Day: February 13, 2020
Ethiopians at loggerheads
The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, for restarting peace talks with Eritrea. Since taking office in 2018, he has initiated a series of reforms founded in a new ideology: medemer. Translated from Amharic, medemer means synergy and collectivism. On February 13, the United States Institute of Peace hosted a panel titled, A Changing Ethiopia: Understanding Medemer, with guests from Addis Ababa and Washington D.C.
The conversation was moderated by Aly Verjee, Senior Advisor of the Africa Program at USIP, with attendance from, Fitsum Arega Gebrekidan, Ethiopian Ambassador to the US, Lencho Bati, Senior Political, Diplomatic, and Foreign Policy Advisor, Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Mamo Mihretu, Senior Adviser on Policy Reforms and Chief Trade Negotiator, Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, and Etana Dinka, Visiting Assistant Professor of African History at Oberlin College. The panel was very tense at moments and the discussion involved many audience reactions in the form of both applause and verbal boos.
What is medemer in practice?
Verjee persistently directed the panel numerous times to illuminate what medemer means in practice in Ethiopia, rather than what it means as an ideology. Despite Verjee’s tenacity, his question, although reemerging many times, lacked concrete responses. Ambassador Fitsum delineates medemer as a social contract for Ethiopians to live together and pool their sources and efforts to achieve collective prosperity. He professes it as “a convenant of peace that seeks unity in our community, humanity, practicing love, forgiveness, and reconciliation.” Lencho explains medemer as the Prime Minister’s way of organizing a society and achieving a middle ground between different ethnic, religious, and federal sectors. He classifies it as striking a balance between competition and cooperation. Mamo professes that memeder is used as a framework to reform policy by engaging the past in a productive way through acknowledgement and lessons of what was successful and unsuccessful, rather than completely erasing it. Etana, taking a radically different view than the government officials, proclaims, “for ordinary citizens, medemer is hell.”
Ongoing Reforms
Much of the panel discussion was composed of biting remarks between the Ethiopian government officials and Etana. When engaging with Verjee’s question about the type of reforms that Ethiopia should undergo, the officials agreed that the “home-grown economic plan” of partial privatization is necessary moving forward. Ambassador Fitsum identified this plan as a tailored, Ethiopia-specific plan that will help shift its agrarian society to become more industrialized. Overall, the officials noted a much more progressive society since the PM’s election.
Etana disagreed with this rosy analysis, claiming that since 2018, when the Prime Minister took power, Ethiopia has experienced significant violent clashes in the countryside and instead of fixing and reforming Ethiopia, the PM Prime Minister has been building a foundation to stay in power. Etana sees the main obstacle to reform as the Prime Minister.
In response, Ambassador Fitsum conceded that the government has been trying to implement this new philosophy first by teaching and then by applying law, highlighting that there is still room for growth in this process.
Abiy Ahmed as a Federalist?
The government representatives declare that the Prime Minister is a federalist; however, this received vehement criticism from Etana, who professes that the government is ignoring identity politics as well as the sharing of state power. Etana claims that if the Prime Minister were actually a federalist then there would not be clashes in certain states in Ethiopia and the Prime Minister would not be failing to recognize that some people want separate statehood.
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RS in doubt
Delvin Kovač of Vijesti.ba asked questions; I answered:
Representatives of Republika Srspska (RS) at the level of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) will suspend their participation in decision-making on any matter within the jurisdiction of the BiH authorities until a new Law on the Constitutional Court of BiH is adopted, with no foreign judges.
This position was taken at yesterday’s meeting of RS officials, institutions and representatives of parliamentary parties based in that BiH entity, after the decision of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which declared unconstitutional the Law on Agricultural Land of the Entities of RS.
How do you see this newly created political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Seems like Bosnia remains politically deadlocked…
A: Indeed, deadlocked due to the Dayton peace accords, which left gaps and ambiguities that the RS exploits.
Q: Milorad Dodik said: “Either political leaders will come to a new agreement on what the Constitutional Court should look like, or Bosnia will be no more.” Is this a serious threat to Bosnia’s as well as Balkan’s peace and stability/security?
A: It certainly is, but it is not new. Dodik has been threatening the state for years. Were I a citizen, I would be concerned.
The real question is not whether the state should exist. It is whether RS should continue to exist, if it continues to make the state dysfunctional.Dodik also said that the RS National Assembly will adopt a decision to remove Serbian judges from the Constitutional Court of BiH. Can a lower level of government impose it’s decisions to a State?
I am not a lawyer, but it is my understanding that the RS Assembly can name judges to the Court. I don’t know if can remove them. Nor do I know what happens once their seats are empty. I imagine the Court could continue to function without them.
Q: Dodik also said he would inform president of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić about the newly created situation, adding that he would ask for Vučić’s “understanding”. What do you think about that?
A: I think it amounts to Dodik demonstrating once again his disloyalty to the state. Vučić needs to read Dodik the riot act, which in English means telling him that he has to stop the nonsense.
The EU accession process is becoming more conditioned. Brussels should make it clear to Vučić that getting Dodik to stop undermining the functionality of the state in Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the conditions for Serbian progress in negotiating accession.
Q: We now have HDZ BiH and it’s leader Dragan Čović blocking the formation of the Federation government by imposing changes to the Election Law on one side, as well as SNSD and it’s leader Milorad Dodik blocking the work of state instutitions on the other side. How do you comment on that?
A: Bosnia and Herzegovina is suffering because Dayton ensured the persistence in power of ethnic nationalists who conducted the 1992/95 war and remain uncommitted to the state. Until that is fixed, such blockages will remain frequent. Ultimately, it is up to the citizens whether they vote to undo the legal and constitutional provisions that make governance so difficult.
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Stevenson’s army, February 13
– Senate likely votes today on Sen. Kaine’s Iran war powers measure. Should pass, sure to be vetoed.
– A pro foreign aid group [yes, there is one] has its summary of the international affairs budget proposals by the administration.
– In our topic on the media and interest groups, we read a section from Dan Drezner’s book, The Idea Industry, where he raises concerns about foreign funders .of US think tanks. There’s a new report on that topic, which Drezner evaluates.
– In that same topic, I plan to add a new reading from Ezra Klein, who has a fine new book explaining why US politics has become so polarized. Here’s a review, telling some of its ideas.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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