The Danger of Rewarding Dictatorship and
Subsequent Emasculation of Democratic Political
Culture: What President Biden Should be Cautious
of
Ghelawdewos Araia, PhD
February 6, 2021
Before I delve into the main thesis of this
article that intends to systematically analyze the
danger of rewarding dictatorship, I like to first
state a passing remark on the promise and oath of
President Joe Biden to the American people. Soon
after inauguration on January 20, 2021, when Joe
Biden entered the White House, he made a pledge in
a manner of invoking a divine witness and
expressed them in simple terms such as ‘I will
be president for all Americans’; ‘we will get
through this together’; ‘politics does not
have to be a raging fire’; ‘we must end this
uncivil war’. These are great phrases and full
of promise, affirmation, and hope, and I am
gratified that Biden assumed executive power and
became president of the United States.
However, long before Biden became president, I
campaigned for him and even contributed a brief
article entitled “Diaspora Africans, in
particular Ethiopians, Must Vote for Joe Biden in
order to Remove Donald Trump”, and interested
subscribers can read the whole article via the
following link: www.africanidea.org/Vote_for_Biden.html
But Joe Biden must bear in mind two things at
the very outset of his presidency: 1) he must
understand that he is not president for all
Americans only, but he is also a world leader by
virtue of American global stature; for good or for
bad, American presidents have had a major clout on
world politics and consequently their foreign
policies (US policies implemented by the State
Department) have had a tremendous impact on the
world at large. Unfortunately, however, developing
countries and marginalized states were impacted
negatively by American policies, because the
latter, in most instances, were designed to
promote US national interest by supporting
dictatorships that violate human rights and
trample over nascent and fledgling democratic
cultures.
The US is a number one economic power in the
world and via its wealth and by exporting
democracy, it could make developing countries,
particularly African nations, gravitate toward its
orbit. I am suggesting here that America should
completely overhaul its foreign policy and abandon
the idea of ‘promoting US interests by rewarding
dictators around the world’.
I am hoping that Biden will be a uniquely
different American president and world leader and
he would be the first to pave the road of sharing
wealth-cum-democracy with the rest of world as
opposed to the old-fashioned coercive diplomacy
and extending unnecessary financial and political
support to dictators who suppress basic democratic
rights and traumatize their own people. If this
hope of mine bears fruit, we will label this new
American foreign policy the ‘Biden Doctrine’.
But if America continues to pursue its
traditional foreign policy of rewarding autocratic
regimes, such as the one we have in Ethiopia,
developing countries around the world will
encounter great danger and altogether suffer from
maladministration and ill-governance, bad
governance that has been recognized and justified
by a Superpower, so to speak.
I have no doubt that by now the United States
has a clear picture of the devastating war in
Tigray that left close to two million people
internally displaced; an estimated 50,000 killed;
and some 61,000 became refugees and sought asylum
in neighboring Sudan. The destructive war in
Tigray is a combined operation of four forces,
namely the Ethiopian Defense Forces (EDF),
Eritrean troops, Amhara militia, and United Arab
Emirates drones; these combined forces have
inflicted a huge toll on the people of Tigray, not
to mention the immeasurable looting and
destruction of industries, farms, institutions of
higher learning, churches, mosques, and historical
and UNESCO heritage sites.
So, what is the purpose of rewarding dictators
like Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia and Isaias Afeworki of
Eritrea? Since Abiy came to power in 2018,
Ethiopia was devastated, its social fabric
dismantled, millions internally displaced, and as
explained above, the dictator has conducted an
extremely violent war not only on the TPLF but
also on the people of Tigray. Is America ready to
embrace such a dictator and a ‘war-like king’
akin of the medieval period?
While I appreciate Antony Blinken’s assertion
about ending the war in Tigray, I am perplexed by
the fact that he said, “the US will support
Ethiopian election and reform”, which, in my
opinion, is tantamount to rewarding a dictator
responsible for heinous crimes. Incidentally, what
Blinken and Biden should be cautious of is the
bizarre behavior of the impressionist hypocritical
regime that clamors for ‘reform and change’,
and as aptly put by the French historian Alex de
Tocqueville so long ago, “the most dangerous
time is when a bad government begins to reform
itself.” To be sure, a bad government does not
reform itself; on the contrary, it serves as an
impediment to genuine reforms and changes.
A bold and committed leadership would
encourage, first and foremost, a plural and
participatory democracy in which citizens will
have access to the political process. At this
juncture in Ethiopian history, let alone the
average Ethiopian, even the registered contending
political parties led by astute politicians, are
now blocked from participating in the political
process. Recently, eleven political parties were
expelled from the Board of Elections simply
because they were perceived as robust challengers
to Abiy’s Prosperity Party, and other parties
like the Ethiopian Democratic Party of Lidetu
Ayalew are eliminated from the Ethiopian power
politics, and the Oromo Federalist Congress
leaders like Bekele Gerba are behind bars.
In all probability, the parties that will have
an upper hand in the forthcoming fake or rigged
election are the Prosperity Party (PP) of Abiy
Ahmed, the EZEMA or Ethiopian Citizen’s Party of
Berhanu Nega, the Tigray Democratic Party (TDP) of
Aregawi Berhe. To a lesser extent, other parties
that will participate in this election are
PP-affiliated regional parties of the Somali and
Afar and supporting parties such as the EPRP. The
likelihood is these parties will form a new
government under the tutelage of the PP and their
immediate task could be to restructure the federal
structure under what they call multi-national
federal system, and it will no longer accommodate
the various Ethiopian nationalities and
sub-nationalities of yesteryear during the EPRDF
government; actually, it will reflect more of a
unitary state under a heavily centralized
government in Addis Ababa and effectively
eradicate the federal structure.
President Biden and Secretary Blinken should
also be extra cautious in their assessment of the
Ethiopian reality on the ground and the behavior
of the current Prime Minister; here are some tips:
·
The Abiy regime has now effectively undermined the four important
component parts of the Ethiopian nation-state
(territorial integrity, sovereignty, independence,
and legitimacy); Abiy has surreptitiously dealt
with the Sudanese top officials and told them to
go ahead and grab Ethiopian territory that they
claim it is theirs by the 1902 Treaty; he once
said, ‘Ethiopia is not sovereign’ and by
extension ‘it is not independent’, and for
these apparent reasons, Eritrea and the UAE were
invited to intervene in Ethiopian politics and
also encouraged to massacre Ethiopians in the
Tigray Regional State. As a result, the legitimacy
of Ethiopia as a state and an independent
nation-state has now become questionable; for all
practical purposes, Ethiopia is heading toward a
vanishing point; it may survive as a very weak and
fragmented nation, but it is also possible that it
could implode.
·
Abiy as a leader is expected to set the moral tone for Ethiopia and
all Ethiopians; on the contrary, he has
demoralized Ethiopians and plunged the country
into a deep morass and quagmire, sort of
entanglement from which it may never uplift
itself.
·
Abiy as a leader should have been in a better position to promptly
respond to the Ethiopian crisis and conflict
(Tigray, Oromia, Benishangul Gumuz etc.); quite
the contrary, in many instances he was numb and
cold vis-à-vis the violence and wars that have
disturbed the entire of Ethiopia, and like a weird
political beast, he seems to justify the pain and
sufferings of his own people
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