The next chance for Meles Zenawi’s opponents to pick apart the ruling party’s record at home and abroad will be Ethiopia’s landmark elections in 2010

In keeping with this country’s sporting traditions, the so-called ‘Ethiopian renaissance’ being proclaimed on billboards across Addis Ababa may seem to resemble a marathon run. 


Yet there is fierce debate about whether the country’s leaders are running in the right direction. Ethiopia is not only divided by some bitter sectarian political rivalries but many among its 80m people are right now struggling against the vicissitudes of drought, while their government faces conflict in two neighbouring countries.


Ethiopia is also a country whose economy has seen double-digit growth over the past five years, becoming a favoured African destination for productive investment by foreign companies (after South Africa and Botswana), and it has made impressive progress in education and health provision.


The idea of a ‘renaissance’ is central to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s plans. Having survived 17 years of turmoil following the ousting of Haile Mengistu’s much-loathed Derg regime, he speaks with fervour about development economics and “fundamentally changing” Ethiopia.


“As we moved from a centralised authoritarian political system towards a decentralised, federalised, democratic system,” Meles said, “there was always a risk that we could disintegrate like Yugoslavia or the former Soviet Union.”

Make our garden grow


Meles is proud of progress in the countryside where former subsistence farmers have moved into small-scale commercial farming and have pushed up their yields substantially. It is these farmers who have been driving growth, boosting production of coffee, tea, cereals and livestock. Industrial production in the sugar refineries and food processing plants is up too. Ethiopians in the diaspora have been sending money home to set up new businesses, but mostly to finance new houses, fuelling the building boom.


But these signs of new growth face a hostile climate. Soaring food and fuel prices have pushed inflation to high levels over the past year and an ambitious state-led investment programme has eaten into foreign reserves. Over recent months, drought in southern regions has brought back the country’s all-too-familiar scourge of mass malnutrition. In mid-October, the government and the UN released figures showing that 6.4m Ethiopians would need emergency food aid this year. These are in addition to the 7.2m Ethiopians so poor that they depend on government cash or food aid to survive.


Food aid, like much else in Ethiopia, is highly politicised; some aid agencies and opposition parties accuse the government of ‘denial and delay’ over food aid. “Famines frighten investors”, commented a Western diplomat. 


Opposition parties also accuse the government of clamping down ahead of the 2010 elections. Bulcha Demeksa, leader of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM), and Bertukan Mideksa, the former judge who chairs the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party, have been campaigning against the government’s new laws on political parties and civil society organisations. 


In the 2005 elections, political parties and factions jostled for power openly as never before in Ethiopia; opposition parties did well in the cities, although the government maintained control in the countryside. Some 200 people were killed in clashes between opposition supporters and security forces.


Bertukan, who was jailed after her former party, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy, won 109 out of 546 seats in the 2005 election, said that the ruling party’s control of security and the legal system makes democratic progress almost impossible. “Our key issues are democratisation, respect for human and political rights, and the rights of association,” she said.


“Political repression is very serious,” the OFDM’s Bulcha said, “of our eleven MPs, three have already come under government pressure and quit. Rallies are effectively banned, parties can have just small meetings and press conferences.”


The OFDM general secretary Bekele Jirata was arrested in early November, and the government accused him of working with ‘terrorists’.


Uncritical critics


Meles’ record of reform has won uncritical support from Western governments according to Tom Porteous of Human Rights Watch (HRW), who said: “Meles has transformed Ethiopia from a war-torn, famine-prone dictatorship into a relatively stable state which combines elements of both democracy and authoritarianism.” But HRW has led international criticism of the military operations in the Ogaden and Somalia, and accuses Western governments of ignoring unpalatable facts about their ally in Addis Ababa.


Meles dismissed such criticism as “uninformed”. Foreign minister Seyoum Mesfin said that much reporting of Ethiopia’s role in Somalia is exaggerated: “Al-Shabaab is fragmented … they are resorting to selective political assassinations. There are more deaths of peacekeepers in Darfur than Mogadishu.” Ethiopia recently reduced its troops to about three brigades (3,000 soldiers). Seyoum said Somalia urgently required better local leadership.


The prospects look little better for Ethiopia’s other foreign policy headache, the rumbling border dispute with Eritrea. According to Seyoum: “By re-occupying the border zone, Eritrea has committed a material breach of the Algiers Agreement.” He insisted Ethiopia is willing to talk “up to head of state level with Eritrea”. But he, like everyone else, is not holding his breath for a summit between Meles and Eritrean leader Issayas Afewerki.