They have finally seen the outside gates of Kality Prison. (Can we hear a Hallelujah?) Some of the members of the Coalition of Unity & Democracy Party (CUDP) are senior citizens who languished in jail in bodies wracked with old age and rapidly deteriorating health. Others are parents to young children. They needed to be among their families, their followers, and their supporters, and only the most contemptuous would ignore the human story behind last week's negotiated release. And this is essentially what all of us sought: in numerous petitions, protests, articles, blogs, and support for various proposed legislative acts, Ethiopians and non-Ethiopians alike lobbied for the day to see the men and women who led the campaign to realize the electoral demise of the ruling party walk away from prison intact.
Then there's the issue of the July 16, 2007 admission of culpability. The letter to the Prime Minister included language that frankly shocked our conscious, including admission to attempting to usurp power through non-constitutional means, and a promise to refrain from engaging in similar conduct in the future. Many who supported the opposition movement in Ethiopia, particularly the CUDP, were in utter disbelief that its leaders and members signed a document not just admitting guilt but asking the very forces that engaged in extra-judicial killing of young children for forgiveness. A friend described this development as a bitter taste he had difficulty rinsing from his mouth; an infectious mucus he couldn't spit out. Our initial reaction was not that far off.
A quick Timeline
July 9, 2007 = the ruling party seeks the death penalty;
July 16, 2007 = the ruling party hands down life sentences;
July 20, 2007 = the ruling party issues "pardons."
In just ten days, the EPRDF's Ministry of Justice went from arguing that the most ultimate, cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment should be visited upon some of the most respectable members of Ethiopian society, to four days later, in an act of seeming penance, setting aside that call and passing life sentences, and to finally absolving them of their purported sins. All it took was their placing their signatures on a pro forma document that is silent on the level of culpability of each defendant and the manner, time, and place of the supposed constitutional violations. So much for establishing legal precedence.
Forgive what?
Never recognizing the jurisdiction of the court, the accused maintained that the ruling party's genocide and treason charges were nothing but an attempt to rewrite the fraudulent elections of May 2005 and the ensuing EPRDF violent crackdown. They argued, in our opinion, rightfully, that they would not receive justice in a court that is subservient not to the rule of law but to the dictates of the Office of the Prime Minister. They maintained that the EPRDF's incantations of a divided government, checks and balances, and independence of the judiciary were a collection of phrases designed to keep Western donors at bay.
So while the EPRDF information machinery engaged in a sustained media blitz declaring the government’s non-interference in the judicial process underway, the ruling party was steeped in negotiations to secure a negotiated settlement. In what is perhaps the world’s longest plea-bargain-but-soon-to-be-post-conviction-pardon, both parties ultimately obtained what they apparently sought—for the EPRDF, both a conviction and an admission that the defendants engaged in extra-judicial political activities; for the CUDP, a political as opposed to a legal resolution and reinstatement of the right to participate in future political activity.
Gambling with Human Lives
The benefit of hindsight rewards the CUDP. The treason and genocide charges and the courtroom proceedings were merely a drawn-out process designed to accomplish at least three objectives: (1) alienate the most critical and popular voices of dissent from their supporters and the public, (2) create a rift within the CUDP and to hasten factionalism among its leaders and supporters, and to (3) grind the CUDP leaders toward an unfair bargaining table. After all is said and done, the enduring reality will be that the EPRDF’s prosecutions were not designed to meet out justice or to set a precedent for the adjudication of the laws of treason, insurrection, and genocide. The unproven charges, repeated delays of courtroom proceedings, the government’s in- and out-of-court repetition of unsubstantiated legal theories were designed to vilify men and women whose worst sin was to vociferously campaign for the EPRDF’s electoral demise. What makes the ruling party reviled among the governed is its willingness to use the country’s legal arms to wrangle political outcomes. The governed are left with a deep-seated resentment that this type of activity is par exellence governance without accountability to the rule of law.
The process by which the EPRDF has arrived at the latest “pardon” does not necessarily usher hope into the hearts of the governed. It merely completes the monstrous noose the government has placed around the fragile neck of Ethiopian democracy. We have repeatedly argued that democracy is not just about reaching the right outcome; its the tedious processes are perhaps more important. We recall one of our earlier postings where we hypothesized a scenario where the CUD was indeed guilty of the crime of treason as charged:
[L]et’s assume for a moment that the EPRDF is right—that those who disagreed with its policies violated basic tenets of democratic debate and engaged in acts of treason. Winston Churchill once remarked that “one of the most unfailing tests of civilization lies in how a country treats people accused of crimes.” The EPRDF’s treatment of those it accuses of committing crimes has rendered the ruling party and the government it leads utter failures under both the civilization and fear tests.
And who speaks for them?
Even though history will not be kind to the EPRDF on its treatment of political dissent, there is the nagging issue of the admission of guilty signed by the detained members of the CUDP. The people of Ethiopia deserve to hear from the leadership as to the degree of culpability they’ve owned up to. Saying that the admission was a result of a drawn-out and complicated elder process (Shemgilina) or that it was signed under duress is not enough. It also leaves both the democracy movement and the people of Ethiopia uninstructed on the limits of constitutionally protected speech and dissent. The people of Ethiopia deserve it.
Ultimately, the EPRDF, as the government, bears the ultimate burden to show that both the process and the outcome of the political settlement were fair. But the ruling party does not seem concerned about fairness. Instead, it is gambling on a scenario where, at best, a mutually assured interpretive destruction ensues where both parties will either be winners or losers, or at worst, to leave a lasting perception in the hearts and minds of the governed that it has the power to ultimately decide the fate of all that cross its path. This list includes individual voices of dissent, opposition parties, civil society, the private media, foreign journalists, and blogs.
So here were are, elated that the leaders of the opposition who have taught millions to advocate for democracy (regardless of its consequences) will no longer have to breath the putrid smell of their prison cages. At the dawn of the Coptic Ethiopian millennium, we must, however, reluctantly believe in Bernhard Meltzer's oft-repeated aphorism: "when you forgive, you in no way change the past—but you sure do change the future."
The opposition will continue to do what it does—oppose. The issue is how the EPRDF will deal with that opposition. Once again, the ball is in the ruling party’s court.
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- Andrew Heavens' departure from Ethiopia has left a void in the Ethiopian blogsphere. We thank Andrew for his work during his stay in Ethiopia and his apparent affection for Ethiopians from all walks of life regardless of the situation in which life has placed them. We hope to soon write a piece on Meskel Square's important contributions to the development of Ethiopian democracy.
