By Eyob Asfaw Gemechu
On 14 November 2023, PM Abiy Ahmed broke his silence publicly after he engaged with MPs. His last appearance to directly communicate with the public was during his recently controversial statement on Ethiopia’s access to the Red Sea. Arguably, as a typical politician and statesman, in all of his speeches, he stood bold enough for the idea floating on the political fields. Nevertheless, these days’ people from different walks of life are wandering in search of a sign of hope within the speech of PM Abiy more than ever before. Building the framework of argument on his uttered words before the MPs, this piece will question whether there is hope within PM Abiy’s audacity.
In his reply to questions raised by MPs made on 14 November 2023, Abiy Ahmed grossly categorized the culture of political analysis are erroneously full of emotive content other than substance. As for him, when his administration is unable to address the demands of the northerners, they dub his administration as ‘Dergue’. It has to be reiterated that some politicians build a consensus over the Dergue military government used to be perceived as a textbook example of authoritarianism. Furthermore, PM Abiy laments against the view that ‘ those who objected from the South and Oromo labeled his administration as ‘empire’ then ‘republic’. His lamentation is his administration becomes prey to erroneous characterization in which he claims his administration is neither empire nor Dergue-type authoritarianism. On the contrary, In fact, the political scientist Semir Yousuf characterizes authoritarianism as a continuity of Ethiopian state structure over the past centuries other than attributing it to Abiy Ahmed per se.
As for the characterization of elites, to their shame, Abiy Ahmed exclaimed that ‘how one earth a government can be both (i.e Dergue and Empire) at a time?’ Notwithstanding the counterproductive role of elites and political analysts, the recent monograph by Semir Yousuf uncovered that the role of elites couldn’t be ignored for the eventual dialogue and contestation as politicians. Moreover, he wrote explicitly that incentivizing elites would undoubtedly open the political space and should be part of the upcoming national dialogue in Ethiopia. Be that as it may, his analysis missed that even elites are the byproducts of the society from below without which they couldn’t build independent ideology.
Coming back to our review of the PM address he said “From the outset, there was one single man called Oromo who eventually became a nation”. To the relief of Amhara activists, such a statement is conciliatory in the face of critical rejection of the existence of one unified Amhara. Notably, he appeared to recognize Amhara to have a single genealogy which may resonate with Amhara activists. On the contrary, maybe his remark was lukewarm and spoken in a loose way other than intentionally forwarding about the one-ness of either the Amhara or Oromo. Beware that some political pundits were arguing that the Prosperity Party is overstretched in its fight against insurgency. In fact, the cause and the nature of the insurgency made them remain intact in their antagonism. Interestingly enough, Amhara-Fano and Oromo OLA/ Shene share a single enemy but never learn to make an alliance. The former claims Addis Ababa to remain belonging to all Ethiopians while the latter reclaims Addis Ababa to exclusively belong to Oromia.
Also, he shared his rare take on the persistence of institutions dubbed as ‘national, such as the National bank and national lottery. He firmly argued that the persistence of the ‘national’ identifier is no more to dub entire Ethiopia as a mere monotonous would be an erroneous characterization other than the Prosperity Party’s doctrinal conviction of ‘multiculturalism’. Also, he pursued the definition of Aleka Kidanewold Kifle’s Amharic lexical dictionary which used ‘nation’ to refer to either ‘land’ or ‘people’. Perhaps, one can note that the Stalinist definition of ‘nation’ stood binding and remained controversial in explaining what nation means than Aleka Kidanewold’s rendition.
In his reaction to questions regarding the government’s commitment to pursue a means of peace other than means of violence in resolving conflicts, later, he shared a very debatable stance regarding war and macro-economy. He pointed out that his administration has the capacity to consider at worst the entire 10 billion USD budget of the mega projects can be redirected to purchase for arming and wage defense from violence and ensuring survival. In this endeavor, his remark may stand contrary to what Paul Collier wrote extensively on war, conflict, and peace. He argued back in decades, for the first time in history, that the world economy looks capable of delivering the material conditions necessary for global peace. However, in the face of his commitment to sustainable peace, PM Abiy threatened the possibility of amassing the economic sphere to fuel violence by different potential conflicting actors. In fact, he pleaded for anyone who could lodge a new alternative solution to bring sustainable peace in contestable places such as Wolqaite Tsegede. Be that as it may, PM Abiy was wholeheartedly referring that with all its limitations of inability to bring a win-win scenario, there is no solution other than holding a referendum for such contestable areas.
Against the above-discussed backdrop, the answer to the initial question of this piece; ‘is there any hope in his audacious remark before MP?’ would be partially yes and partially no. One has to make a balance between the thin line of being a cautiously optimist and brutally skeptical over the fate of hope in the Ethiopian political discourse.
