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Though highly anticipated, the elections of the Somali Region in Ethiopia in this past August 2005 and the subsequent extraordinary session at the end of September 2005 has produced anti-climatic results. It brought about a cosmetic change without any real change in the body politic of the region. Of the 187 local parliamentary seats and 23 seats for the federal house of legislators, all but 11 local seats went to the ruling Somali Peoples Democratic Party (SPDP). With the exception of a few notables, entirely all the elected bodies are the same individuals who had previously populated both the local and the federal seats. Members of the ruling SPDP are the same personalities whom Mr. Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minster publicly chastised for the utter failure in running the affairs of the region.
It appears that Mr. Zenawi, a man with multiple political heartbeats, chose once again to look the other way and did not care about the meaningless election and its results, which was officially sanctioned by the Somali Regional State's ruling party. Zenawi, after receiving a serious political jolt in the May elections, which endangered his own seat and that of his ruling party, Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Party (EPRDF), opted for the status quo in the Somali Region. Mr. Zenawi, it appears, did not want to risk seeing independents and opposition candidates in the Somali Region making tangible inroads into the region's leadership, as was the case in the elections in Addis Ababa . The largely re-elected, or re-imposed,SPDP candidates expectedly staffed all branches of the Regional government from its ranks. In local circles and by local commentators, SPDP is often viewed as a non-existing entity, which only comes to life when they are re-assembled for the purpose of “legitimizing” farce elections. The Somali region has faced many challenges in the past such as the land transfer to the Oromo region, and the descriminatory law that bars thousands of its citizens who had their education or held managerial positions in Somalia from ever assuming offices in the region. With such enormous tasks, the party lacks strategy and has not met even once to deliberate policies since the summer of 2003, when a hastily convened congress ousted the past president, Mr. Abdirashiid Dulane. From the president-elect (Lugbuur) down to the 20 plus regional ministers (Madax Xafiiseed), excepting few musical chairs that were moved around, the region's leadership entirely went to the 20-something, Sodere-seminar cadres whose indoctrination to carry the banner for the supreme rule of the ruling EPRDF parallels that of the Halane products in the era of Said Barre's dictatorial regime of Somalia. The changes, which the August elections should have brought, are in fact nowhere to be seen in the region's new government and its ruling party! To make matters worse, the former vice president and the interim president for the last two years, Abdi Jibril, whose leadership at both offices wreaked havoc, is recycled as the new vice president. In the midst of this despairing picture of the region's politics, there are lessons to be learned from these latest elections: Negative Lessons • We have learned that the Somali region, unlike other Regional States in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is actually administered as a colonial outpost not from the Prime Minster's office, but from the powerful office of the erstwhile Abay Tsehaye, Minster for Federal Affairs and his staff. • Just like colonial Africa of the 1900s, under the British proconsul Lord Lugard, the Somali region's political affairs is run by Mr. Tsehaye and he does so through what Lord Lugard then called “indirect rule of native tribes.” Under the principles of “indirect rule,” policies that are crafted and designed by the colonial office are handed down to local leaders and its traditional leadership, which they in turn obediently rubber stamp. Because of this un-equal relationship between Addis Ababa and Jigjiga, Tsehaye's office, whose entire secretariat camped in Jigjiga while the proceedings of the outgoing congress were in play, had reportedly handed down a list of names with office assignments up from the president, vice president down to all the new ministers of the regional government and party leadership. • The August elections taught Somalis the unforgettable lesson that Mr. Zenawi and his ruling EPRDF party are not trustworthy, a lesson learned by other Ethiopian regions much earlier; they have learned that elections are only conducted for the sole purpose of satisfying donor countries and their election observers who staff some polling stations for very limited hours. The raison d' etre of the elections are not to bring change. Call this hard learned lessons by a populace who came out in droves and cast their votes even at such odd places as “army camps and military barracks” with intimidating guns littering the scenes. The farce elections which the EPRDF administered got the intended results – to bring no meaningful change to the body politic of this troubled region. Positive Lessons
• Although cheated of their small but symbolic victory, the candidacy of Ali Yusuf Ciise (Dhadac) and Mohammed Khaliif and many others in Jigjiga, Dagaxbuur, Qabridahare, Goday, Baabili, Afdheer, e.t.c. and the impressive grassroots campaign they put out represent the future. After evaluating the grassroots movements which these elections spawned in the entire region, coupled with upsetting results in main land Ethiopia, WardheerNews is tempted to ask how long and how much can Mr. Zenawi, and his minority-ruled EPRDF coalition and its supremacist colonial office (Ministry for Federal Affairs,) under the tutelage of the notorious and unrepentant former Enver-Hoxha-brand communist, Mr. Tsehaye, and SPDP functionaries can they cheat and lie to the people of the region who has unequivocally shown their hunger for the twin concepts of democracy and development? • Given what has happened in Addis Ababa 's election of May 2005, where the EPRDF failed to win a single seat out of the 23 seats allocated for this multi-ethnic cosmopolitan, microcosmic city of 4 million people, the Somali region represents the last bastion of voter intimidation and political clientelism. The dark era, when a surrogate and irrelevant group, like the Somali region's SPDP, could deliver a Soviet-style total victory (199 seats out of 210) to the chief, is undoubtedly a passé. As Somalis would like to say “wax kow la yidhi kooban,” or once the counting begins the end is in sight; and there lies the beginning of an end of an era and the demise of the EPRDF system of governance in the Somali Region. If the purpose of elections was to bring badly needed changes and infuse in to the body politic of the Somali Regional State the spirit of participatory democracy, well, that is missed. What is ironically achieved, after a lot of fanfare and millions of hard-earned dollars being wasted, is a change of chairs with no real political change – a political phenomenon only possible under EPRDF rule. This however should not stop the strive of the Somali people to bring democratic changes in their own backyard, regardless of Mr. Zenawi's grand schemes. The eyes of the Somali populace, who is hungry for democracy and development, is cast on the few and qualified technocrats whose names soften the otherwise crude texture of the list of the Sodere -product dominated new cabinet.
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