A youthful ‘joie-de-vivre’

Civic Protest Alliances against Venality:

Quo Vadis ‘Political’ Ethiopia

Public Lecture - Respublica Literaria CXV, MMXVI

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business & Economics, AAU

Abstract

     Large student demonstrations in the 1970s demanded land to the tiller and the equality of nations & nationalities. The ideological baggage that informed the era and that continues to ‘enlighten’ politics heretofore is important to note in at least three ways: the ubiquity of imperious economic policy, the stress on political organization, and the national question. Half a century later, HRW (2016) states, a human rights crisis is taking place in Ethiopia, triggered by the Addis Ababa Master Plan. While the political state and its security apparatus are intact, Lefort (2016) asserts, ‘Since the spring of 2014, it has been shaken by a rising tide of popular discontent. A Front that was righteous, disinterested, devoted as it was during the armed struggle, ready to listen and to serve, is now accused of having succumbed to an unholy trinity: corruption, bad governance & unaccountability. The Prime Minster has apologised for the havoc wrecked by protests (BBC, 2016). Is this the beginning of the end of the omnipresent state and the rise of political openness?

       While the prime role of the state is advancing the economy, it must focus on major infrastructure, streamline the discretionary rule of its officials, eliminate monopolies and economic distortions that facilitate them and improve accountability. Leadership, political will and public support are essential to stemming any threats to stability. The causes and not just the consequences of these threats have to be addressed with urgency. The first requisite of good governance as a precursor of pluralism is a spirit of tolerance that requires political and policy differences to be resolved in a spirit of respect for the views of citizens. The state’s legitimacy stems or should transpire from an acceptance of the fairness and transparency of its procedures for choices to state offices and policymaking. Its sustainability depends on public confidence as well as the confidence in the fairness of its governing. Ethiopia can pursue its good governance transition goals consistently in varying contexts, but do so without resorting to a self-defeating, overly scripted and stage-managed political ploy? The protests and the apologies herald a new era of openness, albeit at a very high price.

Key words: Ethiopia, Oromia, authoritarianism, protests, good governance, pluralism, democracy

At the pinnacle of authoritarianism in Africa, social turmoil reigned when publics fell apart; when sheer anarchy spread; where the best, lost conviction, while the worst acted with brutal intensity and impunity. As the political space gets intricately turbulent, societies became permanently fluid and the task of avoiding distress becomes queerly indefinite. The mystified elite had grown insensitive to change, but the cost of ignorance is indeed too ghastly to contemplate.

See lecture here