BY: Dr. Tekeda Alemu

I could not resist the urge to write to you in response to your November 7, 2005, contribution: "Comments on the Ethiopian Crisis". I thought also that my comment should be in the form of an open letter. I have a very simple reason for this -- your contribution which has the potential of misleading many, has had very wide circulation. It could thus have some damaging effect on our country.

Frankly speaking, I would not have selected to respond in this fashion if I did not feel that I had a story to tell which might help readers to put this latest contribution of yours in the proper perspective.

I have known you, Professor Clapham, for many years. In fact, I have known of you, through your first book on Ethiopia -- a sort of a sequel to Margery Perham's work, The Government of Ethiopia. Thus, I regard you, more or less, as my teacher, though we have never been together in the same class. I believe we might have had an opportunity to meet over the last 14 years a few times, I suppose one or two times in my office.

But what I find most memorable --- all the more so now in light of your latest contribution on Ethiopia --- is our encounter in South Africa, in April 2004, specifically at that magnificent desert resort in the Kalahari, South Africa, in connection with the Tswalu Dialogue. I was there representing Prime Minster Meles who could not accept the invitation because of other commitments he had. Since I know you are an honourable man, I have no doubt, you would not attempt to contradict me if I said you wanted Prime Minister Meles to be at the Dialogue as much as the organizers of the meeting did, to comment on the short paper you had prepared on Ethiopia --- "The Challenge of Democratization...." You wanted the Ethiopian Prime Minister to be at the Dialogue so much that, if you recall, that was the only time we ever had communication. We have not had any contact since.

From the vantage point of a little less than two years from that Dialogue, what is important is not that you went out of your way to seek out the Ethiopian Prime Minister to join you at Tswalu to comment on your paper, but rather --- in light of the tone and content of yoour latest contribution --- what you said in the paper you presented at the Dialogue about the EPRDF and about post-1991 Ethiopia.

I would not be surprised if people would find it difficult to believe that the same author would be responsible for the two contributions, the first one written in April 2004, and the second penned in November 2005. With all due respect, Professor Clapham, it is like there are two Professor Claphams --- the first, that of the "The Challenge of Democratization in Ethiopia." Here, I must tell you in all honesty, you were in your best form as a scholar and as an academic. This was the paper that you wanted the Ethiopian Prime Minister to comment on. Despite the very many efforts you made, you could not succeed, and what you had was me as a substitute. I have to admit, I must have mumbled something, but I did not do justice to the wonderful paper you presented on the challenges of democratization in Ethiopia. You were also very generous towards the EPRDF in that paper and though you still retained some scholarly skepticism, you made it clear nonetheless that 1991 was a watershed in the history of Ethiopia and that the EPRDF had brought Ethiopia almost to the doorsteps of democratic governance. I shall return to this theme in a moment, but now to the second Professor Chapham, that of "Comments on the Ethiopian Crisis."

What Professor Clapham II Says

Here, one sees no trace of the scholar with 40 years of concentrated labour on matters relating to Ethiopia. You started out with a sentence whose validity is manifest and which reminded one who the author was. "The place to start trying to understand any political crisis is always with the government in power. Oppositions merely fill the gaps left by the incumbent regime." In all frankness, I thought, that opening remark would for sure be a curtain raiser for an analysis of the current Ethiopian crisis only a writes of the caliber of Professor Clapham I would manage to deliver. But what a disappointment. After that magnificent salvo, you immediately descended into polemics which one would normally expect from partisan scribes of political parties, and not from an academic of your caliber and, I might add, of your integrity as a scholar.

The thrust of your analysis suggests that you simply did not care to try to understand why an election which began with so much hope suddenly degenerated into a bloody and ugly confrontation which ought to be excruciatingly painful, not only for patriotic Ethiopians, but also for friends of Ethiopia like your good self. What I have found the most intriguing is how uncharacteristically you have become downright rude in this piece as when you gratuitously refer to our former Minister of Information as "neurotic" in his "pronouncements". I am sure there is no factual basis for your fulmination, as there is absolutely no basis for another outrageous remark you make in which you claim that "Ethiopia retains one of the longest periods in Africa for establishing a business." The truth, Professor Clapham, as I checked with the head of our Investment Office while reading your paper, is that the opposite is true --- Ethiopia makes available to businessmen and women one of the shortest periods in the world for establishing business firms. You could do it within two hours, Professor Clapham.

For some of the factual errors you make, I do not need corroboration from third parties, for since I myself have been directly involved in these events, it is with regrets that I have to point out to you those unscholarly transgressions. You refer to the expulsion of Dr. Siegfried Pausewang as one of the "worrying signs, even before the election took place." But Professor Clapham, if you had discussed the issue with Dr. Pausewang, you would have discovered that long before the election and before Dr. Pousewang's name was ever proposed as one of the observers of EU, questions had been raised in writing and in the form of a critique of his work, about his neutrality. That judgment was made on the merit of his own behavior. For your information, Professor Clapham, I myself had a long exchange of views with Dr. Pausewang before he left Ethiopia prior to the election. I thought we had a very civilized exchange of views and the position of the Ethiopian Government was explained to him in as frank a manner as possible. The point is, Professor Clapham, even with respect to matters that could be easily verified you have been, in this second paper, rather careless, sloppy, and utterly un academic.

What is most revealing, however, is how you have been so unreasonably harsh on the EPRDF in this paper while you have been so much indefatigable in your effort to find excuses for the shortcomings of the opposition, so much so that at times the whole enterprise looks comical. "The opposition is caught in a bind", you assert in all confidence. "On the one hand, it cannot simply accept election results that it has every reason to believe are fraudulent", you argue. While on the other hand, you tell us, the opposition "has no interest in escalating violence, which would only play into the hands of a government that possesses a monopoly of organized force and has not the slightest hesitation to use it." Not even the best minds from the opposition have managed to come up with an argument lending a plausible cover of reasonableness for the policy of the