The Spiky Road Ahead: Problems Behind the Issue of Clearing up Voting Irregularities

By the Network of Ethiopian Scholars (NES) - Scandinavian Chapter June 23, 2005

Meles's claim that complaints will be resolved by vote -recounting does not address the real challenge of fully restoring trust in the elections that took place without proper observers in place. NES is left with more queries than answers regarding the probable outcome of Meles's strategy for legitimising the election process. If clearing up the irregularities is expected to deliver a standard of election in Ethiopia, where opposition and government would reach broad consensus over the ultimate results, the process of dealing with and responding to the numerous complaints would demand thorough, meticulous, and inclusive investigations and transparent procedures from start to finish, and all along with independent observers monitoring it.

This is necessary to assure all the parties that no side ends up with a raw deal with a probable one-sided advantage to the Meles group and disadvantage to the opposition. The ruling party's proclivities to reduce all complaints to vote-recounts and to hurry and pre-empt the outcome by actions that appear to pre-judge and pre-determine the election has the opposite effect... unfortunately, throw muck and dust in the process altogether and upset the millions of Ethiopian citizens that came out to restore Ethiopia's renewal with democracy and ditch without end the elite's preferences and knee-jerk reactions to resort to the use of arms and killing to retain power. If indeed the real objective is to restore faith in the election process, the retention of a highly compromised NEB to do it will compound the mistrust rather than clearing it. The only possibility to move forward requires that highly independent people with known integrity and legal knowledge should be mandated to review the complaints. NEB has abused by its open partisan role the high sense of the nation's future, when it should have shown reverence and respect for the greatness with which the people of Ethiopia turned out to pioneer a peaceful transition to give short thrift to their hitherto elite-detained killer political culture. It got the opportunity to mid-wife the change of the political mould of the country, and lost the plot by playing the political tune of Meles & Co.

The NEB cannot be the judge of problems that is largely of its own making. It is part of the problem and an independent commission must judge its performance how much it has been a factor in complicating the much desired and anticipated outcome of a lawfully run election. If this historical opportunity were derailed by the selfishness of small-minded men, the judgment of history on the NEB would be as severe as it would be on Meles, Bereket & Co.

There is a huge stake in how this voting irregularity is conceptualised if Ethiopia is to embark on a trajectory of a peaceful and lawful pattern of power transition in the years to come, and if violence were not to be the arbiter of such a transition, all along as it happened in the country's long history.

The first false premise is to say that investigation where the NEB sustains 147 complaints will not suffice to deliver the verdict that the election is finally proved to be just and fair. How the NEB disqualified the majority of the complaints so easily and perfunctorily is a mystery. That this dismissal of the complaints, mind you, against the protest of the opposition parties makes it even harder to take the NEB's discarding of the complaints so easily seriously. This adds to our perception of how hard Meles and his NEB are tampering with the process rather than humbly engage with the opposition to restore the credibility of the process that they have contributed so much in undoing by their various tasteless riggings.

It is clear that all the 300 cases initially filed and the 147 cases that the NEB filtered now cannot be so easily compressed to one and only one remedy: by some magic wand, they alone or those they themselves largely appoint are self-entitling and self-arrogating to do the investigation, and, if they do that, they think all would go well. As far as we understand from the kinds of complaints lodged, the issue is not restricted only to minor irregularities such as, for example, vote counting, but also it has to do with a number of grave problems related to intimidation, even allegation of killing of opposition supporters, absence of independent election observers, imprisoning opposition election observers, vote rigging, stuffing ballot boxes with not properly registered voters, different forms of harassment and different types of cheating. The irregularity relates to deeper protests against voter degradation and tampering with the election process by the mismanagement of the polling stations and harassment of the voters. The National Election Board cannot possibly dare try to hoodwink the world by pretending to clear all these complaints by a simple act of hurried investigations of a radically reduced list of cases. This reduction of the number of cases and simplification of the complex issues does not only make NEB to commit cognitive violence but also it makes it position itself as having been in the forefront in committing a grave damage to the process further worsening the sores and loss of credibility that it seems to have had so much a part in imparting to the election process.

The Dubious Role of the National Election Board: Is it Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?

What makes us doubt that the process will deliver acceptable election standards is the singular fact that all along from pre-election to post election, the National Election Board has been charged as partisan not only for the Government, but also for being against the opposition and domestic civil society groups. It suffers a sore credibility of commitment for being too aligned with Meles & Co. and not being able to live up to its challenge of historical calling that is required by the sheer popular democratic energy that came from the Ethiopian people. The paramount problem is related to the fact that the National Election Board has not been constituted as a neutral body. This partisan constitution of the NEB is the sole responsibility of Meles and his group. The influence of NEB on the ad-hoc Complaint Review Body also makes the latter to be handicapped by the same problem of partiality and support to Meles' side in the negotiations related to the election. Meles wants to demonstrate that the election, on the whole, has been won by his side and would like to trivialise the charges of vote rigging from the opposition. He also wants to speed up debunking the complaints knowing full well that all the members in the various bodies of the election complaints are in favour of his party. It is to be borne in mind that the National Election Board has been an arm of Government and remains as such, regardless of the various sub-bodies manufactured, until its mission confirming EPDRF in power for the next five years is fulfilled.

It was an incredible spectacle to see that the discussion regarding establishing the procedures for a complaint inquiry committee invariably saw the EPDRF and the National Election Board operating and expressing one and the same position on one side at all times and on all significant issues, and the opposition on the other side. This anomaly would not have come had Meles & Co. heeded the opposition demand that the National Election Board should be broadly representative of the range of views in the country in the first place. The opposition demand to do that was rejected and now it came to haunt the nation that there is no easy exit from the current impasse.

The National Election Board issued on 17 June the provisional results before investigating the 300 complaints. On June 19,2005, it reduced the complaints it has to investigate to only 147 cases, thereby dropping over half of the complaints. As Meles has pronounced that most of the complaints were ' groundless', the NEB has provided the proof and corroborated his claim by adding number and statistics to it. This shows that both Meles and the National Election Board are more in a hurry to crown EPDRF rather than give the care, detail and attention to make the election process legitimate, just and fair by looking deep into all the irregularities that continue to cast a shadow on the whole election alienating the Ethiopian people to doubt the process from all parts of the world

The Irreparable Cost of Abusing the Election Process The NEB and the EPDRF together are engaged in a dangerous manoeuvre to outwit the opposition, re-impose the Meles' regime by disregarding opposition complaints as inconsequential, and reducing the complaints to a simple matter of filtering through harried investigations that would not invite trust.

evertheless, what will hit them in the face is ignoring the fact that any short- term fix they do wallow in for a time invariably would bring long-term obstacles to the country and finally expose them as historical cripples that would leave the power that they so much love to cling to in total infamy. The attempt to extend the Meles regime's tenure of power, as if it had popular backing from nearly all the regional states by making the opposition a minority in all states and the federal Government appears to send a dangerous signal to the people of Ethiopia who voted for true change. The population that voted for the opposition will not buy easily this strategy by Meles. They would like to see that the people they voted for speak for them, raise their issues and govern or co-govern their communities. The use of the NEB to bring about a situation where the opposition would be jettisoned into a corner where they can only play to the tune of EPDRF's politics can only create a dangerous direction for the country.

The NEB and the EPDRF must recognise that the regularisation of the initially reported 300 cases of irregularities during the election and/or the investigation of complaints is invariably tied up with the proud national achievement of a lawful and peaceful political situation in the country. It must be knocked into their heads that the investigation is meaningless unless it achieves the higher purpose of re-injecting trust in the process. The issue is one of re-building trust in the election process after it has been so cruelly mangled and shattered by Meles who went to the extraordinary extent of ordering military force to attack and kill unarmed young people. Had the election been run properly in the first place with the neutral election board, the involvement of independent observers and other pre-legitimising actions, there was no need to produce any irregularity let alone the massive irregularities with the enormity of nearly three quarters of all the 547 seats. Ethiopian civil society who prepared to field 3500 observers especially in the rural areas-as it happens in hindsight in the areas where Meles& Co. boast of their pyrrhic victories- were barred by the NEB from doing so. They challenged this in court to only get the okay three days before the Ethiopian people magnificently thronged in their millions to the polls. They only managed to field 250 observers, a little less than the foreign observers. All together independent observers from civil society and foreigners were no way near to the task of yielding a fair and free process in all of the rural areas.

What makes the election to remain extraordinary and unique in our nation's history is that the people came out in droves to express their voice. If it were not for the selfish power- craze disposition of Meles, Bereket & Co, the people have demonstrated a historical imagination that could have delivered a new history of peaceful change in the country. This has now been misdirected by the coercive and corrosive myopia of the ruling elites in the country. They want to force the people to submission. They want to deny the people their expression of agency and steal the moment of the people's victory into something that makes Meles & Co. alone to be false winners. Meles has to arrogate the power of agency to himself, and seems to get high when he conspires and contrives to deny the people their historical moment to give birth to a new pattern to the nation's age-old killer politics of despair by a politics that builds, engages and renews hope, opportunity and historical possibility. It is richly gratifying that the Ethiopian people came out to vote in their splendid millions, reminding us the scale of turn out of the South African first multi-racial election in 1994, a sign that the country has a great future to make it, to do away with its many wounds and humiliations, and finally we can say with confidence that left unimpeded the people have the collective wisdom to make their own future.

Meles wants to force a nation to abort its greatest hour of pregnancy with a new history, and he is spoiling for a fight with the peoples' striving to deliver this new history not knowing that by forcing the pregnancy what will be born will not be a historical ontology of hope, but a return to despair. The people want history to bear a new baby that they can nurture as their democracy, as their liberation, and above all as their moment of historical truth and rebirth.

What are the deeper reasons for the irregularities? Meles & Co. by their own admission are persons who cannot afford to stick to principles. As far as they are concerned they can be Albanian socialists at one time, liberal or revolutionary democrats at another time. What this means is that it is hard to believe that they have ever been, by the sheer force of conviction, democrats. It is also hard to see any hard evidence of any belief they have in democracy. The defining hallmark of their political identity is remarkably consistent: autocrats that are prepared to kill citizens at a first sign of their own self-fabricated and nervous agitation and fear. The issue becomes whether these fellows will be entrusted to refrain or stop from playing tricks of one sort or another behind the back of the people and try to use their democratic fa�ade to hide their lethal authoritarian true identities.

When one observes the dispute over voting irregularities, one can see their anti-democratic character clearly and manifestly. The democracy they like to exhibit to the world is cosmetic and largely for show. Scratch them a bit, the autocratic monster-their true character becomes exposed for all to see. It is thus no big secret the root cause for the irregularities to take place has to do largely because the ruling party was forced to be democratic by its need to appear so to the donors who continue to bank roll all its loans and grant-money from outside, and from the long popular struggle at home for the creation of freedom and democracy that has been going on for over a generation now. The irregularities did not drop from the sky; they are a consequence of a structurally rigged and flawed process. Meles did not permit civil society to participate as election observers; even foreign observers that asked questions were expelled; news agencies that reported and exposed election irregularities were not spared. The regime used high handed tactics, controlled the election process, interfered with the voting where observers were not available, chased some observers to help it impede the voter and the voting. These practices were rampant especially in the rural world of Ethiopia.

The regime did not see the supreme value of transparency and managing an open and accountable election with clear and agreed procedures. Since it had an inflated notion of its electoral rigging opportunities, it vastly underestimated the opposition's power to resist with determination. Now it is caught red-handed with so many irregularities that it has itself been forced to admit to. What is done cannot be undone. It has mangled badly the election procedures and became the source for generating so many of the complaints. No matter what its NEB does now, this election may not be proved to be free, just and fair beyond reasonable doubt. Such a standard would not be easy to achieve. The damage has been irretrievably done. Going through investigation of a much reduced and contested number of complaints will not clear the dangerous tampering and destabilisation of the process, which seems to be beyond the authority of a compromised NEB to clear up. The people who have expressed their voice will not be placated by an investigation done by a rigging Meles & Co, who have appointed an equally rigging NEB, and who knowingly oversaw a rigged election, and which it has now shamelessly put itself in the forefront to carry out a rigged investigation whilst still under complaint and protest from the opposition.

NES believes that the NEB's casual dropping of the numerous complaints already against the protest of the opposition parties shows contempt and does not seem to be aware it is doing great disservice to the democratic conquest that that the peoples' march to the ballot box has so manifestly demonstrated. Meles' regime has suffered a crisis of perception as its NEB has suffered from crises of election management. Even if there were an investigation, after investigation by the NEB, it would not deliver the standard of election that would inspire trust in the election process as having been executed with tolerable flaws. That achievement is dependent on the level of popular trust and the regime has lost that trust. The way the NEB has gone about clearing up the irregularities seems to create more spikes in the road of peaceful political transition. Far from attenuating the problems, it seems to have deepened them.

What would bring back trust is not do harried investigations perhaps to prefer doing a recount and close the matter, as if all the complaints can be algorithmically compressible to it only, but agreeing to launch a strategy that would create an inclusive governance system by taking the expression of popular voice and votes in supporting the opposition into account. Ignoring the voice of the people of Ethiopia will sour the historical opportunity that is open as a new dawn to score a higher civilisation turn in the country by forcing a situation that can potentially degenerate into a historical peril of bloodshed and barbarism. Any more exclusive power drive by Meles & Co. after nearly 15 years being saddled in power to date, that is predicated on a wish to form a repressive government system of the next five years on the basis of the arithmetic counts of a profoundly flawed election in many parts of the country, where opposition candidates have been harassed, beaten, and in some instances, killed, where election monitors were put in police custody rather than do their jobs across the country before polling day, would not be reasonable or acceptable to the people of Ethiopia.

The international community must be forewarned/ forearmed not to expect any fair dealing in these so-called completely rigged investigations or recounts. We suspect that NEB may be inclined to bend or reduce the investigations to a mere issue of vote counting. The international community must watch and scrutinise all these potentially hazardous steps. They must do all they can to assist the Ethiopian people to stop Meles and his chief crony Bereket from planning further and implementing any of their cruel designs that they have in store or they may still hatch. Meles, Bereket & Co. have already damaged the Ethiopian people by the numberless stratagems to deny them their victory in creating a new history for their country. That damage alone suffices to make them pack their belongings. Any more crime Meles & Co. may commit when people inevitably protest must be seen as crime against humanity and should put them in the world court of history and judgment as defendants against Ethiopia's just persecutions of the many wrongs they did to our gentle nation. NES cannot accept any killing and we call the international community to put maximum pressure on Meles & Co to desist from such embarrassing and barbarian acts. We appeal to the international community to be informed and forearmed in order to stop and rebuff Meles from taking any of his usual unsavoury and cunning tricks.

It looks a foregone conclusion that the investigation by NEB will not lead anywhere. Even if the investigations were to show one result or another, how would one factor in or out the acts of violence and intimidation in the way the election have been carried out in numerous parts of the rural hinterland and the regions? The NEB is part of the problem and not the solution in the larger good of the historical delivery of freedom and democracy- key conditions for anchoring the complete transformation of the country and the productive power of the mind of its people, harness the productive power of its vast and yet untapped nature and the productive power of physical matter and manufacture.

NES demands:

• * That the NEB should be investigated by an independent legal panel of experts for the many wrongs that surfaced in the election process including its compromised neutrality
• * To investigate independently why EPDRF had poor results where there are independent observers, and where there were no such observers it claimed it had good results
• * That the voice and votes for the opposition must be recognised in government to redress the injustice of the destabilised rigged election.
• To unconditionally rescind the state of emergency that has been imposed to give Meles &Co. the license to misinform, harass and kill the unarmed people.
• * To condemn Meles for imposing measures to complicate governance in areas where the opposition was proved beyond doubt that it has won.
• * To condemn Meles himself as the chief architect of the state of emergency that has contributed to change the political environment to kill unarmed young people.
• * To condemn Meles's double freedom to spread malicious attacks against the opposition on public media whilst denying, through threat of force and imprisonment, the opposition to have the opportunity to present its case to the public.
• * To condemn their attempt to sell the state of emergency as necessary to keep security and protect democracy when their intention and practice belies this and they engage in harassment, terrorizing and intimidation of the people and the opposition members throughout the country.
• * Calls on the international community to continue exerting maximum pressure on Meles & co. and not to tolerate their actions due to their fabricated worries of instability to allow them to take violent actions against the people and the opposition.
• * Calls on the international community to support democracy and the people's voice as the major foundation for enduring peace, stability and security.
• * Calls on the international community to condemn the use of the ethnic card by Meles and Co. in their attempt to scare the Tigray people by cynically using them for narrow political ends. Condemn also their tactics of misusing Rwanda type genocide in the Ethiopian context and psychologically scaring and intimidating the Tigray people.
• * Calls the internationally community to trust that the election has shown that the Ethiopian people have great historical and humane sense and wisdom and will never listen to ethnic entrepreneurs like Meles & Co to turn on each other, much as the politicos wish to see that outcome for reasons of their own power perpetuation.
• * Calls on the international community to continue to show strong faith that the Ethiopian people are ready to overcome together, many as one, one as many, with their diversity and difference together, to make their future free from all sorts of natural and man made disasters.

  Concluding Remarks The road map looks clear from Meles and his group's perspective. The majority seats in the state council have been confirmed even if provisionally by NEB to them. Meles employed three strategies. First feeling threatened by the landslide victories in the major cities including Addis Ababa by the opposition, Meles chose to neutralise and pre-empt this threat by state of emergency, trying to disorganise the opposition leaders by dispersing and arresting them. The second strategy is to promote the image of Meles & Co. as agents of democracy in Ethiopia by pushing all opposition gains to minority parliamentary seats with no power to enact legislative changes and absolutely no opportunity to share or join any executive function. This strategy seems to emerge from the declaration of provisional results, which give majorities to the ruling party in nearly all the regions of Ethiopia, and Meles's own expressed preference to resolve the 300 complaints by a uniform method of a simple re-count to do away with the complaints.

  Meles's third strategy is to make the areas like Addis Ababa where the opposition had land slide victories to be administratively ungovernable by imposing new measures that will cripple the opposition from carrying out service to the people. The main objective of Meles & Co is to create contradiction between the opposition and the people. Their strategy is to go for exclusive control of the country by disrupting governance in the areas they lost. For example they are hurrying legislation with the existing parliament to take over the transport service responsibilities of Addis Ababa that used to be under the mandate of the city administration.

  The state of emergency is used by the Government to silence and intimidate the people from expressing their voice, while Meles & Co. freely help themselves to the public media and daily harangue and harass the opposition. The police and army roam around the country intimidating and arresting opposition supporters and members throughout Ethiopia. They do not even spare attempting assassination or even killing elected MPs. This situation is centrally connected to the state of emergency under the direct command of Meles himself. It tries to enforce security by suppressing the people, and it is inappropriate and must not be tolerated.

  We think that the reported huge irregularities, the strong showing by the opposition, the need to respect the voice and voting of the people for the opposition justify fully that the opposition should aim at nothing else but play an active role in the governance and the future direction of the country. The international community should assist in making a smooth transition to a power-sharing arrangement. There are only two options, either a re-election once more, or a power sharing arrangement for a government of national concord. We think the latter is a preferred option to give possibility to the massive energy and spirit displayed so wonderfully by the Ethiopian people. We were driven to tears when we saw South Africans patiently exercising their right to vote that changed the course of history in South Africa into a non-racial democracy. A similar historical moment arrived for Ethiopia where our people did the same like their South African brethren. We simply hope that Ethiopia ushers into a new historical destiny. Together, let the nation rise to undo all its humiliations, feed itself, organise itself and stop agonising and fiddling with election irregularities where there is no chance of regularising given the process was mangled from start to finish by Meles and his NEB. Let new possibilities and new history dawn for Ethiopia and in Ethiopia.

  Professor Mammo Muchie, Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter

  Berhanu G. Balcha, Vice- Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter

  Tekola Worku, Secretary of NES-Scandinavian Chapter

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