1. http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=140&edition=8&ccrpage=37&ccrcountry=155
2. http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=140&edition=8&ccrpage=37&ccrcountry=156
The complete reports of both reports are available at PDF Version link. Individual chapters can be opened as internet pages directly from this email through the individual links at the top and bottom.
Source: Freedom House: Countries at the Crossroads 2007
1. Country Report - Eritrea
PDF Version
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Capital: Asmara
Population: 4,600,000
GDP: 200
Scores:
Accountability and Public Voice: 0.44
Civil Liberties: 0.95
Rule of Law: 0.71
Anticorruption and Transparency: 0.86
(Scores are based on a scale of 0 to 7, with 0 representing weakest and 7 representing strongest performance.)
Introduction
Eritrea showed considerable promise upon winning its de facto independence in May 1991 after a 30-year war against successive U.S.- and Soviet-backed Ethiopian governments that had laid claim to the former Italian colony.
Eritrea formalized its status as Africa’s newest nation in a near unanimous vote for sovereignty (99.8 percent) in a United Nations-monitored referendum in which 98.5 percent of the 1,125,000 registered voters participated.1
Over the next three years, the transitional government established new state institutions—executive, legislative, and judicial branches presiding over a three-tiered administration (national, regional, local); a streamlined civil service; professional armed forces; and new police and security forces, while also managing a highly participatory constitution-making process.
However, the leadership of the independence movement was deeply divided in its commitment to democratic governance. Regime hardliners, who got the upper hand during a series of regional conflicts capped in 1998-2000 by a bloody border war with Ethiopia, plunged the new country into a cycle of military mobilization and political repression that stymied the country’s development prospects and reversed progress toward democracy.
This situation worsened in 2006 with an increase in politically motivated arrests, torture and deaths of political prisoners, persecution of religious minorities, and tightened restrictions on nongovernmental organizations and aid agencies.
The victorious Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF)—renamed the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) in 1994—today rules with an iron fist under the leadership of former military commander, now president, Isaias Afwerki.
The constitution, ratified in 1997, has yet to be implemented; national elections, repeatedly postponed, have yet to be held. Meanwhile, other political parties and independent nongovernmental organizations are prohibited, and what few private media emerged in the immediate post-independence years have been shut down.
Thousands of people have been detained for political offenses ranging from public dissent to noncompliance with open-ended national service requirements. Among the more prominent political prisoners are 11 former independence movement leaders and government ministers—dubbed the Group of 15—jailed in September 2001 after publicly criticizing the president’s undemocratic practices.
Detainees also include journalists, mid-level officials, merchants, businessmen, young people resisting conscription, and church leaders and parishioners associated with banned religious organizations.
Eritrea is a nation in a perpetual state of emergency, under siege by its own leaders, with a population denied the most basic freedoms of speech, assembly, press, and religious practice.
The continuing confrontation with Ethiopia not only dominates the political discourse to the point where all dissent is branded as treason, it also provides cover for militarizing the new state from top to bottom and for exporting instability to neighboring states—among them Sudan and Somalia—in an effort to weaken Ethiopia.
The unresolved border conflict serves as justification for President Isaias to maintain a near-total monopoly on all forms of domestic political and economic power.
The absence of any independent media and the complete suppression of civil society preclude the development of a legal opposition within the country—or of any organized public discussion of what such an opposition might look like, were it to be permitted.
The ruling party itself is largely a shell through which the president exercises one-man rule that he shows no sign of relinquishing voluntarily. Under these conditions, national elections, when eventually conducted, will only serve to confirm the current dictatorship.
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Source: Freedom House: Countries at the Crossroads 2007
2. Country Report - Ethiopia
PDF Version
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Capital: Addis Ababa
Population: 74,800,000
GDP: 180
Scores:
Accountability and Public Voice: 1.85
Civil Liberties: 2.85
Rule of Law: 2.35
Anticorruption and Transparency: 2.36
(Scores are based on a scale of 0 to 7, with 0 representing weakest and 7 representing strongest performance.)
Introduction
In May 2005, Ethiopia held its third-ever multiparty parliamentary elections. The first had been held in 1995, four years after the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) succeeded in toppling the Marxist-Leninist regime that had ruled the country since 1974.
Over the past decade and a half, the EPRDF regime has made substantial progress in transforming Ethiopian society, but further steps are required. While in some respects the political system is much more open than at any other time in Ethiopia’s history, it is far from resembling a liberal democracy.
When it came to power in 1991, the EPRDF organized a conference that led to the implementation of a transitional charter and government. This was achieved by means of pact-making among the leaders of thirty-one different political movements, most of them based on ethnicity and region.
A Council of Representatives in the Transitional Government was created in which the EPRDF had the largest single bloc (thirty-two seats out of a total of eighty-seven), followed by the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) with twelve seats. The aim of the body was to secure the support of the leadership of the most significant ethnic groups in Ethiopia so that this multiethnic state could hold together.
Initially, the most significant ethnic groups in society were given both a stake in the new regime and more regional autonomy than at any time in modern history. However, over the next year the ruling coalition narrowed further until it finally included only the EPRDF and ethnically based regional parties beholden to it, so-called People’s Democratic Organizations (PDOs).
This was fueled in part by the EPRDF’s sense of insecurity; the core of the party is the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), and the Tigray people make up less than ten percent of the country’s population.
Despite a public pronouncement that it was committed to redressing past inequities and injustices toward various ethnic communities, the EPRDF chose to deal with non-Tigray groups only through the PDOs. In retrospect, the EPRDF’s decision not to compromise with other leaders, who at the time were perceived as threats, was a grave error.
Very early in its rule, the EPRDF initiated policies designed to demonstrate that it was dedicated to social justice and respect for the country’s ethnic diversity. Examples of this could be seen in the creation of a federal system based on what are at least nominally ethnically based states as well as a constitutional provision allowing for “self-determination up to and including separation.”1
Coupled with this was the creation of mechanisms to devolve administrative and political authority from the center to the regional states and subregional governments, including a revenue-sharing formula based on a system of block grants. Notably, the World Bank saw the merits of such a strategy and has over the years been one of the strongest supporters of Ethiopia’s decentralization and social-equity policies.
However, politics continues to serve as a significant drag on rapid and steady socioeconomic and political development. For instance, the regime benefited from widespread support during its 1998 to 2000 war with Eritrea, but after a ceasefire was declared, support turned to criticism.
Many in Ethiopian society wanted nothing less than the total defeat of the Eritreans. Hardliners in the TPLF threatened Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his supporters from within, while other groups, some today represented in the formal opposition parties Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) and United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF), criticized the regime from without.
Over the past decade and a half, three nominally democratic national elections have been held in Ethiopia. However, until May 2005, the opposition did not present a formidable challenge to the EPRDF. In the latest elections, opposition parties were able to secure 173 out of a total of 546 seats in the unicameral parliament, the House of Peoples’ Representatives,2 up considerably from the meager twelve they held in the previous parliament.
This electoral success seems to have emboldened certain members of the opposition, who to this day continue to cry fraud in reference to the May 2005 balloting, arguing that they should have gained even more seats. The EPRDF has consequently cracked down on internal opposition and seems to be again on a war footing over the situation on the Eritrean border.
The EPRDF regime also feels threatened by the designs of Somali Islamists on Ethiopia’s southeastern border. Late in 2006, Ethiopia launched a massive invasion in support of the fragile transitional government of Somalia, routing the Union of Islamic Courts forces that had come to control most of southern Somalia.3
Armed opposition to the regime generally manifests itself in low-intensity warfare in regions like the Somali state and parts of Oromia. However, the government has recently become increasingly concerned with the activities of a group calling itself the Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front that operates primarily in the Gondar area of the Amhara state and parts of the Gambella region. The movement is in the early stages of development, and it is unclear whether it will present a formidable military challenge.4
Despite the country’s continuing political instability, there are prospects in 2007 for important political reforms. For example, in response to the demands of the opposition following the 2005 elections, the parliament is presently considering an amendment of the proclamation regarding the composition and work of the National Elections Board that would make it more broadly representative.
Other proclamations, such as those regulating nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and land-related issues, will also be presented to parliament for discussion. Additionally, the parliament is expected to enact a new press law, though critics expect more restrictions rather than an expansion of press freedom.
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