Part I: Netsanet le Netsanet Demissie Belay
July 2004
TC (his initials) heard a calling. Fresh out of a northeastern college, the kid for whom my family and I assumed responsibility after his parents’ passing years ago was ready to change the world. He reminded me of myself twelve years ago, minus the dreads. But the polysi major was ready to spend a few weeks hanging out in Joburg before starting his trek to Ethiopia where he hoped to stay “for about a year or so.” The trekking part sounded interesting—he mentioned Swaziland, Arusha, and the esoteric place of my dreams Zanzibar. I was in no position to pass judgment on TC’s foolishness. I had once embarked on a year long journey of self-rediscovery in Ethiopia. I just hoped the kid with a bleeding heart would be back just in time to send in his applications to grad school.
January 2005
I dragged myself in the direction of the incessant ring. It was a Sunday and I cursed under my breath wondering who the hell would call at 5:00 A.M. Able to sleep through a tsunami, the little creatures we created were snoring soundly, oblivious to the annoying cell phone that rattled on the old depression-era tiles in our tiny Brooklyn apartment. It was either from Ethiopia or just bad news from anywhere. It was TC.
Any hope to expect him on the transatlantic EAL flight was dashed a few seconds into our conversation. He was staying put and was in need of cash. He wanted to stay through two upcoming events he described as “historic” and I wasn’t sure which one was more important to him. Bob Fest or the May 2005 elections.
Ten years ago, I would’ve probably been in Addis to attend the Africa Unite festival to celebrate Bob Marley’s 60th birthday anniversary. The elections were another issue. In January, I believed, the elections were nothing but pomp and circumstance, an elaborate show for both the governed and international community. Nothing told me the EPRDF was prepared to relinquish power. But by April 2005, I would be caught up in the fervor and excitement the opposition had unleashed in Ethiopian politics and like millions, I had hoped against hope. I promised to send TC what I could. By the end of the day, he had hit every relative and friend in the U.S.
The fresh supply of Benjamins allowed TC to embark on the historic Lalibela-Bahr-Dar-Gonder-Axum route, and subsequently, to hang out with his buddies at the Sheraton and Hilton hotels where he rubbed shoulders with the city’s who’s who—essentially its businessmen, the country’s rulers, the wealthy members of the opposition (mainly the old school), but most important, foreign election monitors and observers.
At the Hilton, he managed to sneak into a meeting between the members of the Carter Center and a bunch of Ethiopian suits. Reading his e-mails regarding his observation of the foreign monitors were (and are) fascinating: he found the members of the Carter Center impressive—they had a seasoned look about them; seemed as if they’d done this type of work before; and in typical gregarious American bearing, had ease communicating with Ethiopians. Ana Gomez’s team didn’t mingle easily with the locals; its members were young, seemed to have a perfunctory knowledge of Ethiopian history, but had a penchant for statistical accuracy that kept them glued to internet connections the Hilton, Sheraton, and the UN complex offered.
TC heard about Netsanet Demissie sometime in February 2005. Not from State’s Disinformation Organs ETV and Fana but from mind you, a drunk-ass West African diplomat who slung Green Labels to the back of his drunk-ass throat at the Sheraton, and who, in his drunk-ass stupor announced to anyone who could hear that if it were up to him, he would kick out every foreign observer in the country and give the responsibility of monitoring the elections to Netsanet Demissie and his organization. Why, he asked, does Ethiopia need the validation of white people when Ethiopia had “thousands” of observers at home? An excellent question to anyone who would give the High Calls a break. But TC’s curiosity was piqued, and so was mine. Until then, I had never considered the possibility there were Ethiopian observers.
I made my calls. My inquiries led me to Mr. A, a good friend, currently a resident of the city on the hill AA. Mr. A was kind enough to share the following with Carpe Diem Ethiopia, months before CDE was born and has allowed this blog to share only the fact he is “affiliated with the university.”
March 2005
Netsanet is a graduate of the Addis Ababa University Faculty of Law. Following graduation from law school, he worked as a lecturer at the university and later, as federal judge, before founding and becoming Executive Director of Organization for Social Justice in Ethiopia (OSJE), a civil society organization with a mission to "nurture social justice, democracy and good governance by addressing the denial and violations of basic rights of the poor and [ ] marginalized." With his friend Daniel Bekele, Netsanet also worked as coordinator for G-CAP—Global Call to Action Against Poverty.
By the time the election season arrived, OSJE undertook a historically significant responsibility—that of election monitoring. It became an umbrella organization for 35 or so Ethiopian civil society organizations (CSOs) with approximately 3,000 members who expressed a desire and readiness to observe the May 2005 elections. However, the CSOs soon found themselves constrained from fulfilling their objectives by various rules issued by the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) that kept changing the country’s election rules. More on this later. Its late-day rule change prevented more than two-thirds of the organizations the ability to obtain accreditation.
Mr. A, who ventured unannounced to the offices of the OSJE in the Kasanchis-Aware gave an interesting description of his one time visit in early February 2005. No guard or attendant was present at the entrance to the modern four-story building. The CSO occupies the second or the third floor of the building and consisted of a few rooms where no more than ten young Ethiopians with illuminated faces sat typing away in front of glowing monitors.
Mr. A and others who have spoken with Netsanet speak of his voice as kind, gentle, and reserved. He speaks English without a trace of an accent; he sounds like an American and once could swear he’s lived his entire life abroad. The EPRDF and its followers frequently extrapolate the OSJE’s challenge to the NEBE as biased against the ruling party. Nothing could be far from the truth. Netsanet strongly believed the 2005 elections were a watershed moment in the country’s history and was deeply convinced a fair election was an important step toward democracy and representative government.
Mr. A’s brief exploratory visit to the offices of the OSJE left him disheartened. In telephone conversations, he wondered why the European Union, the Carter Center, the African Union, India, China, Turkey, the Arab League and other international governmental and non-governmental actors were getting all the coverage when Ethiopia was able to produce outstanding organizations like the OSJE and individuals the likes of Netsanet. A few months before the elections, the work and efforts of domestic observers were completely unreported, their efforts hampered by a government that viewed any administrative and judicial challenge unconstitutional and treacherous. Their work was completely eclipsed by the presence in Addis Ababa of a colorful Portuguese parliamentarian and a colorless ex-Prez out of Georgia.
April 2005
Then, just like that, one month before the May 15 election, Netsanet arrived on the electoral scene with a bang and in the process did what most Ethiopian human rights advocates rarely managed to do: get a federal High Court to agree with him, in a precedent-setting decision, that the nation’s election rules were violative of the Ethiopian Constitution.
The background is important because the OSJE’s legal filings before the High Court propelled Netsanet and the importance of Ethiopian CSOs into the international arena. On April 20, 2005, the OSJE, on behalf of the 35 organizations brought a lawsuit before the federal High Court claiming the NEBE’s new rules were violative of the letter and spirit of the country’s election laws. Under the NEBE’s new rules, domestic organizations that intended to monitor the elections were required to meet two criteria: first, they must have registered with the government as election observers when they were originally founded, and second, they must also prove they are independent. Netsanet argued the NEBE's new rules would exclude no less than two-thirds of Ethiopia’s domestic observers.
The NEBE’s chairman, Kemal Bedri, himself a lawyer and the presiding judge of the High Court (but who, recused, did not hear or decide the case), arguing for the NEBE’s new laws stated: “you just can’t welcome anybody in to pass judgment on a very sensitive matter . . . accreditation cannot be automatic.” Comparing the work of domestic observers against that of international observers, Kemal also forwarded the claim he would later eat in the face of the EU Preliminary Report: unlike international observers for whom “it doesn’t matter who won the elections,” domestic organizations have a stake in the outcome of the elections. Kemal Bedri all but argued that Ethiopians are innately incapable of impartiality.
Two weeks before the election: enter Judge Berhanu
On May 3, 2005, barely two weeks before the elections, the High Court threw out Kemal Bedri’s distasteful arguments and the NEBE’s eleventh-hour edicts. In a seminal decision, High Court Judge Berhanu Teshome found the rules “contravened” the laws of the country and overturned the NEBE’s rules.
In our book, Judge Berhanu’s decision came down in the country’s relatively brief judicial history as the Ethiopian John Marshall, the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and whose decision in Marbury v. Madison paved the way for judicial review of executive acts. Teshome Berhanu must belong in any Ethiopian government textbook.
But that would be in a sane world. The federal judge’s decision was a loud bark without a bite much less a lick. The NEBE immediately appealed the decision and the OSJE had only a few days to prepare, train, and deploy observers in the country. It takes months to prepare election observers; months to acclimate them to the environment and the players involved; months to observe local traditions, rules, and region-specific electoral constraints. The under-funded civil society and its members had to accomplish in a few days what international observers were able to do in months and months of preparation, with high paid consultants and professionals working with the most current technology at their disposal, while being courted by the nation’s most powerful, staying in posh five-star hotels, and eating the best dishes Ethiopian chefs could throw together.
Fraud, blood, and tears
Ah, the elections of May 15, 2005! That day and its aftermath are now indexed in the annals of Ethiopian history, leaving in their wake a trail of blood and tears. In all of the post-election drama, the real losers became the people of Ethiopia. Killed with Ethiopian kids in June and November 2005, thousands detained in Kaliti and other detention centers, and a free press effectively shut down is civil society and the important role it plays in a burgeoning democracy. Carter and Gomez issued their findings and we entered the post-election observer debate. The contributions of the OSJE, Netsanet Demissie’s and those of the 35 domestic observer organizations are almost never mentioned except from the mouths of prosecutors who lance the fiery spears of treason and genocide againt them. We do not know what the findings of Ethiopia’s domestic observers are, but whatever they are, the CSOs operated under-funded and in a climate of hostility and antagonism, their existence barely recognized by their own government.
The EPRDF’s use of the NEBE’s powers to suppress the role of Ethiopia’s CSOs did permanent damage to the elections of 2005. Ethiopia missed a golden opportunity to elevate the importance of the Ethiopian judiciary and its ability to undo unconstitutional parliamentary laws of the Peoples House of Representatives. What should’ve happened following the High Court’s monumental ruling was a complete review of the country’s electoral laws, and if necessary, a delay of the elections to ensure constitutional issues relating to electoral laws were completely vetted by the judiciary, CSOs, and interested parties. It goes without saying that the EPRDF’s muzzling of Ethiopia’s CSOs did the most disservice to the establishment of the rule of law in Ethiopia.
A few days after the guns blazed in June, a shocked TC got the hell out. I welcomed a much changed TC at Newark. Our drive to the city was significant for the constant use of holly shits and holly, holly shits. I remembered our initial drive to the airport more than a year ago: then, TC was full of hope and bubbling anticipation whereas I had been wary and concerned. Lighting one Rothman after another, his face displayed a sad and almost despondent affect. This time around, I was the one who was full of anticipation to hear news of Ethiopia, the June bloodshed, the taxi boycott in AA, and the ongoing Troika-led discussions between the CUD and the EPRDF. But it was soon clear to us that I was the one with the news—he just left a land where the free press was already on its way to indefinite extinction.
And as the kids lay dying in November, TC called me at the office. Since his return from Ethiopia, he had moved uptown with his buddies from college. He said he was receiving minute-by-minute updates of the situation in AA. What he said about Netsanet made my heart skip a beat. The government had issued an all-points-bulletin on Netsanet. I could tell from his faltering voice he was affected by the rapidly deteriorating situation in Addis. He had made lots of friendships and acquaintances in AA and was dialing every number he knew.
“I’m sure he will hand himself to the bastards . . . he’s got nothing to hide . . . he hasn’t done anything . . . they’ll kill him!” He went on. Unbeknownst to us, Netsanet had already gone to the police the minute he found out about the APB. He has been behind bars since then, denied bail, and charged with treason. The language of the charges are enough to make you shudder in disbelief: “insurrection for incidents that happened on 8 June 2005 and November 2005.” You can review the ensuing in and out of court drama here.
Final thoughts on Netsanet
Both Ethiopians and foreigners who know Netsanet talk about his absolute belief in the justice system; that he believes electoral irregularity to be endemic to the exercise of universal suffrage, and that if left unchecked, would take advantage of holes in the electoral system. His solution was simple: setting up independent Ethiopian watchdogs that observe the conduct of the parties and their constituents. But he never banked on monitoring alone: the independence and strength of the judiciary was paramount, after all, only the courts would be the ultimate arbiters of disputes that were sure to arise. Everyone who knew and met Netsanet speak of his political independence and the importance he accorded to impartiality.
TC went to Ethiopia hoping to reconnect with his people and himself, but in the process, came to hate what his own people are capable of doing to each other. His trans-African trip made him accept another sad reality—that the Ethiopian government was not much different from other African regimes: it gives a much higher value to the judgment of westerners. The irrebuttable fact remains that on the eve of the May 2005 elections, Netsanet Demissie was as competent and impartial as Ana Gomez and Jimmy Carter; the OSJE far more credible and effective than the Arab League or the African Union.
Netsanet encapsulates everything that is right about Ethiopia and Ethiopians. Silencing him is silencing a voice of reason so crucial to Ethiopia.
Additional information about Netsanet Demissie can be found at Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (E-Law).
