(Ron Singer, 10 September 2011)--With a wave of democratic revolutions sweeping the region, how eager is the Ethiopian populace to follow suit? The Prime Minister seems to have stopped talking about democratization,but what do the people think?
“Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” H.L. Mencken. Is it just a canard that desperately poor people in un-free countries like Ethiopia couldn't care less about the type of government under which they live, as long as it puts the proverbial bread on the proverbial table? And do less-poor people in these countries care more?
“Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” H.L. Mencken. Is it just a canard that desperately poor people in un-free countries like Ethiopia couldn't care less about the type of government under which they live, as long as it puts the proverbial bread on the proverbial table? And do less-poor people in these countries care more?
With the wave of democratic revolutions sweeping the region, the question has become urgent. Dissidents claim that the Ethiopian populace is dry tinder waiting for a spark. But is that just wishful thinking? According to an Al Jazeera article during last year’s elections, “while the opposition parties are already making claims of unfairness, the public mood does not seem to be in any way as charged as it was in the disputed 2005 poll.” (Unsurprisingly, in 2010, the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, the EPRDF, retained power.)
Ethiopia’s non-democracy
Abiye Teklemariam is currently a post-graduate student at Oxford University and Executive editor of Addis Neger, which, until 2009, was a widely read dissident newspaper operating from inside Ethiopia, and which is now a diasporan website.
In a 2009 interview, Abiye pointed out that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who has ruled since 1991, was in the process of shifting his agenda, dropping talk of democratization in favour of claims of rapid economic development. In a follow-up interview in 2010, Abiye said, “The Ethiopian government has decided to do away with the façade that the government was transitioning to democracy.
We had a feeling that this was a stagnating transition. Now it is going backwards… . So now he is trying to project an image of a very efficient leader, meaning that, even though he’s a dictator, he’s bringing a lot of economic development to Ethiopia.” FULL ARTICLE AT Open Democracy.Net »
No comments:
Post a Comment