Accurate prophecy needs to build on facts and reality

(MoFA, June 3, 2011)- There are still too many commentators from the west who appear to enjoy getting it wrong on Ethiopia. Rene Lefort once wrote a book on Ethiopia entitled “Ethiopia: an Heretical Revolution” but that was thirty years ago. A week or two ago he appeared to be poised to write about another revolution in Ethiopia, but this time his supposed new ‘revolution’ is more of a pipedream than the stuff of a bestseller. In a recent article he wrote of a possible ‘day of rage” likely to erupt in Ethiopia on May 28th, prophesying a Tunisian-style revolution to sweep EPRDF out of power. His sources were not verifiable facts on the ground; Mr. Lefort was counting on the counted on an apparent Addis Ababa grapevine and make-believe stories of bankrupt Diaspora politicians in Paris or on US-based websites.

According to Mr. Lefort, the ruling Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front PRDF was in a panic because it feared a North-African style revolution was about to take place. His language makes clear his dependence upon the gossip peddled by rejectionist elements in the Diaspora. In his opinion piece on a website “Open Democracy”, Mr. Lefort indulged in an exercise in fortunetelling about a near certain “day of rage” on May 28. His piece, entitled “Beka: Will Ethiopia be next?” suggested the ruling party would be swept out of power. Beka “enough’ was the word used by alleged proponents of such a policy. Mr. Lefort produced no arguments of his own why he thought this would be the case, but he swallowed everything the bankrupt Diaspora politicians in Paris and Washington had to say. He made a series of assumptions and then uses these as the basis of incontrovertible evidence that the ‘day of Rage’ would surely happen, something that he appears to welcome. Mr. Lefort is another case of a foreigner trying to play the know-it-all expert with a message for the natives to take to the streets for a cause about which he himself has little or no understanding.

His arguments for thinking a ‘day of rage’ was imminent do not arise from any sound analysis of facts on the ground. He has the curious habit of making assumptions and then turning them into facts a line or two later. One of his stranger remarks appears based on a fundamental misreading of developments. According to Mr. Lefort, part of the evidence for his thesis lies in the timing of the announcement about the Renaissance Dam: “This project suddenly appeared from nowhere, as it is not mentioned in the recently adopted five-year plan.” Its true there is no mention of the Dam by name in the Growth and Transformation Plan, it was kept secret under a code name, but the figures detailing plans for generating 8 to 10 thousand MW of power in the next five years were a giveaway. Anyone following the Prime Minister’s interview with an Arab TV Network, aired in Egypt, might have realized Ethiopia had significant plans for development along the Nile. Equally, planning such a major project takes years, and it’s difficult to see how anyone interested could have missed the preliminary site survey, feasibility study, impact assessment and designing process, all necessarily predating the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt by some years.

Mr. Lefort also tells us the price caps imposed by the Ethiopian government last January were meant to avoid a backlash against the government. He calls this “unprecedented intervention of the state” in the free market. Strangely, Mr. Lefort also happens to be one of those critics who are adamant that the government has always harbored Marxist tendencies.

The irony is that half way into his article, Mr. Lefort himself seems to have doubts about his own predictions. After several odd remarks about Tigrean economic oligarchy, fear of ethnic carnage, or docile Abyssinian psychology, he does however produce one very real fact which he agrees might militate against an Arab style revolution: “…. the average Ethiopian is not running into a wall whenever he tries to move on. The beginning of a middle class has emerged in the wake of the political and economical elite, because the economic realm is still relatively open… a fringe of Ethiopians, among the most educated and the most enterprising, continues to get glimpses of a way out, an opportunity that it can still grasp, by jumping onto the economic elevator. In urban areas, this means joining the circle of businessmen or, if that is not possible, the ever swelling ranks of civil servants. In rural areas, for those who can connect to commercial networks, it means joining the new peasant elite.”

Mr. Lefort, however grudgingly, has got that right. Under conditions where the youth can see a bright future, where there are very real possibilities for upward social mobility, it is highly unlikely there would be an Egypt, Tunisia, or even Libyan style revolution. May 28th was a week ago and none of the rage Mr. Lefort wanted to see appeared. A million or more people packed Meskal Square, and indeed they were expressing their anger, but it wasn’t directed against the government but against poverty, the main enemy of the government and of the people of Ethiopia.