Report on Ethiopian opposition movement meetings with the House African Affairs Subcommittee
By: Mesfin Mekonen
I helped organize and attended some meetings between Ethiopian political leaders and Congressional staff recently. A brief note about the meetings follows.
Staff from the House African Affairs Subcommittee held two separate meetings with Ethiopian opposition officials in late July and August 3. At the first meeting, Dr. Hailu Araya, vice chairman of EDP briefed the subcommittee staff on the Ethiopian Democratic Party's (EDP) positions. He said the EDP is attracting support from young people in Ethiopia and the government holds it responsible for the recent unrest that led to the government attacking Addis Ababa University students. Dr. Hailu said the government is trying to suppress the EDP. He also presented the EDP's proposals for national reconciliation. He said that Ethiopia has a long history of using reconciliation to settle disputes, but it hasn't done a good job of creating democratic institutions. He called for joint meetings among the opposition groups and the government to develop common positions and plan a strategy for a transitional government. He said that a national reconciliation movement should work to "replace the current policy where one ethnic, religious or regional group gets the lions share of the national resources while others are relegated to second class citizenship, where one group takes charge of the national affairs while others are told it is none of their business, by one which gives equal opportunity to all Ethiopians irrespective of their ethnic or regional origin."
At the second meeting, Ato Hailu Shawl, chairman of the All Amhara Peoples Organization (AAPO), briefed the subcommittee. He gave a very strong presentation, saying that the current government has virtually no support among the Ethiopian people and that it has only limited support in the armed forces. He said that the Meles government has failed to extend its political base beyond the Tigrean ethnic group. Ato Hailu Shawl said that the U.S. government should act quickly to engage with the Ethiopian government and the opposition groups to prevent a collapse of governmental authority such as happened in Somalia. It is necessary to start planning for the transition to a new government, he urged. He also said that the impression Meles tries to give that he has changed his position and is a believer in free-markets and democracy is just a sham designed to fool western governments into giving aid. Meles has actually implemented, and continues to implement, old-fashioned Albanian-style communist policies which have failed everywhere and are ruing the Ethiopian economy. He gave numerous examples, such as government ownership of land, government control of the largest bank and primary source of credit, failure of the government to return or privatize nationalized businesses. In addition, he noted that many businesses that appear to be private are actually monopolies owned and funded by the ruling parties. He also described the large toll that AIDS and other diseases are taking on the population and the failure of the government to take steps to prevent AIDS and improve healthcare.
The African subcommittee staff asked about the impact of the split in the TPLF on opposition parties. Representatives of the EDP and AAPO said it is merely a dispute between factions for power and doesn't represent differences on policy issues. The staff also asked about the impact of the war with Eritrea and was told that there was tremendous loss of lives and economic devastation that will take decades to overcome.
The African subcommittee staff said they plan to request information from the State Department about the U.S. policy towards Ethiopia. If the responses are not satisfactory, then the subcommittee is likely to hold hearings about Ethiopia, and such hearings could cause the State Department to adopt new policies.
There is also interest in Ethiopian issues in the Senate. A recent letter from seven Senators to the State Department requesting pressure on the Ethiopian regime to improve human rights has attracted the attention of the Ethiopian embassy in Washington. A spokesman for the embassy to Washington mentioned it in a radio interview recently.
[Opinions in this article are solely that of the writer.]