Ethiopia’s Future Rests on Outcome of Weekend Voting

Try to win them. If you cannot, let hardship teach them.

-- Ethiopian proverb recited by President Meles Zenawi

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From out of the lava mountains today, a man drives a donkey. On the back of the donkey is a green canvas bag. In the bag is Ethiopia’s future--and, not inconceivably, the future of Africa.

Among the oldest nations in the world, Ethiopia stands at one of its great crossroads.

In the sack on the donkey’s back are election ballots. They bear no candidates’ or parties’ names, just everyday symbols like a bumblebee, an oil lamp, a flower, a scythe. Many people in this nation in sub-Saharan Africa can hardly feed themselves, let alone read.

Choosing among these printed images, then, millions of Ethiopians pressed down their thumbprints Sunday and voted.

Now the ballots are being collected. Hundreds of thousands of people in this country live farther than a day’s walk from even a jeep trail, so the process is tedious. In places, donkeys must bring the ballots out of the hills and deserts back to the cities to be counted in the days ahead.

This is an election unlike most because the winner is a foregone conclusion. But by no means is the outcome.

The young revolutionary government here is destined for victory. And with the backing of developed countries in the West, the donors who keep Ethiopia from starving, the nation will embark on one of the boldest experiments ever attempted to quench Africa’s ethnic fires--a wholly new form of African pluralism called “ethnic federalism.”

The plan divides the country into ethnic regions, allowing them autonomy in most government affairs and, ultimately, the right to withdraw from Ethiopia if they choose.

But many Ethiopians foresee just another vicious turn in a cycle of doom. Weeks ago, several political parties decided to boycott the election, saying that it would only ratify the authority of a militarist minority. And that decision may have set in motion forces to break apart this ancient country, probably violently.

This election, or more properly this transition from a tortured past to an uncertain future, occurs at a time when Africans can ill afford Ethiopia’s failure.

Because of its size and influence, this is one of a handful of countries that must be counted upon to lead the continent into the 21st Century, for better or worse.

Sitting on pillows on the floor, optimists among Ethiopia’s intellectuals sip the rich coffee grown here and envision this: a burst of entrepreneurship sufficient to modernize one of the world’s most primitive agrarian societies. With ethnic warfare--Ethiopia’s biggest problem--ended, the country would be able to feed itself within five years. Then, along with South Africa at the other end of the continent, it could serve as an example to all Africa of ethnic accommodation.

Conversely, if the experiment fails, Ethiopia will suffer horribly, all agree.

The United States and other wealthy nations already are impatient with the turmoil on this continent. Another outbreak of civil war, another brutal power struggle here, is sure to jeopardize the West’s continued financial support, including $130 million in U.S. assistance to Ethiopia.

This is a particularly acute threat. For nearly a century, starvation has haunted this difficult landscape on the Horn of Africa. Even in years of plenty, this nation falls short of feeding itself by more than 1 million tons of food. Periodic droughts widen the gap, while the population is growing so fast as to double in 20 years.

Just as awful to contemplate is this: What if the government is dead wrong about ethnic autonomy? What will happen if this experiment ignites, instead of dampens, fears and rivalries among 80 different peoples who share only desperate impoverishment?

“I’m afraid it will make Rwanda look like a picnic. If this government continues with its emphasis on ethnic distinctions, if government policy is to divide and rule along ethnic lines, fighting is inevitable. And when it begins, it will be unstoppable,” said Meshesha Biru, candidate for mayor of Addis Ababa and a onetime instructor in African politics at UC Santa Barbara.

The historic roots that brought Ethiopia to this juncture are as deep and gnarled as any in Africa. For more than 2,000 years, the country was an empire--ruled from the Solomonic throne by those who traced their ancestry to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The empire collapsed in 1974 and was replaced by a military regime that grew into one of the most brutal Communist states in history.

In January, 1991, insurgent fighters from the northern province of Tigre concluded a 17-year campaign and seized the nation. Backed by their victorious army, they established a transitional government, which organized Sunday’s election.

Tigreans, however, account for only 5% of Ethiopia’s population. The new constitution they promulgated was designed at its core to protect the language, culture and territory of the country’s many diverse peoples--certainly Tigreans themselves.

One of the government’s first acts was to permit the secession of Ethiopia’s northern coastal province, now the country of Eritrea. The new constitution, which the election was designed to certify, guarantees the same right to nine remaining provinces, each of them drawn to account for the major ethnic distributions in the country.

“No one can deprive the people of the right to arrange their own lives in any manner they feel is suitable to them,” President Meles said. “Who are we to limit the border of democracy here?”

Besides, Meles knows well the irrepressibility of revolutionary zeal. “World history has repeatedly shown that you cannot beat a people who have made their minds up to gain independence,” he said.

Opponents, however, say the only thing democratic and open-minded about the Tigrean-dominated administration is its rhetoric.

Opposition politicians have been jailed and harassed when they tried to campaign. And by most accounts, the institutions of government are all aligned to promote and protect the incumbent order, which ran under the ballot symbol of the bumblebee.

“The minority group that has assumed power is in the process of transforming itself into a firmly entrenched despotic regime,” said Beyene Petros, leader of a coalition of 14 small ethnic groups in southern Ethiopia. He boycotted the election, and so did the established political parties representing the Oromo people, 40% of the population, and the Amhara, 20%. Virtually all of these political opponents oppose “ethnic federalism.”

Some leaders of these groups say the current government has no legitimacy except its army. And they already have begun armed insurrection.

Western governments, by and large, side with Meles and his Tigreans, although not without some reservations.

“The government can be blamed for many things. But it cannot be blamed for everything. The political opposition, especially the opposition in exile in the United States, has not had to deal with the reality of governing. They’ve become adept at the rhetoric of democracy--but that’s not what it’s about to them. It’s about power,” one Western diplomat said.

Such sympathy is driven by a pragmatic view: Peace is better than war in a country beset with problems the size of Ethiopia’s.

Here in Debre Zeyit, only an hour away from Addis Ababa, the capital, there is hardly such a thing as a tractor. The thin volcanic soil is tilled by flimsy wooden plows and skinny oxen. Donkey carts provide the public transportation. Pavement ends half a mile from the only highway, and the roads peter out soon thereafter. The people of Debre Zeyit still live in circular thatch-and-mud tukuls , and the children sing out in chorus the one English word they know well: “Money?”

Former U.S. Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally, a Los Angeles Democrat and old Africa hand, toured Addis Ababa just before the election.

He said he was “disappointed” that opposition politicians were boycotting even an imperfect attempt at establishing democracy here.

“As I travel, I’m impressed with the fact that the government is talking reconciliation--there’s a sense of peace and tranquillity in the air,” Dymally said.

One opposition political party--the Ethiopian National Democratic Party--ignored the boycott and fielded scattered candidates in the election. One of its founding wings was established first by exiles in Southern California in 1985 and then moved back here after the Communist government was overthrown in 1991.

“We’re very new in terms of political culture in Ethiopia,” said party Secretary General Nebiyu Samuel, a former Southern California insurance executive. “We’re not going to win power this time, but we stick around for one single reason--the process has to be encouraged.

“In Ethiopia’s long history, and you can go back hundreds of years, not a single government has arisen with the blessings of the people, but always from the barrel of a gun. We need to break that vicious cycle.”