What with the ADF?
By Fekade Shewakena
June 2, 2006

Virtually everyone there wants it to work. An Oromo friend I met there told me he hopes that from now on the regime will not kill our people turn by turn. At least they will kill us together and together we will fight. He told me how he feels insulted when the TPLF/EPRDF uses Oromos to give an appearance of democracy while tormenting the Oromo people. He mentioned to me how the TPLF tried hard to have an Oromo take the mayor’s position of Addis Ababa recently.

The TPLF searched for months looking for an Oromo to do the shameful work of taking the place of a popular elected mayor who is now in prison. They knocked on the doors of many Oromos before finding the current pathetic individual who volunteered to do one of their dirty jobs. He said it is the same as they have left the ceremonial post of the presidency for an Oromo. You know, he said, it is as if they are saying let’s fool these Oromos by giving them positions that make them feel they are on top and do our job from behind. He said he is tired of being constantly told to hate the long gone Neftegna while the Oromo people are being subjected to degrading treatment now by the TPLF. Then came another person I know and told me that he heard the agreement is manipulated by the OLF in its favor. He complained that some of the most incapable people in CUD shouldn’t have been allowed to handle an undertaking of this magnitude. I told him I didn’t even read the agreement but have no problem of being manipulated by the OLF. What is wrong with representatives of the Oromo people manipulating the rest of us at least once in history, I said to him, and asked him if he knows how many times in our history the Oromo people have been manipulated? He told me he will have to think about that and went to the meeting.

The event was a refreshing moment. Our OLF brothers were not only articulate, they definitely seemed to have made a hard look at themselves and reflected on their past. They reiterated that they want to leave the past for historians and focus and work on the future to repeated standing ovations. It was a “where have you been” moment. Our Somali brother from ONLF summed it up for all of us when he said that we are sitting in the same boat destined to survive or perish together. The paint made by our rulers on all these organizations and their movements as some lunatic and demonic forces out there to dismantle order and kill people insanely was not the image we all saw. It was a gathering where peace and stability and democracy were the words frequently spoken. The talk was about how to fight the poverty grinding our country and the absence of peace and justice and the desire of all of our people to live in dignified humanity on their own land. At the end of the meeting nearly everyone that came to the meeting left the hall in great hope understanding that much of the work is ahead of us and knowing that the ADF is not the full answer to our questions, it is a work in progress if you like, more of a reflection of a positive attitude on the part of the forces of democracy.

From the meeting we took away that the ADF is not a military pact. It is an alliance created to make peace. It wants to make itself into a huge force for peace by pulling resources together and generating new ideas to get Ethiopia out of her poverty and injustice. Even the TPLF which never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity has a lot to benefit from this agreement and approach. A sane TPLF can make itself a beneficiary of the proposals of the ADF to come to a negotiating table and resolve the country’s governance problems once and for all. The ADF has made it clear that the TPLF can join in and can become a part of the solution. The TPLF in its current route is becoming a danger to the stability of the country. I am sure enlightened Tigreans who think strategically would find it important to encourage the approach. The TPLF is alienating the people of Tigrai from the rest of their brethren much less protect their interests and benefit them. Here is a stark choice for the TPLF: It can decide either to continue with its repression of dissent or become a part of a civilized discourse and resolve the impasse in Ethiopia through negotiation.

The formation of the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom (ADF) is no doubt a bold move on the part of the forces responsible for its formation. Anyone who doesn’t think such a move would be a contribution to lessen the complexity of Ethiopia’s problems must be one who hasn’t wrestled with the problems at all. There are many questions to be asked of the ADF and I think there should be. I would have been surprised if there aren’t any questions. But it is encouraging that many people have seen the formation of the ADF as a positive first step. I hear that our people at home are silently celebrating this bold move. People tell me a tremor is developing in Ethiopia as a result of this move. There are others who want to resolve all agendas overnight and proceed from there. I think this is wrong. We have to primarily value the discourse the parties have entered into. I am sure the ADF doesn’t have all the answers yet and we should not expect them to come up with ready-made answers at this stage. More importantly, we the public expect them to be widely involved in healthy and constructive debates and help the process and even answer some of the questions ourselves. Differences that have to be narrowed down and ironed out still persist. There must be a lot of give and take, and any result in this area is a function of time. Hardliners within each group should not be given a chance to self-destruct. The best use we can make of the ADF is to make it a tool to help us find solution to our problems than see it as a solution in itself.

The ADF and all their supporters may have to begin with the key questions. Why is it that we are condemned to live in misery and as people whose dignified humanity gets defied by ruthless tyrants ad infinitum? Why do we find ourselves at the bottom of the world’s poor while we have far much better resources than even some who are classified as advanced? Who or what is the evil running amok in our midst cursing us to be the wretched of the earth, condemning us to be a country of millions who go without food everyday and die like flies in cycles of six and seven years? Why do we produce a quintal of crop per unit area of land while another farmer somewhere in the world produces 30-40 quintals from a land of the same size? Why do our mothers keep carrying the ensera on their backs to fetch waters for, God knows how many years now, and we can’t even find some way to get it off their backs? Why do the sons and daughters of the Abay, the Ghenale, Shebelle, Baro and the Omo and Awash, sons and daughters of the water tower of Eastern Africa, die for lack of water? And who is going to solve this problem anyway? In a word what has gone wrong with us to make us such a hellhole of famine, wars, ill health and abuse by a handful of greedy individuals who sit in positions of power by pitting us against one another? How can a handful of individuals lead us like herds of cattle rather than as humans entitled to dignity? We may all have our answers or illusions to help us explain this conundrum. Perhaps the first step towards solving this problem is to come together and talk out our problems and share perspectives. When we stand in one another’s shoes we can understand each others pain. There is no short cut to this route. The ADF can provide such a forum.

Although we have a multitude of complex problems, we all know that there is one problem sitting at the center of all. It is the problem of governance. It is so visible to miss it. It is the rulers, past and present that have put millions of us out of the business of solving our problems. Currently the regime that wouldn’t let us write, discuss openly, think independently, organize freely and serve our people in freedom is at the center of the problem. Our regimes don’t care how many intellectuals they kill or how many they throw into prison or exile to keep out new and innovative ideas from competing with their blind love for power. Individuals in position of power like Meles Zenawi, who have decided to raise their children in happiness by killing the children of other citizens, sit at the center of the problem. At this stage there are many genuine people on all sides of the ADF who are wrestling with tough questions. Understandably, many pessimists are not getting enough material from the ADF to change their pessimism yet.

The TPLF and its surrogates appear a little more desperate and are trying to zero in on the phraseology of the statements in the ADF formation and their imagined conspiracies behind the agreement than the substance of it. They think in terms of so and so trying to use so and so for this and that end. For them every relationship is one where the mechanism of eliminating the partner is hatched at the same time the relationship is formed. A screaming headline on a TPLF website declared, “CUD is played out by the OLF”, as if they care for the CUD to their death. Perhaps these kinds of statements coming from their mouths illustrate their mind frame more than anything else. For them every political game is a game of playing out the other - a zero sum game. That is what they did in 1992 with the OLF and what they are doing with the CUDP after they declared a free and fair election in May 2005. They always take a hundred and their opponents end up with zero. This is what they call winning.

The TPLF and its functionaries also tell you, for example, stories like the ADF is a creation of Shabia to serve Shabia’s purpose. I feel like puking when, of all people, the TPLF and its functionaries become the first to question the integrity of any opposition party or group that has imagined or real relations with Shabia. They forget that we have seen them come to Addis Ababa in 1991 with the help of Shabia. This may be the easiest of the responses for their accusations but we can also answer this within a larger frame. Yes any government of Eritrea, Shabia or a future government, has a lot of national interest associated with political outcomes in Ethiopia. Is that surprising? Let’s even say they support the Alliance. So what! In the first place, people who think that Shabia with its 4 million people can harm a 77 million sized neighbor must be only those that harbor inferiority complex. Secondly, organizations or parties in Ethiopia have every right to find and advocate for good strategic relations with Eritrea that benefit the people of both countries. What is wrong with this? Do we have to be enemies for ever? Eritrea and Ethiopia can and must be good neighbors that complement each other’s needs instead of one trying to chock the other and fight medieval wars between themselves and kill their poor citizens by the thousands as happened in 1998-2000. After all Ethiopia is a big country in the Horn of Africa to fear a much smaller Eritrea even if it so whishes to be destructive and attempts anything beyond mutually beneficial partnership.

I also suggest that the ADF be transparent and engage the public in discussion. Intellectuals from every group, including non partisans should be called upon to come together and debate and even form a think tank and help develop the new thinking. We need to create an opportunity for everyone to play a role. Sitting on the sidelines should be considered shameful. Understandably, such a huge undertaking requires patience, perseverance and brilliant leadership. What matters is not what is written on paper as an agreement. What matters most is what can be done from now on. Much of what can be done together may take time. But that is ok. One couplet I know from an old Ethiopian patriotic songs sums up what I think of the work ahead:

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The writer, Fekade Shewakena,, can be contacted for comments at Fekadeshewakena@yhoo.com