By Jilcha Hamid
In early June of this year a major protest staged in Finfinne caught the attention of the international media, which described it as the first protests since the 2005 elections. I assume that they were talking specifically about political opposition protests. Stepping into the spotlight and reading a statement to the media on behalf of the political opposition was Yilikal Getnet , chairman of the ‘Blue Party’. In the statement the chairman called for the release of political prisoners while highlighting other political and economic problems. The call raised a lot of interest and support, most notably from the ‘Hear Our Voices’ movement which had been protesting and advocating for religious freedoms for Muslims in Ethiopia for well over a year by that time. So when the Blue Party took to the streets for their first protest, the ‘Hear Our Voices’ (HOV) movement mobilized its alongside them. The HOV movement had long been looking for a partner outside of the Muslim community, namely to counter the regimes ‘Jihadawi’ propaganda levelled against their movement. The Blue Party on the other hand was looking to gain wider support for its political program by appealing to the disenfranchised Muslims.
Not much information was available regarding the Blue Party at the time, but in an interview with a local Amharic paper, Life Magazine, Mr. Getnet explained his party platform which he characterized as being based on “individual rights” as opposed to “group rights”. His main issues appeared to be with the existence of regional states, and “ethnic politics”. He states:
“Individuals come before groups (individuals are primary to groups). And so, we believe that when individual rights are respected, group rights will be respected.”
A political party should in time correct itself rather than stick to its pre-commitments; it can’t do politics in this way. For example, you can be a tribal organization but not a tribal party. Because of the sensitivity, in this country, we don’t talk about it, but if someone starts by saying I am an Oromo organization, where else can he go other than [to] Oromo? Because it is limited from its very start. We believe that organizing oneself on a tribal basis is the cause of new issues. But we don’t have a view that in our Ethiopia everything should revolve around tribes.” There are no tribal organizations or political organizations. He then goes on to say:
“Ethnicity comes with colonization. Colonizers exploited it to divide and rule. The English have walked a long way on this matter. However, as this belief is getting position and power, it is messing up the country. Even if the sort of ‘I am better’ … ‘I am better’ competition is putting our country on the verge of collapse, we are struggling to give individual right a priority. We Ethiopians used to be great, if you go and search on the Internet, you will find out that we are one of the oldest nations. Ethnicity is a new creation and we need to go back to the old greatness.”
I wonder which colonialist introduced ethnicity to Ethiopia? Was it Aba Bahrey, the 16th century Oromophobic monk? Or was it Aleka Taye the Oromophobic Ethiopian Court historian (father of the “Oromos from Madagascar” theory)? The irony here is that Mr. Getnet promoting his own brand of ethnic nationalism. The only difference is that he refers to Amhara nationalism as Ethiopian nationalism. The old greatness that he refers to is the promotion of his own ethnic nationalism as the foundation of the Ethiopian state. When a single ethnic identity is promoted in such a way at the expense of other ethnicities, the members of the promoted ethnic group will naturally develop a sense of entitlement and attachment to the state. Mr. Getnet is exhbiting this sense of entitlement. When he dismisses ethnicity as a colonial tool, he’s not dismissing his own ethnic identity because his ethnic identity, as far as he is concerned, is inseperable from the state. His language is the language of the state. The ethnic identities that he’s dismissing are the ones which were not promoted and nurtured by the state.
“I don’t understand what was achieved. It is not new to speak in your language. If you go to south Ethiopia, you see people speaking Amharic. The number of Amharic speakers has not decreased. The number of books being written is much higher than that time. Then, there was not much magazine, now you will find a lot of them in Amharic. Except benefiting few ethnic elites, I don’t see anything new. Afan Oromo is not created in EPRDF time. It was there before. But to develop the language, it would have been better to use Geez instead of Latin alphabet. EPRDF deliberately used this issue like colonizers to rule over the people. There are people who become millionaires overnight just because they are in the EPRDF circle. The poor Ethiopian whether he speaks Amharic, Oromo, Sidama …is not their problem. There is nothing special; they are still living with their tiny plot of land. Afan Oromo used to be spoken in the rural area, and it is still there. No one prohibited it then, and it doesn’t have anything new now.”
His fundamental problem seems to be that when others promote their languages and identities he characterizes it as “narrow” and partisan, while his promotion of the Amharic hegemony via Ethiopian patriotism is somehow different, and is considered to be neutral.
But going back to his party platform, why does the Blue Party consider the existence of ethnicities to be an affront to individual rights? The reality seems to be that the issue has little to do with individual rights. What is being threatened is the hegemony and privilege that he believes should belong to his language, culture, history and ethnic identity as enshrined in the old system. He believes that Amharic is for the state, while Afan Oromo is to be confined to “the rural area”. This seems to be the mentality hiding behind the cloak of individual rights, and it just shows how persistent some groups are in continuing to promote failed ideologies through modern slogans of “liberalism” and “individual rights”.
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