Ethiopia’s
Political Trajectory: From Meles to Abiy Ahmed.
By
Teodros Kiros (Ph.D.) 08/22/2018
Meles and his idea of the
Developmental State had put Ethiopia on the
modernity project, the central ideas of which can
be summarized as follows.
The development of the Ethiopian
nation must be assumed as the defining task of the
State. The
State must guide all the necessary components of a
functional state, the economy with its central
institutions including the banks, education,
infrastructure and parts of civil society.
All the subordinate parts of the state must
follow directives articulated by the state and
then processed by the appropriate functionaries of
the state, most particularly the bureaucrats.
Since Ethiopia is fundamentally a
peasant society, attention must be given to the
peasantry, the main labor force.
The duty of the state is to create
opportunities for the peasantry, who had hitherto
been excluded from the development project, must
now be encouraged to venture as entrepreneurs and
learn the skills of capitalist entrepreneurs and
improve their conditions.
The state in turn must create a development
bank which will lend money to peasants to create
values and exchange them at a capitalist market,
as socialist entrepreneurs.
The idea of modernity which began in
Europe in the seventeenth century was anchored on
the capitalist form of distributing resources with
an ego centered moral frame, which caters to the
whims, interests and passions of the rich and
powerful.
In contrast, the inadequately
organized socialist economy
seeks to develop an alternative form of modernity,
which is slowly but steadily penetrating global
consciousness.
Capitalist modernity keeps on
growing, leaving a vast moral wasteland, a
wasteland that socialist modernity seeks to combat
but with deep grounding in the people’s public
reason and heart.
Socialist ideas, however, have yet to
develop grounding institutions.
The strategic Meles attempted to
modernize Ethiopia through a market economy,
jettisoning the socialist alternative, which
characterized the earlier project of revolutionary
Ethiopian modernity, which Meles, following the
visions of Chinese thinkers dubbed, the
Developmental State.
From the very beginning, Meles’
Developmental state seeks to give Ethiopian
modernity an original economic form which
decouples the idea of development, the motor of
modernity, from any moral limitations and worse,
it seeks to develop bureaucrats whose task is to
implement a singular leader’s vision of building
an economic infrastructure that will develop the
agricultural center in the villages and also build
roads, highways, universities and business centers
guided by the imperatives of the global market
economy, seeking to develop modernity, using China
as a model. The
decoupling of morality and economy, characteristic
of capitalist modernity, is in direct contrast to
the blending of morality and economy, which
typifies the socialist vision of modernity.
Meles Zenawi, betraying his
commitment to “revolutionary democracy,’ makes
the strategic decision of securing food for the
poor of Ethiopia by any means necessary. This
decision is realized at the expense of aborting
the democratic necessity of allowing citizens to
participate in choosing ways of life and ethics of
existence. The
unflinching vision of developing Ethiopia came
with shocking results, such as the death of
hundreds of university students after the 2005
elections, and the imprisonments of dissidents.
a recent video in Aiga Forum,
presents the young Meles Zenawi, movingly grounded
in the rural cultures of the Ethiopian
countryside. There
in the vast fields of the principled Ethiopian
peasants, impressive democratic dialogues take
place. The
leader is seen teaching and learning, lecturing
and being lectured at, instructing and being
instructed, relentlessly attacking bureaucratic
ineptness, praising the natural intelligence of
Ethiopian peasants.
These moments were the sites of direct
democracy, my lifelong dream for Ethiopia, to
which I devoted my two most recent books, Philosophical
Essays, and Ethiopian Discourse. (Red
Sea Press, 2012)
Again, I am profoundly dismayed that he
did not read these two books, in which I fully
share his earlier vision of developing Ethiopia by
directly empowering Ethiopian farmers, the back
bone of the unfinished project of Ethiopian
modernity.
Perhaps he did read them in their
original forms when I first published them in the Ethiopian
reporter, as a weekly columnist for five years
and that I was not fortunate enough to engage him
in a critical dialogue in the spirit of Ethiopian
modernity, a unique blend of culture and
enlightenment, tradition and elements of
capitalist modernity.
The fundamentals of the developmental
state that Meles has left are impressive sources
of waking the sleeping Ethiopian giant of one
hundred million people waiting to be engaged
economically and be disburdened from poverty.
The repressive political structure however
is at loggerheads with the idea of modernity, the
pillars of which are enlightenment, democratic
freedom and tolerance.
In 1982 the continent of Africa was
engulfed by the menace of food crisis and then I
proposed remedies in a series of conferences
sponsored by the African Studies association.
These conference papers were collected in
book form, Moral Philosophy and Development:
The Human condition in Africa. (Ohio
University Press, 1992)
In that book, I proposed that food security for the continent be
developed by African States, which make conscious
decisions and adopt two principles of Justice:
The first principle is the recognition of food,
Health, Shelter and clothing as inalienable human
rights. African resources must be used in such a
way that they can, with proper scientific aids, be
channeled to eventually (a) eliminate urgent human
conditions of poverty and hunger, and (b) address
other attendant consequences of mental and
physical health, hopelessness and under
motivation.
The second principle is a demand for the
absolutely necessary duty humans may have in the
recognition of the importance of freedom for those
who think and feel that they are unfree.
When the basic human needs are met, only
then may the Africans be able to think about
nonmaterial human needs, such as art and religion.
(Moral Philosophy and Development:
The Human Condition in Africa, p, 176)
I can only hope that Meles Zenawi, a
voracious reader, has read this work of my youth,
and perhaps adopted it to his recent call for
Ethiopian food security.
Instead of assuming that he was familiar with the work, I publicly
suggest that the present Prime Minister, Abiy
Ahmed, consult this work as he continues
implementing Meles Zenawi’s vision of securing
food for the Ethiopian poor, a lifetime work.
I would like to elaborate and revise
my present views of using the two principles of
Justice by the Developmental state. With the first
formulation, I treat the two principles of justice
separately and give priority of importance to the
first principle and sacrifice freedom by
relegating it to the second position, whereas now,
I propose that the Ethiopian Developmental state
must enshrine the two principles of justice as
constitutional amendments simultaneously.
The repressive political structure
that does not allow the flourishing of the
thinking individual must be checkmated by the
second principle of justice that guarantees
freedom for every citizen. That food security and
freedom must be procured for the poor of Ethiopia.
The first principle and the second
principle must be realized at the same time. Both
are necessary and sufficient conditions for the
vision of a just and efficient modern Ethiopian
state.
The existential imperative of food
security ought to be mediated by the democratic
right of freedom for every Ethiopian. Meles Zenawi
was very much mistaken when he thought that
freedom and food security couldn’t be realized
simultaneously.
I think they can.
Development, one of the engines of
Ethiopian modernity, requires a democratic
structure. The right of speech, principled
assembly, spiritual conscience, which includes
religious sensibilities, fuels the democratic
structure and most potently expresses freedom.
The first principle of justice
justifies the idea of development and gives it a
material anchor.
This material anchor however, must be
buttressed by the full satisfaction of the second
principle of justice that secures the basic
freedoms of speech, assembly and worship.
Indeed Ethiopian modernity ought to give
pride of place to the fundamental freedoms, as
political rights, the inherent features of
democracy.
In an enlightening article, Dr. Ghelawdewos Araia, has rightly
argued, which I would like to quote in its
entirety.
While
addressing the Ethiopian parliament, Dr. Abiye
told us that he is in favor of capitalism, which
by the way is acceptable to me, and as I have
indicated above, this economic system was most
successful and has demonstrated universal
applicability. However, I have not heard of the
details of the Prime Minister’s policy in
regards to the capitalist system. Similar to Dr.
Abiye and his Government, Ginbot 7 and Arena
Tigray are also in favor of the neo-liberal market
economy, but I am not sure whether they have
incorporated in their respective policies and/or
political programs the distinction between the
Liberal Market Economy (LME) and the Coordinated
Market Economy (CME), both of which are capitalist
systems. It is beyond the scope of this paper to
discuss in detail the policies of the two systems,
but it is important to note which countries belong
to which. The US, Canada, the UK, and Australia
belong to the LME group, and Germany, Japan,
Scandinavian nations, Netherlands, Austria, and
Switzerland belong to the CME bloc. While the
former group still promotes unfettered capitalism,
the latter bloc of nations humanized capitalism.
If
Ethiopia adopts the LME policy of economic
development, slowly but surely it could reverse
the gains of the DS and the many major projects
such as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)
could be stalled or delayed indefinitely; if, on
the other hand, Ethiopia pursues the CME strategy,
it will have a chance to make reforms in the
economy without completely obliterating the DS and
without hindering the current pace of development.
(African Idea, August 22, 1918)
I appreciate his penetrating
question. “If a DS renders sound
transformation and prosperity as it did for the
Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and
Hong Kong), China, and Japan etc. why then resort
to a neo-liberal development agenda, when in fact
the latter failed in most Third World countries”
( African Idea, August 22, 2018).
Indeed, if DS has worked miraculously,
why should it be abandoned, instead of perfecting
it more, and making it repression free. I suggest
as Dr. Ghelawdewos does, that we think very hard
about choosing an appropriate economic form that
serves the people’s interests as opposed to Washington
consensus.
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