On Sunday, the ruling party won 499 of 536 seats now decided, with 11 seats still to come.  That’s 93%…a landslide by anyone’s  reckoning.

The common expectation around the table at a meeting of ‘knowledgeable observers’ last Friday was obviously mistaken; the existing 70-30 split was not maintained.

Did Meles’ really want this extreme result.  It’s hard to think otherwise.  He gave the instructions to mount an all-out effort to take as many seats as possible.  But at all costs, I can hear him saying, make sure there is no bloodshed to feed Twitter and YouTube.  Meles saw what happened in Iran last summer.

Given the results, did Meles really win the election?  He certainly won almost every seat but there was more at stake for him than that. He wants this election to be seen by the world as evidence of his legitimacy and political integrity.  He wants to be seen as a leader who was chosen by appreciative voters in recognition of his impressive economic and social achievements.

Yet this lopsided outcome is so transparently a manufactured product with a suspect relationship to public opinion that the result may ultimately not be what he wants.  The EU’s chief observer commented favorably at first, responding to the absence of violence and mechanically  repeating the government’s claims of a high turnout (an endlessly repeated claim in the absence of little first hand information, though it is challenged by many anecdotal reports of nearly empty polling stations).  A day later, he now says that the election ‘falls short’ of international standards.  In a classic European acceptance of a political fait accompli. he also said that the process wasn’t bad enough to overturn the results. What he didn’t say but clearly meant was, “Can I go home now?”

The US  Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Johnnie Carson told a House panel today that “the elections there were not up to international standards”.  There were no US observers this time. The Carter Center had asked in December to send an advance team to observe the crucial voter registration and campaign period as well as the voting itself. The Ethiopian government stalled until there was time only for a last minute arrival and the kind of limited effort that the EU was willing to agree to.  The Carter Center declined, perhaps remembering its shabby performance during the 2005 election, led by the former president himself.

How will the Ethiopian public see things?  The level of political sophistication in Ethiopia after living through centuries of government maneuvering is as high as anywhere in the world.  They don’t have the least doubt that the deep divisions in their society could not possibly have led to this outcome.  As realists long familiar with how power operates, they certainly expected the government to win.  But a victory of such proportions may not go down as easily as 70-30 did.  It implies such great enthusiasm for a little admired leader that they might choke on it.  Whether they do, and whether it might find tangible expression, is impossible to know.

And what of the defeated…no, the humiliated…opposition?  An election is supposed to be a mature, peaceful way to express dissent. When that expression is insulted in this way, with opposition leaders ‘defeated’ and thrown out of Parliament, how are they to react?  So far they have honorably rejected calls for violence but have stated the intent to challenge the results through proper channels. Since these channels are under government control not much satisfaction is likely beyond a chance to air their grievances.  That is something, at least.

Will it end here?  Or might the ill will generated by such an egregious election consolidate the fragmented opposition?  It is widely agreed that Ethiopia missed a historic opportunity in 2005, when a seriously contested election produced a real challenge to the ruling party.  Neither side was capable of letting it play out fairly.  The government locked out the poll watchers and produced the result it wanted.  The opposition claimed it had won.  The result of an honest count that year will be forever unknown, but the lesson the government learned to make sure that it wouldn’t be close next time.  And that’s what happened.

In practical terms, as I said a few days ago, nothing has changed.  The government was in complete control before and is still in complete control.  The difference is the aftertaste of a tainted election.

There are reports that the EU sent 170 observers, not 140, as I wrote yesterday.  How many observers were there, in fact?

The higher number could be correct but the difference isn’t material.  Thirty more observers might add about 100 polling stations to the total visited, out of a total of 43,000.  The total that had EU or African Union remains about 5%.

The EU’s chief observer still says that the turnout was high, but he doesn’t say that most of his information comes from the government, not from independent observers, least of all the small number in his group.

Here’s his quote in a BBC report today:

“I do not know what the final turnout will be but it was very high. I think this in itself is encouraging,” the chief EU observer Thijs Berman said

“The Ethiopian citizens have expressed their vote in a democratic, calm and peaceful way and massively,” he said.

There were many local observers, but widespread complaints of interference with their efforts.  Staffs from all embassies were banned from the countryside during the voting, removing a group of potential witnesses from the scene who could not be easily intimidated.

The truth, of course, is that African governments,  like incumbents in the US (will this year be different?), usually win.  Ethiopians are not really worse off today than they were before the election.  That’s both good news and bad news.

Wait till 2015!

On one point all sides agree: there was no bloodshed today when Ethiopia voted.  The Election Board says that results will begin to be announced as they are tabulated and certified, beginning tomorrow, Monday.

There is little agreement on anything else.

The government claims that there was a huge turnout.  Anecdotal reports from Ethiopia by email named towns and polling places where there were no lines of voters by mid morning.  In 2005, a turnout of about 29 million, smaller than the 32 million voters claimed by the government today, stood in lines well past midnight.  Could the turnout have been that big today?

The European Union had 140 observers to cover 43,000 polling places.  Since they probably did not go singly to every site they visited, a generous estimate of the number of polling places they observed might be has high as 500.  Estimate generously that the 40 African Union observers visited a few hundred more.   The number of polling places observed, and many for a short time if one observer traveled to several sites, would have barely have reached 5% of the total.

The EU said that the election went well, though candor should have elicited a comment on how little of their information was first hand, and how much was given to them by the government.  The statement mentioned some ‘irregularities’ that would be investigated, but by and large they Europeans endorsed the legitimacy of the balloting process.  I have seen no statement yet from the African Union observers.

The Voice of America said that there had been a record turnout, but since there were no American observers they had to rely entirely on what the government told them.

Personnel from all the embassies in Addis Ababa were banned from traveling outside of the city during the election, so no independent verification of the government’s claims from that source are possible.

Claims of voter intimidation and interference, destruction of election posters, etc. by the opposition were loud and widespread. While that would be consistent with campaign interference, these election day claims have not yet been unverified.

It is fair to say that so far the reports in the international media have come almost entirely from government statements and from the limited personal observations of the small number of foreign observers, who were able to visit only a small percent of the voting sites.

Over the coming days we can expect to hear more detailed complaints from the opposition and denials of any interference from the government.  The foreign observers may yet provide new, first hand information. Since the government successfully blocked the presence of more that a few independent witnesses, it will remain difficult or impossible to separate truth from fiction regarding the number of voters and the use of harsh tactics to interfere with voters.

Will there be any ‘aftershocks’ in the coming days?  Early reports suggest that so far the mood in the country is quiet.  There is little celebrating, but there are no stories of angry gatherings.  The opposition has explicitly stated that it wants to avoid violence.  The presence of security forces in the streets is also an extra deterrent.

Addis Neger is a weekly newspaper whose editor was warned by the government to censor itself.  The editor, Tamerat Negera, took the hint and is now in exile.  The paper continues to publish online.

Today it is providing a live blog here: Addis Neger, with regular updates from around the country.  (You have to refresh your screen to see the updates.)

Reports from various cities and towns as well as Addis indicate a much lower turnout than in 2005, with a heavy visible police presence and some intimidation of voters.  Whatever else one can learn from this, it is evident that technology has penetrated far into Ethiopia.

Reported here: two opposition candidates — in Adama (more often called Nazret in the past but the Oromo name is now favored) and Bishoftu (the former, revived Oromo name, but still often called Debre Zeit) have withdrawn on election day amid suggestions but as yet no evidence that they were bribed.

The blog sends reports from its own observers but also forwards comments it receives from others by email, including supporters of the government.  Impressive!

Meles will win big, says almost everyone who has commented publicly. I have agreed, for what that’s worth.

What this expectation really means is less clear, even to me.  The opposition now has about 30% of the seats in Parliament.  Meles, with the few small parties that he controls, has the rest.  That’s enough to confer legitimacy on any policy.

At a seminar on the Ethiopia elections yesterday almost everyone agreed that the next Parliament would probably have roughly the same 70-30 balance. No one used the words ‘landslide’, ‘overwhelming victory’, etc.  No one thought that post-election violence was likely, though small incidents were possible.

That left me wondering whether an unchanged 70-30 should be considered an ‘overwhelming victory’, or whether maintaining the status quo was just smart politics. It would avoid antagonizing the world, which has already criticized the lack of fairness in the campaign.  And it wouldn’t add force to domestic complaints.

Most interesting to participants yesterday was is the fate of Meles’ dominant Tigre-based party faction itself. For the first time it faces opposition from defecting senior party members. Meles himself faces an opponent in Adua, his home town.  In 2005 he ran unopposed.

So…two things to watch in tomorrows’s election:  will Meles increase his margin in Parliament, and will Meles experience even a small embarrassment in his home province?

Nothing else seems to be in doubt.   But I remember the wisdom of Yogi Berra, who said that predictions aren’t easy, especially about the future.

Reuters

Ethiopia’s Meles on road to 25 years in power

May 21, 2010

Barry Malone

ADDIS ABABA - Meles Zenawi, a young rebel who dropped out of medical school to go to war against east Africa’s biggest army, had contracted malaria and was close to death, hiding near a river in remote northern Ethiopia.

His father, the story goes, turned up with some medicine just in time to save his son’s life. He begged the idealistic guerrilla to abandon the war and come home.

Meles refused and the next time he saw his family was 17 years later when he emerged as leader of Ethiopia after the fall of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam.

“He believed in the struggle,” a party colleague in Addis Ababa told Reuters. “He had a desire to see a better Ethiopia. Despite what some say, he still does.”

The 55-year-old has now been in charge of one of Africa’s most complex countries for almost 20 years and is expected to win national elections again on Sunday, amid accusations from opposition groups of widespread intimidation.

Meles was born Legesse Zenawi in 1955 in Adwa, the site of Ethiopia’s most celebrated victory against Italian invaders in 1896. He took the nom-de-guerre Meles as a tribute to Meles Tekle, a young activist killed by the government.

When Mengistu announced the start of his Red Terror purges in 1977, Meles was already in the bush and a rising figure in the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that he helped found as a 20-year-old.

The TPLF would ultimately succeed, and after aligning with other groups and forming the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition, entered Addis Ababa in 1991, much to the amazement of the locals.

“NEW GENERATION”

“They were this army of kids in shorts with huge afros, marching into the city,” an Addis resident told Reuters. “We didn’t even know who Meles Zenawi was.”

Ethiopians soon got to know the 35-year-old intimately when he took power, first as transitional president and later, after poorly contested elections in 1995, as prime minister of the renamed Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.

The EPRDF set about trying to change the desperately poor country, pledging to drive growth and improve the lives of peasant farmers. It introduced a system of ethnic federalism, opening regional parliaments and giving Ethiopia’s main ethnic groups the chance to govern the areas in which they dominate.

The West welcomed Africa’s new youngest leader enthusiastically, grateful for his overthrow of a communist regime and impressed with his obvious savvy.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Meles was part of a “new generation” of African leaders and he was invited to join then British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s crusading Commission for Africa.

But Meles’ record of solid economic growth, poverty reduction and closer ties to the West is being marred by a crackdown on dissent, rights groups say.

The analysts who say the once bright hope for the continent has become autocratic blame two major incidents.

“CULT OF THE PERSONALITY”

The first came shortly after Ethiopia fought a bitter war with neighbouring Eritrea, a country that ceded from Ethiopia once Mengistu had fallen. The war bred divisions within the TPLF central committee that soon spilled over into arguments about economic policy.

That row ended with 12 of the TPLF central committee expelled and some, including former Defence Minister Seye Abraha, ended up in prison on corruption charges.

The second test was Ethiopia’s last national elections in 2005, seen as the first poll that could be truly democratic. Meles and the EPRDF were caught off-guard by the rise of the ad-hoc Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD).

When the EPRDF claimed victory, the CUD cried fraud, street riots erupted and 193 protesters and seven policemen died. The CUD leadership was imprisoned. Meles showed his stubborn streak under pressure from Western donors, refusing to back down and saying Ethiopia could survive without them if it had to.

“He intimidates Western ambassadors in Addis,” a junior diplomat told Reuters. “At their meetings, they bring up a subject and he just lectures them on it.”

Despite his “strongman” image, the voracious reader often shows flashes of wit and is well liked by those who work closely with him and by many senior diplomats.

“America didn’t give us money because of Somalia,” he said in reply to a question on whether the U.S. had given financial support to Ethiopian troops who entered the neighbouring country to oust an Islamist regime.

“This doesn’t mean America hasn’t given us money for food aid or HIV prevention before. It has. But we’re not going to fight Somalia using condoms.”

With the results of Sunday’s election seemingly a foregone conclusion, the father of three looks set to see out almost a quarter of a century in power. But he has always insisted it is the party and Ethiopia that count, not him.

“Africa’s downfall has always been the cult of the personality,” he once said. “And their names always seem to begin with M. We’ve had Mobutu and Mengistu and I’m not going to add Meles to the list.”

The headline of the Voice of America news item says it well enough.  The article is a reasonable summary of a complicated situation.

There has been at most a small change in US policy since Obama took office. Mostly it is the sharper tone of Voice of America coverage these days, a novel way, maybe, to make new policy. Broadcasts in Amharic have been jammed for weeks, and now those in Tigrinya and Orominya also, I am told.

The State Department has said almost nothing about Ethiopia for years.  The new US ambassador presented his credentials only a few weeks ago.  And naturally the Ethiopian government isn’t interested in hearing anything new from the US right now. Anyway, China looms larger than the US in Ethiopia’s mind these days. And of course the election and maybe some nervous time afterwards is only days away.

Voting will take place this coming Sunday, May 23.  Though no one expects anything but a landslide in favor of the ruling party, the government will hold its collective breath until it feels confident that there will be no aftershocks.

Whatever the outcome, as the VOA article that starts this post notes, the situation will remain complicated for the US. And given what’s happening elsewhere, the Horn of Africa will not get the attention of any important policymakers unless/until something ugly happens.

For more about Ethiopia’s election, there are news reports here.  Scroll through the headlines after choosing ‘Ethiopia‘ under ‘ARCHIVE CATEGORIES‘.  If you put ‘Voice of America’ in the search engine, it should bring up some recent coverage.

Last week I suggested that the Ethiopian government’s heavy-handed treatment of the opposition before the election on May 23 is a sign of its anxiety.

The government has already assured its victory by hobbling the opposition leadership, interfering with their candidates and making sure that there will be no meaningful oversight of vote count. So, what is it afraid of?

I can only guess, but one possibility is that Meles is worried about public violence if the opposition has managed to connect with enough of the public, as it did last time. Ethiopia became remarkably politicized during the 2005 election campaign and its bloody aftermath — an unprecedented and heady experience in a country where feudalism didn’t end until 1974.  Urban youth in particular…high school age and above…were excited. Others were also caught up. The government was shocked at the depth of its unpopularity. Where those emotions went when the hammer came down. I doubt that they simply evaporated.

College students in Addis Ababa first became politicized when they supported the failed coup in 1960, after which they abjectly apologized to Emperor Haile Selassie.  But soon, annual protests against the Emperor led to broken heads, some gunshot wounds and an occasional death as the global tide of campus activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s reached Ethiopia from through students sent abroad to Europe and the US.  Eventually the students got more than they wanted after the Derg overthrew Haile Selassie and killed tens of thousands, including students, over the next several years, driving the hard core opposition underground.

Meles was one of them, going into the bush and emerging as leader of the group that replaced the Derg in 1991. He knows the danger campus radicals can pose, and now there are a dozen or more campuses around the country.  There is little doubt that his agents have infiltrated groups and cliques, collecting names and sowing mistrust, making it dangerous to conspire if there is in fact an impulse to do that.  In these extremely polarized times, how could such an impulse not be present?  Fear is one way to keep it in check.

Meles also seems to fear something or he wouldn’t be clamping down so hard on his political opponents.  Does he hear alarming reports from his agents about simmering anger?  Are there signs of it outside of Addis Ababa, where ethnic resentment at the Tigrean-dominated government is no secret?   Ethiopia now has cities with populations of hundreds of thousands (Awassa, Dire Dawa, Bahr Dar, Dessie and more), and probably a few dozen of between 25,000 and 100,000.  Even the heavily militarized/securitized Ethiopia with several armed military, paramilitary and police organizations can’t cover a country of 80 million.

Smaller numbers of election observers in the field will make it easier for the government to manage the news if trouble breaks out.  Last winter the Carter Center asked for permission to send observers at the critical early stage of setting up campaign machinery. It was the right way to do things, and the Center needed to atone for its shabby performance in 2005, when they and the former president disgraced themselves with vacuous statements about an acceptable election at the same time that the EU’s observers and others rightly condemned the obvious fraud.

The Ethiopian government turned the Carter Center down, which then declined to join the EU and the AU in providing a rubber stamp for another stolen election, which is what they will probably do. It would be nice to be wrong about this.

Is the Ethiopian government intentionally limiting the number of potential witnesses in the countryside, as it appears? Everyone, expatriate or Ethiopian, working for an embassy or international organization must get a travel pass from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before every trip. The application (I have a copy), asks where, when, for how long and why the trip is to be taken.  See the English language weekly, The Reporter for more. If there is trouble and ‘unmanaged’ news leaks out, the government will have a list of potential leakers.  Is there another reason for the passes?

The election and its aftermath might go smoothly. On the other hand, a nasty surprise like the one in 2005 can’t be entirely ruled out.  The government had badly underestimated the depth of political feelings aroused during that campaign. Could it happen again? We don’t have long to wait.

A short, angry exchange broke out yesterday in this blog.  A defender of Eritrea took exception to the strong criticism of its regime by a commenter.

Let’s take a brief look at the way both countries treat press freedom.

One way to know, or at least have a sense of, what’s happening in a country is through the media.  Both Ethiopia and Eritrea make that either difficult or impossible.

Ethiopia jails or intimidates its media critics, though sometimes it only beats them bloody and sends them to the hospital.  Some journalists have gone into exile.  Websites with news or criticism are routinely blocked, following the example of China, whose government Meles admires in many ways.  Ethiopia jams Voice of America broadcasts, to which the Obama administration has meekly acquiesced, it seems.   Ethiopia’s policy makes it clear that the government is afraid of what its citizens might do if they knew that their leaders were getting away with murder, sometimes literally.

But Eritrea is far worse.  There is no press at all, just a government ‘news’ bureau.  The entire independent press was officially shut down years ago.  Journalists were arrested, fled for their lives or changed professions.  This is consistent with the regime’s iron-fisted policy of arresting any and all dissenters. Reports of torture are widespread and credible, not least from prison guards who have fled the country.

When 15 of Isaias’ close colleagues from the liberation war wrote to him in 2001 to ask for a meeting to discuss implementing the new constitution now that the war with Ethiopia was over, his response was to arrest all of the signers who were in the country (12 of the 15).  Not a single one of them has ever been heard from again. Not one, not once. Even their families have had no word in nine years, and don’t know if they are alive or dead.  The signers were among the Isaiais’ closest advisors and most senior leaders during the independence war and the subsequent ten years.

The BBC gave up and withdrew its last Asmara-based correspondent years ago.  There is no resident international press at all in Eritrea. ‘News’ is whatever the government hands out, if anything. Journalists are allowed into the country when it serves the interests of the government.  This happens infrequently.  The rare business traveler or tourist is constantly watched, making candid conversations impossible.

It is clear that Ethiopia is a nasty abuser of the press and of free speech, but it is equally clear that Eritrea is so much worse that they can’t be seriously compared. Both are among the worst abusers of press freedom on the planet. The difference is that Eritrea makes no pretense of having a press in the first place.

Here are two articles about press freedom, the first in Eritrea, the second in Ethiopia.  In both cases, the original source is Reporters Without Borders.

http://af.reuters.com/article/eritreaNews/idAFLDE6420JR20100503

Eritrea is Africa’s “biggest prison for media,” RSF

http://en.rsf.org/ethiopie-reporters-without-borders-writes-06-05-2010,37394.html

Reporters Without Borders writes to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi

Another post?  So soon?  And Kenya isn’t even in the Horn!

The link below goes to a news item from the Daily Nation, a Kenya paper.  It touched a nerve that has been rubbed raw by the frequent use of  ’infection’ and similar words to describe the spread of financial breakdowns, but the spread of anarchy is not so different.

Anarchy in Somalia began when the government collapsed in 1991.  In the past decade it spread offshore, first to Somali coastal waters, then the Gulf of Aden, now to a vast (a million square miles?) stretch of the Indian Ocean.

Ethiopia’s Ogaden troubles are old but have been further inflamed by Somali anarchy.  Some aid groups fear that food and water are at dangerously low levels but verification (or refutation) needs access, which is hard to get and tightly monitored.

Northern Kenya has both its native ethnic Somali population and well over 100,000 refugee Somalis in camps.  There are many thousands more in Nairobi slums.  They are poorer than poor — an unstable population created in another country by anarchy in Somalia.

And now the Daily Nation tells us that Kenya has a serious problem with heroin addiction.  Is today’s Silk Road a heroin pipeline from Afghanistan through Pakistan then across the Gulf to Yemen and into the hands of the pirates. Have the pirates become a drug cartel servicing the east coast of Africa across the Gulf of Aden, which they control?  Will heroin addiction spread to Tanzania and Uganda, if it hasn’t already?

Will Ethiopia be far behind?  Actually, Ethiopia is already deeply involved in the drug trade as a khat/qat exporter to Somalia, Djibouti and the Arabian Peninsula that brings in a lot of hard currency. As coffee prices were falling ten years ago, trees were uprooted in Harar and replaced with khat bushes.  Farmers immediately realized, as opium, cocaine and other drug farmers already knew, that drugs are the most profitable crop.

Coffee prices have recovered but coffee trees are not replacing khat bushes.  On the contrary, khat growing has spread to other parts of Ethiopia, and khat use — once a regional habit — has gone national. It’s as common in Addis as marijuana in the US, but legal.  Almost every kiosk in town has bunches of fresh khat hanging over the window.

I guess this turned out to be about the Horn after all.

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Drug%20barons%20getting%20real%20dirty/-/1056/914728/-/f9f42s/-/index.html

Below is an angry reaction to the coffee/khat transition by a disillusioned Irish coffee merchant who raised money for villagers in the area his beans come from.  The ‘infection’ metaphor seems on target. It also reminds us…and readers of Peace Corps WorldWide know this better than most…that the disconnect between promoting change and the reality of  change often seems impossible to overcome.

From today’s (May 11, 2010) Independent (Ireland):

“Why my compassion for Ethiopia turned to anger”

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/issues/why-my-compassion-for-ethiopia-turned-to-anger-2174913.html