It is a journalist’s headache in Ethiopia that nearly everyone interviewed prefers to remain anonymous. That is not even humility. It is rather the fear of what the consequences of accountability for what people say might be. That goes for when many people believe in the truth of what they say. That also goes for when what they disclose is simple data, with which no one would have any problems with.
Government policy has it clearly set up so that information goes through public relations officers. I find these people usually the least informed, least excited, and sometimes less educated than the rest of their colleagues.
These officers ask for a letter to be delivered to them listing the questions that a journalist needs details about. Invariably, they will tell the journalist to return however many days later. That day could be 15 days later, as if a newspaper story was an annual report. A reporter thus tries to go around them. Ending up attributing remarks to unidentified officials and information to anonymous sources.
Despite the fact that things are so much better today than they were during the Derg, Ethiopians have not allowed themselves to drop the shroud of fear that is forever upon them. In some ways, they had experimented with what they thought was their newfound liberty through demonstrations, which led not to clashes with police as in other countries but to forceful reactions that took the lives of some demonstrators.
The biggest experiment in striking also turned out to be the last. Employees of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) attempted it, and they discovered that the new government did not tolerate such messes.
In the 2005 National Elections, democratic fantasies had reached their highest point. The debates took the attention of the majority of voters. The mass gathering that the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) called had a historic turnout which, to the credit of the public, was very peaceful. This peaceful force turned into a violent one in the chaos of the election aftermath.
The dream vanished, many people died, and fear of consequences became its legacy to the forthcoming elections. As things sobered up and people started looking back, they also saw the significant defects of the CUD. And then, as if that was not enough, Brehanu Nega (PhD), the economist who had endeared the CUD to the public, fled to the United States, claiming that only violence could bring down the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government.
For a man who claims to retain painful memories of what the forces of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) did to their own members who they felt were entertaining different opinions, that is a tragic change. He himself was to be killed. Only his young age (17) saved him from that.
As this election drew to a close, the popular feeling was lukewarm, if not cold. The government, too, did not want anybody to think that lessons had not been learned from those elections.
There are now laws on every side putting restrictions on everyone. The revised criminal code, the media law, the charities and societies law, and the antiterrorism law, not to mention a couple of other restrictive bills the incumbent wants to push through the legislative process. They all ganged up against those forces that might prove to be incendiary during election time.
In the aftermath of the last elections, journalists, civil society members, politicians, and members of the public who were alleged to have been involved in the violence, all went to jail. There were bitter lessons on every side.
Many people have been heard speaking of their preference to maintain the status quo. Some of them say they fear a return to costly violence. Others say that the EPRDF is good enough. The EPRDF says that the opposition parties are forever pitted against one another.
How can they, it argues, lead a country if they cannot even solve their differences?
That is what it says as an incumbent party. Representing the government, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has been worrying and repeating his warnings against possible chaos related to the elections. He has made it clear that anyone who thinks about messing with the elections will pay dearly once the elections are over. That way he has planted the seeds of fear in many people. Of course, it does not take much to imagine what the consequences of ignoring his warnings might be.
If democracy was ripe in Ethiopia, the elections five years ago would have been a big thing for the nation.
Now what do people expect from these elections. One hardly knows until the actual voting happens on May 23, 2010. Leaders of the opposition parties express faith that they are going to win. The EPRDF keeps repeating reasons why the votes will go in its favour. Election observers are gearing up to monitor the voting and counting processes, although they may not be up to the challenge of making proper observations in all the 43,000 polling stations.
Thinking of that day and May 24 as well as the next few days after, there is fear and suspense.
Will there be violence if the EPRDF claims victory? Will there be violence if the opposition claims victory? Will the incumbent easily let go of power and control in those areas where it could possibly lose?
This election will be more important for the lessons it will give for the 2015 elections, an American professor recently said in a video conference, claiming that this time the Ethiopian voters do not have proper choices. As the day draws closer, I wonder if the voters actually feel that way. This time, there are over 30 million registered voters, larger by at least five million than the number in 2005. That is a very big force to mull over.
Addis Fortune
