A Week in the Horn October 24, 2008

In fact, M. Jean Ping, the Chairperson of the AU visited Eritrea last week, but Eritrea appears to have used the occasion of the visit to continue its criticisms of the continental organization. According to an official Eritrean website, President Issayas told the Chairperson that Eritrea had not seen any meaningful accomplishment by the organization, that it had become marginalized, and that none of its original expectations had been fulfilled. The AU needed to be reformed and renewed and restructured beginning with its headquarters. Following this comprehensive denunciation, the President added that he was not saying that the AU lacked principles or even goodwill, but these needed to be translated into action. This is not the first time for Eritrea to make remarks denigrating the AU and its activities. Nor is it a surprise as Eritrea is one of the difficulties that the AU has faced in the discharge of its mandate in support of peace and stability in Africa. Eritrea openly hosts, organizes and deploys terrorist groups, and has publicly admitted supporting armed groups operating against AU member states, in clear violation of the Constitutive Act of the Union. It has refused to cooperate in the resolution of disputes with its neighbors, most recently with the decision of the Peace and Security Council of the Union, strongly condemning Eritrea’s military action against Djibouti and demanding its immediate and unconditional withdrawal from the Djiboutian territory it occupied. As President Ismail Omar Guellah said it is now up to the Security Council to take decisive measures against Eritrea and failure to do so will have ominous consequences for regional peace and security.

Mr. Alexander also met with the Prime Minister and exchanged views on bilateral, regional and global issues of common interest. He raised concerns over the delivery of humanitarian aid in the Somali region and over the Charity and Societies Bill yet to be considered by Parliament. Parts of the Somali region are some of the areas that have been worst affected by the drought and the effect of sharply rising international fuel and food prices earlier this year. Mr. Alexander told Prime Minister Meles that although he was not able to announce any multi-year DfID funding for Ethiopia at the moment. Britain’s annual aid program to Ethiopia would remain unchanged. Regrettably, the headlines on a couple of stories in the London Daily Telegraph, and in the London Times, by journalists accompanying Mr. Alexander gave a different and highly inaccurate, if not entirely coherent, picture. The Times headline claimed “British minister withholds aid as Ethiopia hides famine victims”; while the Daily Telegraph only had a threat of withholding aid: “Ethiopia risks £130 million of British aid by "hiding famine". The articles, in fact, gave no foundation for these allegations. Indeed, in an interview with the Ethiopian News Agency, Mr. Alexander emphasized that Britain had no plans to reduce or stop assistance to Africa. He noted that Africa might face financial challenges to its development activities due to the current financial crisis and called on donors not to overlook Africa’s problems. Mr. Alexander told ENA that the UK was one of the main development partners of Ethiopia, and he recognized that UK assistance was being properly utilized in the implementation of planned development programs. Earlier, Foreign Minister, Seyoum Mesfin, also held talks with Mr. David Fish, head of DfID’s Eastern and Central African section. Their discussions covered various issues from development cooperation to the humanitarian situation in the Somali Regional State.

The debate attracted substantial attention from the public and in the media. For the first time it was apparent that the statements of opposition and of government reflected shared concerns. The opposition was raising issues that Parliament could and should discuss even if they were matters of detail not appropriate for a debate on the President's opening speech of the session. As the Prime Minister emphasized, the issues, if not the details, were all ones on which the government and opposition could essentially agree. There is clear agreement on the principle of the withdrawal of the Ethiopian forces in Somalia, as well as room for discussion on the detail and timing of any such action. In other words, the government and the opposition demonstrated broad agreement on Ethiopia's national interests. At times, perhaps unavoidably, technicalities of the debate made this difficult to discern. Nevertheless, the debate, the questions asked, and the amendments tabled, suggested the opposition was really moving towards the well-known, if difficult, concept of “loyal opposition” within a parliamentary democracy.

The idea of a “loyal” or an “official” opposition appears to be a contradiction in terms, and that a government should pay people to oppose it is considered bizarre by many people. The concept, however, is quite clear. It is that one can be opposed to the specific actions of a government or a ruling party without being opposed to the constitution or to the political system itself. Within any such framework, the opposition has a constitutional function: to scrutinize government legislation and actions. Most developed democratic political systems have a similar concept, even if the terminology may be different. Democratic parties accept the legitimacy of the constitutional system under which they operate, including the procedures to change the constitution itself. This is exactly where some opposition party members in 2005 in Ethiopia demonstrated their failure to understand democracy. A significant number of opposition leaders were quite clear that their participation in 2005 was no more than a device to try and raise support for an “orange” revolution, to overthrow the constitution. They had no intent to operate within the democratic framework of the constitution, and underlined this by the violence of their post-election activities. They refused to accept results of the election, refused to accept the seats which they had won in the election, betraying the constituents who had elected them, and then attempted to overthrow the constitution by force. In other words, despite participating in the electoral process, once they found they had lost the election, they rejected the democratic and constitutional system under which the elections were held. This failure by some opposition leaders after the May election to participate in the democratic process to which their constituents had so willingly subscribed, demonstrated a fundamental flaw in their approach to democracy. Indeed, the more recent activities of some now abroad show clearly that they have no interest in democracy as well as no understanding of it. Surprisingly, some of their mentors from Europe, who encouraged them to think in terms of non-democratic efforts to change the constitution in 2005, still appear to support this approach. In fact, by their very presence in parliament, parliamentary opposition parties recognize the legitimacy of the system under which they operate, and indicate that they share many of the views of government, not least those pertaining to the constitution under which both government and opposition operate, and acceptance of the country’s national interests. Refusal to accept electoral results or take up seats in parliament inevitably indicates the opposite.

Members of an opposition in a parliamentary system are essentially called upon to act as a brake on government, ensure legislation receives serious discussion allowing opposing and diverse points of view to be aired. They offer vigilance and diligence, to help ensure that there is responsible government. Backbenchers within a parliamentary system such as that of the UK or Ethiopia cannot expect to have any direct influence on legislation, but all elected MPs, whether in UK or Ethiopia, have a right (and indeed a duty) to articulate the interests of the constituents that they represent. This, of course, means all those in their constituency not just those who voted for them. They also have the right and duty to scrutinize the actions of the government and, in opposition, present alternative policies to the public, either in parliament or through the media. This applies to members of the larger parties as much as any smaller ones. There are 17 parties represented among the 546 members of the House of Representatives in Ethiopia and one independent.

The core of parliamentary democracy (or as some would have it, its genius) is that adversarial politics are not simply negative but can be an integral part of the shaping of government policy. Indeed, it might be emphasized that this is a necessity. A parliament cannot function seriously without advocacy and persuasion from all its members. In a parliamentary democracy, the government has a right, and a duty, to govern; the opposition has a right and a duty when it believes public interest is involved to oppose the government's policies and actions by every legitimate parliamentary means, laying the basis for convincing the electorate in the next electoral campaign. This is part of the fundamental constitutional principle of responsible government, under the constitution to which both governing and opposition parties must be committed in a parliamentary democracy. Preserving and enhancing the role of the opposition is critical to democratic legitimacy. It is the opposition which is responsible for holding the government to account, asserting the right of the legislature vis-à-vis the executive – but it can only do this in parliament, not outside it. Indeed, “the best guarantee of good government is still the vigilance of an effective parliamentary opposition.”

But it is not easy to develop the political culture necessary for assuming this responsibility. Of what does this responsibility consist? First of all, it assumes that an opposition sees the ruling party not as an enemy but as a partner in governance. It assumes that the opposition views the ruling party as a partner for advancing and protecting the national interests of the country. There might be differences, indeed there should be, on how to promote national interests in various areas, most importantly in respect to national security. For Ethiopia of course, the fight against poverty and economic issues are matters of national security. Therefore there is a critical need for the ruling party and the opposition to view each other as allies in the fight against poverty and in bringing about speedy economic development in Ethiopia. These are the objectives that the government, the ruling party, and the opposition must share. It is only then that we will have laid the foundations for a political culture which can underpin the concept of the “loyal opposition”, and that is when we can be fully confident of the long-term viability of the nation.