For once, the United States got it right when President Barack Obama, during his visit to India, denounced the November 2010 elections in Myanmar as ‘neither free nor fair’. Still, the military regime that has inflicted authoritarian rule on the country for some 48 years was not pretentious enough to claim to have won more than about 80% of the vote. On 23 May 2010, five years after the fraudulent elections of 2005, Ethiopians were called to the ballot box to choose their members of parliament. There were no more than muted voices from the United States questioning the official results that saw the ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Democratic Revolutionary Front (EPDRF) proclaiming, with almost childish pride, that along with allied parties it had won 99.4% of seats, based on 93% voter turnout.1
The EPDRF and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi know they can count on Washington to turn a blind eye towards an ongoing process of enforcement of standardisation and eventual elimination of all opposition within the political, economic, and cultural institutions of a state. Popular protest against the fraudulent election results of 2005 were violently suppressed by the EPDRF regime, as tens of thousands of demonstrators were beaten, detained and incarcerated in makeshift concentration camps like Denkorochaka in North Wello province (Brigaldino 2006a).
During the 2010 campaign, a divided, intimidated and poorly organised opposition was unable to mount a serious electoral challenge against the ruling regime. The EPDRF had been preparing for years for this round of elections and nothing was left to chance. Notably in the countryside, where few, if any independent observers could monitor the vote casting and counting process, the outcome was largely a foregone conclusion. The opposition was simply unable to mount any sort of logistical challenge to the ruling party, which unapologetically utilised the state machinery to facilitate its re-election.
Therefore, while there never was any real doubt the EPDRF would retain power, the sweeping result did raise a few eyebrows abroad. The ruling party and its partner parties won 544 of the 547 seats to the House of Peoples' Representatives (HPR), and all but four of the 1904 seats in the State Councils. An independent candidate and a candidate from one of the main opposition coalitions, the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Unity Forum (Medrek), won seats to the HPR. A candidate from a relatively smaller party, the Argoba People's Democratic Organisation (APDO), won the third seat. Truly, Soviet-era kind of results.
It took a few months before the European Union Election Observation Mission presented its final report. In a diplomatic tone it suggested that
Measures are necessary to increase the participation and capacity of opposition parties, as well as the broadening of political space in Ethiopia. The return of exiled opposition leaders as well as the release of imprisoned opposition leaders would be important steps in this direction, restoring confidence in the democratic process.
(European Union Election Observation Mission to Ethiopia 2010, 2010)
Already in the aftermath of the 2005 elections, the main donor countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union, had expressed dismay and decided to suspended direct aid to the government of Meles Zenawi. However, the donors' feigned indignation did not last too long as they chose to ignore the systematic marginalisation of the opposition that followed the civil unrest of 2005.2
Then, as now, it is no secret that ‘a series of repressive laws enacted since the previous election in 2005, diminished political space for the opposition, lessening its chances at the polls’ (Economist Intelligence Unit 2010). Regardless, during the G20 meeting in Toronto, Canada, in 2010, no G8 leader hesitated to shake hands with Ethiopia's despot Meles Zenawi: after all, he was invited.
Aid as easy money?
Since it came to power in 1991, the Meles Zenawi regime has received over US$24 billion in aid. Since 2003 alone, development aid to Ethiopia has more than doubled, to about US$3.327 billion in 2008, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) figures. It is true that progress has been made in the education and health sectors, and economic growth has been above expectations, reaching 12% before the current financial crisis, yet dropping to about 6% more recently. Of course, gross domestic product and growth figures are difficult to ascertain where statistical systems are weak and, above all, there is good reason to believe that the government readily manipulates its balance sheets and is well-versed in accounting tricks. Ethiopia remains mired by persistently low governance and accountability scores; the budgetary process is seen as lacking integrity as parts of the national budget are not included in the budget documents presented to House of Peoples Representatives (Global Integrity 2008).
Regardless of the actual extent of economic growth, improvements in Ethiopia's human rights record, the levels of corruption and its press freedom rankings have consistently deteriorated. Donor complicity in a commandeered democratic process can hardly be doubted, as in Ethiopia ‘donor country and IMF–World Bank policies do have the effect of reinforcing the powers-that-be, notably the Executive, and have not contributed directly to the furthering of democratic structures …’ (Abbink 2009, p. 18). This assessment has now been forcefully confirmed in a 2010 Human Rights Watch report that has stuck a finger in a sore spot for donors and dictatorship alike. As this report notes:
Donor policy has been remarkably unaffected by Ethiopia's deteriorating human rights situation … a World Bank Country Assistance Strategy in 2008 … presented the EPDRF's undemocratic character as a technical challenge, rather than one of political will, that could be addressed by providing increased assistance … donor policy [did not] significantly change toward Ethiopia following the flawed May 2010 general election in which the EPDRF won … after a long campaign of intimidating political opponents, restricting civil society and media, and linking government services and educational and job opportunities to support for the ruling party.
(Human Rights Watch 2010a)
In the ‘aid community’, including among the rank and file of donor aid agencies, there is a tendency to believe that increased donor pressure and coordination can be effective levers to sway undemocratic regimes to adhere to good governance principles. Noble as such beliefs are, they often fail to capture how the donor governments themselves, along with the political elites of the new economic ‘powerhouses’, readily engage with autocratic regimes like the one in Ethiopia, when doing so is supportive of neo-imperial agendas.
Flowers, oil and anti-terror
In the case of Ethiopia, it is not immediately evident how such a peripheral, poverty-laden country could find itself courted by international donor countries. However, globalisation has not shunned the country and in the context of the international division of labour, profits can be made even in improbable places. For example, already in the late 1990s, Dutch flower growers invested in Ethiopia and set up greenhouses outside the capital Addis Ababa. New investors have followed suit, notably from India. In February 2011 Ethiopian Agriculture Minister Tefera Derbew announced that 307,000 hectares of land have been transferred to foreign and domestic investors, some 79% of this to Indian companies, made available on a 70-year lease. He failed to elaborate how such investments impact upon chronic food insecurity in Ethiopia (Asianlite 2011).
The Ethiopian government benefits directly from such investments while showing scant regard for the potential local impact of massive Indian investment in floriculture and also in biofuels:
Vast swathes of arable land, a permissive government and geographical proximity have garnered interest in agricultural investment in Ethiopia from Saudi Arabia, China and India. India is the current leader in the stakes and, with more than 400 companies with projects in development, cumulative Indian investment in Ethiopia is approaching US$4.2 billion.
(Africa–Asia Confidential 2010)
SouthWest Energy, a Hong Kong-based Ethiopian company formed in 2005, has recently procured exploration concessions previously held by Malaysia's Petronas, but declined to disclose the amount it has agreed to pay for the assets in the Ogaden Basin. Unconfirmed suspicions have arisen that the company is in part owned by prominent members of the Ethiopian regime, including Azeb Mesfin, wife of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi (East Africa Forum 2010).3
International banks are often eager facilitators of dubious business dealings undertaken by regimes with poor accountability records and outright abuses of public resources. Global Witness has, for example, in the past exposed how banks, including Barclays, Citibank, Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), and Bank of America, have been able to do business with corrupt regimes, facilitating corruption and denying some of the world's poorest people a way out of poverty: a situation recently discussed in a report by a US Senate committee that details how foreign officials and their family members have exploited holes in the anti-money laundering framework to bring millions of illicit dollars into the United States (Global Witness 2010).
Less obscured by secrecy is how the Ethiopian regime has been more than willing to rub shoulders with the ‘coalition of the willing’ whenever the imperial hegemons have requested gestures of loyalty. In the notoriously troubled Horn of Africa, a state even with intermittent stability and a highly questionable human rights record is still considered to be a prized development ‘partner’. In particular, the United States has held on to this prize by underwriting the EPDRF regime, regardless of its democratic track record.
It is worth recalling how eagerly Ethiopia heeded Washington's call when, in 2006, ousting the Islamists in Somalia became a strategic objective of George W. Bush's ‘war on terror’ (Brigaldino 2006b; Love 2009). Funded and trained by the United States, Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia in 2006 and eventually occupied vast stretches of the central and southern regions of this ‘failed state’. Even USA Today reported on how the Bush administration preferred to see Ethiopia go into battle rather than again risk US casualties and resources (Slavin 2007).
The United States was content to resupply the Ethiopian army, provide training and ‘intelligence’. But after about three years of occupation, and with US elections in sight, Washington seemed to have lost interest in this proxy war and scaled back its support to the Ethiopian military effort in Somalia. The Ethiopians were left to fend for themselves, with ongoing casualties and a painful drain on their military resources. As a result, Ethiopia withdrew its troops in 2009, and the African Union agreed to dispatch a protection force for the US-backed ‘official’ Somali administration. Ever since then, the protection force has barely been able to hold on to key sections of the ruins of Mogadishu.
Meanwhile, the United States continues to maintain a considerable, yet less visible, military presence in the region, notably through the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), which is headquartered in Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, where it has about 1000 troops stationed (GlobalSecurity.org n.d.). Active personnel from Camp Lemonnier are regular guests at the airport of nearby Dire Dawa in Ethiopia, where they have established a base camp, with the offical mission to drill freshwater wells in and around the city. But what is apparent is a US preference for an authoritarian regime in Ethiopia over the unknowns of a democratically legitimised government in Ethiopia that might be inclined to favour peaceful conflict resolution over military operations.
Both American and European diplomats in the region are well aware of the democratic shortcomings and a deeply tainted human rights record of the ruling regimes in the Horn of Africa. In 2009, Canada even chose Sudan as a ‘country of focus’, stating on the website of its aid agency that ‘Canada's engagement in Sudan follows key foreign policy priorities of freedom, democracy, human rights, and rule of law’ (Canadian International Development Agency [CIDA] n.d.). This decision was taken almost at the same time that the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for the arrest of Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, President of Sudan, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Western diplomats like to refer to ‘quiet diplomacy’, the practice of discussing political sensitive topics behind closed doors as a means for achieving policy objectives. But, as a cable from WikiLeaks (2011) has revealed, disrespect for Ethiopians' democratic rights is internalised at the highest political level.4 When ask about the success and real outcomes of their quiet diplomacy, the diplomats usually have no comments to make. This is in spite of abundant public evidence of ‘One hundred ways of putting pressure’ on ordinary Ethiopians in order to suppress critical voices of dissent (Human Rights Watch 2010b). In an interview from prison with Pambazuka News (2010), the now released former opposition leader Birtukan Midekssa noted that ‘People in Ethiopia, particularly in the rural areas, do not have access to important political information because of exclusive government control of the media.’
For local observers, the 2010 landslide victory of the ruling regime was not much of a surprise, as there was little doubt in the regime's extraordinary ability to hijack the democratic process and fudge results in its favour. In the end, cementation of the status quo also allows Western donors to proceed with their business-as-usual approach in their political and aid relations with Ethiopia. The faint semblance of democratic legitimacy of the Meles Zenawi regime suffices for justifying engagement with the devil they know. Of course there are a few exceptions among the community of diplomats, some of whom can be counted on as genuine friends of the Ethiopian people. But ultimately, the marching orders for the imperial realpolitik are set by the ‘coalition of the willing’, led by the United States.
A curtain pulled on democratisation
One month before the election, Helen Epstein accurately assessed the political situation in Ethiopia (Epstein 2010). She pointed out that the representatives of the aid donors prefer to focus on the symptoms of Ethiopia's many problems. For example, when discussing food security issues the debate revolves around climate change, the erosion of soils, logistics infrastructure or even the food preferences of the poor as explanatory factors. But as Epstein plainly states, hunger in Ethiopia today, just as during the tragic famine of 1984, is primarily caused by politically motivated human rights violations.
The geo-strategists in the donor country governments remain inept when it comes to drawing developmentally relevant conclusions when confronted with ongoing systematic human rights violations, an opinion shared by the International Crisis Group (ICG), led by Louise Arbour, former United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights.
In the view of the ICG, ethnic federalism as enforced by the EPDRF is one of the triggers for internal conflict in Ethiopia, especially with regard to access and use of resources. To the degree that donors tolerate and work through such a repressive system, they will continue to preoccupy themselves with trying to plug holes at the project and programme level, rather than address the serious democracy deficits that lead to the perpetuation of poverty and political exclusion in Ethiopia (ICG 2009).
Seen in terms of a simple logic chain, Ethiopia's long-standing proneness to famines is minimised as food security gains ground. But what lurks below the technocratic surface of addressing food security issues are the roots of famine politics. Such politics can have direct live-or-die implications for those without a political voice. This is painfully true for millions of Ethiopians, de facto disenfranchised people in ‘a country where dissent is suppressed and, where at all possible, information carefully controlled’ (Orthofer 2010).5
Against this bleak background, it comes as a surprise that the US Senate is debating a bill that calls for a participatory, multi-party system in Ethiopia that allows space for an active civil society to flourish. It remains to be seen if this bill passes and gets implemented (US Senate 2010). Indeed, Ethiopia's growing financial vulnerability represents an opportunity ‘to impress onto the Meles administration that its increasingly autocratic course has to be reversed. … Pledges of further financial and technical support should be clearly linked to an improvement of the political and human rights situation in Ethiopia’ (Bertelsmann Stiftung, BTI 2010). From a theoretical perspective there is ample reason to believe that democratic deficits, weak accountability structures and representation mechanisms often lead to bottlenecks for citizen participation in the public sphere; finding effective channels of voice can turn out to be an elusive goal, notably at a time when unilateralist globalisation agendas collide and undermine existing forms and manifestations of democracy, security, peace and sustainable development (Hardt and Negri 2004). Ethiopia today can serve as a case in point.
For now it is obvious that, after the election scare of 2005 which almost led to regime change in Ethiopia, the Meles Zenawi regime left nothing to chance in 2010. Not only was the election commission EPDRF appointed; its members were mostly associated with the ruling party. Apart from some token independent election observers, EPDRF party members were among themselves and unobserved in the polling stations. On election day, for obscure ‘security reasons’, most diplomats were prevented from leaving the capital Addis Ababa. Vote counting was largely done by EPDRF loyalists. Unnamed sources reported that shortly before election day large numbers of additional polling stations were set up. This was done to ensure that the Medrik opposition was unable to dispatch its own observers to all locales. It is impossible to estimate how many cast ballots were fished out of the ballot boxes by EPDRF ‘observers’. But it has been estimated that EPDRF party members received up to five voting cards each to enable them to cast multiple votes. Hardly surprising, then, that the EPDRF received about 25 million of 30 million votes cast.
In Ethiopia, as in Afghanistan in 2010, those who ballot-count win the elections. Here as there, democratic aspirations and promises are systematically frustrated with the support of those international countries claiming to be champions of freedom and development. Ethiopia's state institutions, dominated by the minority Tigrayans who dominate the ruling EPDRF, serve narrow partisan economic and political interests. The train to democracy has run onto a dead-end track in Ethiopia and the passengers have paid full fare. Critical commentators such as René Lefort believe that the political future of Ethiopia will oscillate between two extremes: stabilisation of the existing authoritarian regime and gradual accommodation of marginalised ethnic groups on the one side, or armed rebellion, possibly along ethnic dividing lines, on the other (Lefort 2010).
Meanwhile, the Ethiopian regime maintains its tight control over the political sphere and the media, obviously nervous that the wildfire of popular protests calling for democratic space raging across the northern Africa and Middle Eastern regions could reignite throughout Ethiopia itself. Outspoken journalist Eskinder Nega, who has compared conditions in Ethiopia with those in North African states hit by popular protests and political upheavals, continues to voice his views online, but at the risk of being detained and harassed by federal police (Voice of America 2011).
Without reliable democratic friends amongst its international partners, Ethiopia will most likely be waiting for a long time to experience sustainable development progress within the institutional framework of a popular democratic political system. For now, the majority of Ethiopians donors and their political representatives distinguish themselves as friends and enablers of a manipulative and uncompromising regime. Ethiopians deserve distinctly better friends than that.