, the AEUP neither sought redress to its complaints through the available formal legal channels, nor called on its supporters to stage protest demonstrations. The last the public heard from the party is Hailu Shawel’s decision to retire from political life. Alas, private as his decision might be, no fitting symbol could, however, possibly capture that the AEUP has outlived itself. Indeed it should have bowed out of the mainstream political arena long before the 4^th national election. For, there is no future for a party whose political agenda is antithetical to the nationality-based constitutional order. And, that in consequence gravitates towards the far end of the political spectrum, bordering on extremism. Finally, we feel that, for the purpose at hand, we have said enough about the two of the major four competing parties in relation to the May 2010 election. It is apt to turn our gaze towards the remaining half i.e. MEDREK and the EPRDF in our next posting.

August, 2010

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