By Samuel Estefanous
I mean no disrespect to the distinguished Group of Experts who had been toiling in good earnest to see the project serve some meaningful purpose. But the way I see it, it looks like they will be cursing the day they got caught up in the ill-fated venture. It is a pity they were carried away by the euphoria of the ‘Transition’ just like any hot headed run of the mill social media activist. Before venturing to produce the Draft Policy, they should have unequivocally answered some hard uncomfortable questions like-is there really a Transition in the legal sense of the term? There wasn’t even a change of government for crying out loud!
I don’t buy the proposition to go back and consider three decades of atrocities. This particular Initiative was undertaken as the result of the movement that had culminated in the 2018 change of Administration. It would be unrealistic to expect it would go far beyond the 2012 or 2013 when the protest had gathered momentum.
The 1995 FDRE Constitution is yet the uncontested supreme law of the land, PP’s manifesto clearly stipulates that it is a continuation and not even in opposition to EPRDF, the reigning Prime Minister came to power as the Chairman of EPRDF duly elected by the 180 member Council of EPRDF who are still running the government in different capacities. Hence logically the policy and system that had given rise to the protests is validated except for isolated instances which are always liable to be prosecuted through the regular justice administration system.
Exactly what Transition are we talking about here? The Group of Experts had sampled alternatives going as far back as 1991 and tabled 1995 as well as 2018 as possible Transitions to reckon with. The rest of the country and the international community had quite a different time frame-post 2018!
No wonder the Initiative’s foreign sponsors are openly saying it would come to nothing and its fate wouldn’t be any different from the Commission founded to determine Identity and Inter-State Boundary as well as the Reconciliation Commission. Actually way back some of us had forwarded an Agenda to the Dialogue Commission to abrogate and disband the Transitional Justice Initiative as it is fraught with anachronism, disorientation, insincerity, and would just result in an absolute and shameless waste of the meager resources.
Besides, I can see that the donor ferenjis are beginning to ask some uncomfortable pointed questions, hence the recent symposium to put their troubled mind at ease. Intimidated by the Americans and the latest UN Agency report, the MOJ has the audacity to declare in a month’s time an auxiliary Special Prosecution Office under the auspices of Ministry of Justice (but accountable to the HoPR) would be launched and a corresponding Special Bench would be constituted by the Federal Supreme Court to entertain the Cases. I sincerely doubt it. The very fact that the Symposium was made to coincide with the American delegation’s extended African tour says a lot about the owner of the Initiative in the first place.
As a matter of fact, the Delegation was least impressed. Parting with diplomatic finesse and courtesy it has bluntly told the world that the project is a failure. Who would blame them? Even donors are accountable and they have to produce follow up reports to Congressional Committees. Besides, the very fact that the Transitional Justice is an initiative primarily instigated and espoused by the donor community makes it rootless.
1-Take a Cut-off Date
That is what auditors write in the executive summary of an audit report. They define the cut-off date very carefully. Without establishing such a milestone mark off, the audit finding fails to determine the party accountable for breach of system, wouldn’t hold anyone responsible for the financial loss suffered and would be unable to suggest credible recommendations.
By the same token the first thing a Transitional Justice Initiative should do is figure out when and why to take a cut-off date. After all, the Initiative is supposed to herald the ushering of a new era and serves as a medium to ‘break with past traditions of atrocities and injustice’ as the Draft Policy document indeed testifies. The Office cannot afford to go back and forth as it suits it and paddle through the quagmire of three decades of atrocities which could possibly make EPRDF’s Special Prosecution Office a subject of interest among others.
Now when the Dergue suspended the Revised 1955 Constitution and deposed the mystical ‘3000 years old Solomonic Dynasty’ it had a clear cut-off dateline. In its own way it had tried to address the issues of Transitional Justice as no revolutionary government could do without. The National Advisory Council established by Proclamation 2/75 could have played the role of a Transitional Justice Office considering the idyllic composition of the members constituting the Council.
In like manner upon assuming power in 1991 EPRDF suspended the 1987 PDRE Constitution and later on established the Special Prosecution Office headed by Girma Wakjira by Proclamation number 22/92.
In both instances the legal grounds weren’t just rife but demanded Transitional Justice in their own right, albeit being entertained in a manner that had seeded another cycle of acute culture of gross and systemic atrocities.
One would naturally expect some milestone fundamental change to warrant the valid introduction of Transitional Justice in 2018. The Draft Policy ‘anchors’ the necessity on a flimsy brief statement that reads ‘political reform unveiled in 2018’. Can you believe that? In its long tenure spanning 27 years EPRDF had ‘unveiled’ seven major political reforms of similar nature, why is this any different?’
In a lame- duck manner that betrays its insincerity, the Draft document prepared by the Group goes on to borrow legitimacy for its effort from the fact that the government had issued amnesty, it had established a Reconciliation Commission and Identity and Inter-State Boundary Commission. For the record both Commissions are no more and their unintended dissolution abundantly signifies the mortis causa state of the Transitional Justice Initiative. Even if they were around and functioning they would give one an unerring impression that definitive Transitional Justice imperatives are already underway and the Office is suspended in mid-air as an irrelevant party.
The Policy Document submitted to the government by the Group of experts wouldn’t even define a convincing preferable temporal scope. In such blurred context I wonder what the Special Prosecutors Office is going to establish as its working procedure and when it is going to be dissolved. But reports suggest that the Office is actually a permanent one and ranges of fresh offences excluded from the Revised Penal Code 0f 2004 are defined for its mandate and jurisdiction. In hindsight it appears quite unfair to have demonized the Dergue for issuing a Special Penal Code without taking into account the existing circumstances.
At any rate it looks like we are fated to live in an everlasting state of Transitional Justice ad infinitum!
2-Which Transition, if I may ask?
While the Transitional Justice project office is dragging its feet in a state of utter procrastination, another wave of ‘Transition’ has ironically caught up with it. I swear to God I almost laughed out loud when I heard the recent American Delegation has demanded that the government should hold EDF officers liable for wrongs committed in the Tigray War through the mechanism of Transitional Justice under consideration.
I understand that when the Americans arrived here they assumed they were doing reviews of the state of Transitional Justice in partial fulfillment of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement signed in 2022! The Ministry of Justice and the government of Ethiopia had quite a different Transition in mind. They meant to intimate the endorsement of the eclectic Draft Policy prepared by the Group of Experts and submitted to the government in 2023.
Though the Draft policy tried ‘to accommodate’ recent developments where the government in power is the alleged sponsor of the atrocities, it was established and mandated to cover pre-2018 EPRDF era crimes. It was nothing short of despicable professional dishonesty to lace the policy with insincere late inclusion of post 2018 atrocities while the alleged perpetrator is in power and is calling all the shots.
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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