#OromoProtests: The martinet’s message meets its match

Ezekiel Gebissa, special to Addis Standard

In his book, The Dictator’s Learning Curve, William J. Dobson argues that old-school dictators like Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao and Idi Amin ruled with unrestrained violence before the advent of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media networks known for instantaneous communication. Contemporary dictators cannot keep their evil deeds secret even when those deeds are committed in the remotest corners of the earth. Dobson observes: “If you order a violent crackdown — even on a Himalayan mountain pass — you now know it will likely be captured on an iPhone and broadcast around the world. The costs of tyranny have never been this high.” [1]

Ethiopia’s Constitution: Fractured legitimacy & the urgency of constitutional transfiguration

Part – I

By Tsegaye R Ararssa

 
Between 1991 and 1995, Ethiopia had another historical opportunity to (re)constitute itself as a polity. Having used (or abused) that opportunity, on December 8, 1994, the Constitutional Assembly adopted a constitution that came into force in 1995 (see interview here). The controversy around the constitution 21 years after its adoption suggests that the acceptability of the constitution among the various sectors of the society is still a work in progress. A simple content-context-process analysis of this constitution will quickly show the cracks of its legitimacy. Such lack of legitimacy at the moment of ‘(re)founding’ the polity and the deficit in basic consensus about the state-society relationship has a profound impact on the durability and practical utility of the constitution as a frame of governance in the country.