‘A House Divided Against itself Cannot Stand’ 

By Samuel Estefanous

A couple of days ago the Federal Justice and Law Institute hosted a panel discussion regarding   one of the studies it had commissioned for the budget year 2025/26.  Apparently the Institute has identified the fault line relative to the failure to effectively constitute a single economic community as envisioned by the FDRE Constitution. 

The Elusive single Economic Community

Guess who was held liable for the epic failure? The Council of Federation! The scholars found it fit to blame the Council for not initiating legislations that could have intertwined us sufficiently enough to constitute one economic community. Apparently the customary and expressly noted common Commercial, Penal and Labor Codes couldn’t do the trick. How could the learned scholars expect the Council to ‘give’ law to the Constituent Federal States? Even if employing the instrumentality of the House of People’s Representatives? Law is meant to regulate an existing or established communal interaction. The facts on the ground need to warrant the necessity of the legislation in the first place. 

That is why the Constitution took enough care to relegate this power of the Council to a secondary importance. I am not saying the Council couldn’t take a proactive stand, it may but it should take into account the possibility of inducing veritable chaos instead avoiding the same in the absence of an existing actual inter-state interdependent economic, political and social vibrancy.        

To begin with one would naturally want to know the validity of the presumption. Is it proved above board that we are fragmented communities unable to chart a common destiny? So there was no wisdom in EPRDF’s constitutional gambling to break up an existing economic community then trying to bring it together? Incidentally, any student of the Ethiopian Constitution would tell you that as a Federation we aren’t supposed to hold-together but by legal fiction we have come together to found the FDRE. You know as if we have forged a Federal Union with South Sudan, Djibouti and Somalia. If you ask me this legal fiction is like a cancerous tumor and it is eating away at the Unity of the Polity.    

Never mind all that. The thing is right or wrong, public policy institutes are beginning to take note of the fragile state of the Federal Union. I hope to God in his next annual State of the Union Address the President of the Republic will take the courage to define the existential threat the Nation is facing along with the prospects of transformation.

Beshasha or Arat Kilo

The Federal Law and Justice Institute should have tried to ’audit’ the implementation of the existing regimes of law instead of tendering advice to introduce fresh legislation as a panacea to settle all sorts of legal and justice problems.

Here is one instance. The Premier has been an established native of Addis for close to two decades. Why in God’s good name would he represent residents of Beshasha in the House of Peoples Representatives? I know you are gonna say it is on account of Article 31 of the Electoral Proclamation of the Country, stupid. Fair enough, my question is what is the raison d’etre behind this piece of electoral law? It is simple- EPRDF’s lingering philosophy of the roots of political power. Prosperity is unable to break free of this vice like clutch. 

It is trying though, one can fairly see, though the Structure of the Party designates the Forum of Federal and Regional Party Leaders a higher tier of power, the Party Program tones down ethnicity.      

Thus, in an effort to counteract EPRDF’s legacy, as Chairman of Prosperity Party and the incumbent Premier of the Republic I wish he were to represent a section of the Federal Territory i.e. Addis Ababa (his primary residence and domicile). There are a number of comparative experiences to tap from. For one Britain is serious about the constituency qualification for candidates relative to domicile and residency. At least we should learn from their example and quit the attachment to the tribal land. 

Sad as it is despite the tons of narratives of Common destiny, in our country electoral politics is tied to a place of birth particularly when it comes to the principal Representatives calling the shots such as the Premier, Deputy Premiers, the Speakers of the House and Federation etc. In other words instead of becoming an agent of advancing a common economic community existing laws are effectively hampering it. 

Let us be honest. Fundamentally, isn’t that what Bantustanism did to Coloured South Africans before 1994? The Apartheid system limited the political participation of blacks to their respective ethnic group and none beyond. In other words a Zulu had no business and stake in the affairs of a Xhosa and vice versa. One cannot help but notice traces of Bantustanism in the Federal Structure of the FDRE.  

I know that wasn’t the intention but the system worked itself out that way.  Ato Meles is tied to Adwa and Dr.Abiy to Beshasha in between we have ruled out the possibility of choosing any Region of choice as a place of residence or domicile and electoral candidacy. Right now what we are trying to do is manage the spillovers from the previously established systems of actual single Economic Community formations, sadly not as something to emulate but as a problem to contain.     

I wonder if the Federal Law and Justice Institute has tried to review regional legislations beginning from their respective Constitutions.  I will suggest three: The Regional Constitutions of Harari, Benishangul-Gumuz and Oromia for starters. There is little the Federation Council could do in the face of ranges of debilitating regimes of law that have been enfeebling the founding of one economic community. 

A Virginian First   

In the event you forgot that was General Robert Lee. He resigned his Commission as Commander of Union forces upon secession of his home state of Virginia. Before that he was for the Union. He was ready to die for the Union.  As a person and a soldier he was loyal to the Federal forces and the President but immediately when Virginia seceded, he resigned his Commission to join the rebel Confederacy.  His reasoning was simple, honest and devoid of any degree of treachery. He said he was first a Virginian and would go where his native State went no question asked- whether he believed in the Cause was secondary. 

Recently while listening to the Premier’s interview with OBN that was the feeling I had.  I didn’t expect that. He is after all one of the top leaders of Oromo extraction who has been demonized by ultra-ethnic-nationalists for hijacking the Oromo cause for a latent overarching unitary purpose.  For God’s sake they even accuse him of being a non-native Oromo speaker, (just like Zelensky who had to learn Ukrainian in the Presidential palace). But contrary to our presumption he sounded a little bit like General Lee.  

At first I thought he was trying to appease or please the disagreeable fringe elements waging a senseless bloody war in Western Oromia. Then he was pulled into a vortex of inextricable alternative history narratives. I don’t like Alternative History. 

The story about the symbolism of Gada featured on the Axum Stelae, the Oromo origin of governors of the Maritime province of Bahrnegash, the northern exploits of the Barentu Clan of the Oromos…I was a little disappointed not just because I couldn’t process the narratives but the reverse dialogue up set  my stomach.  You know what I mean? For some reason some opinion leaders from other Nationalities try to hook up north to claim descent from the source of Ancient civilization.  It betrays a degree of insecurity in one’s own skin. As much as I have been a fan of Tsegaye G/Medhin as an Amharic poet laureate, I couldn’t take to his Egyptology idiosyncrasies tracing the Cushitic origin of some words to put claim to a whole civilization.  I don’t even want to talk about Fikre Tolosa.   

Okay, that would have been ignored as an inconsequential drifting of the human mind. It could happen to anybody. However the context was too squarely defined to miss. It was an attempt at advancing a hegemonic imperialistic motif. It begins with a noble statement that the Oromos of Ethiopia aren’t going to play second fiddle to no one. They rarely did. They shouldn’t either. But in a country of 80+nationalities the Nation cannot be defined in the image of a single ethnic group either. 

Let’s try to heed the late sage, Dr.Negasso Gidada. He had been warning all those who were bent on redefining the Nation on the terms of a single one group. He had said that such tendency alienates the said group; once alienated it becomes the smallest census in the Country. Don’t alienate us. As the Scripture says a House divided against itself cannot stand. After all, we are indeed trying to forge a single Economic Community. 

God Bless.  

The writer can be reached at : estefanoussamuel@yahoo.com

Editor’s Note: Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com  

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