Elections Competency is a sign of Good Government.

Full ViewRules for Ethiopia's 2010 Elections; How to stabilise Horn of Africa; From:
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Dear Patriotic Global Citizens, Friends of African Union and Ethiopia:

Good governance is about implementing a system of administration, that is competitive, fair, just and that promotes choice, competency, transparency and accountability and excellence.

Good Governance is not an end in itslef but a process of achieving a means of improving social, economic, ecological life of citizens and the larger society.

These are words associated with clarity of goals, objectives, good practices, improvement protocol and most of all the ability to learn from experiences and improve on a continuous basis via evidence based good governance.

Elections Competency is one sign of a potential good governance system. But it is not an end in itself.

In a community like Africa and especially the Horn wher there has been natural and man made challenges for a very long time with significant adverse effects of draught, famine, conflict and genocide, it is critical that Good Governance is taken in stages with clear cut tools for measuring progress.

The Ethiopian Civilization is now in its 7502 years of existence according to recorded calendar that the society maintains. There has now been clear cut scientific discoveries making the region the home of primates and hominids that are the forerunners of the human race.

Good Governance is a dynamic process. Each generation has its own set of Governance standards and expectations. It is a moving, improving dynamics.

More recently, the western perspective of democratization has taken hold after its forerunners in Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia have been exercising their own version of Good Governance.

Demoracy is based on representation and elections. However, the process of validating the election and eventual representation has been as diverse as the nation states and civilizations on earth.

The American Governance is highly centralized where the Presidency controls all the executive arm and the legistlatives and the judiciary are subservient to the executive, although on paper they are Co-equal partners. In reality, the ruling party and the Executive have miriads of loop holes where it enforces its will on its assumedly co-equal partners of governance.

This is true of Parliamentary Democracies, where the ruling party in effect acts as totalitarian system, until it is booted or humbled via elections. Please review the experience of the Chinese, Russian and even British democratic process and see how the ruling party manipultes even dates of elections to esnsure that it fits it potential success. Of course, if you question these established institutions, you might not be popular because the stakeholders will not allow you to go free with your comments.

Regardless of the outcome, the process of elections, accountability and the notion of representation does matter and is worth trying to perfect it with time and experience. Ethiopia is no different.

Therefore elections matter, as they are means of expressing free will as well as choosing the consensus leadership.

The comments below addressing the most important issue of Election Conduct 101 but spending all the paragraphs on one lop sided view is such a crass that it needs repudiation and outright critisim. This type of incompetent journalism, that puts a heading and discusses a different issue with out balance is becoming a norm that is cancerous.

What is the Election Coduct of Conduct? Why is it needed in the Ethiopian setting now? What is the expected outcome of this conduct of election?

Who is the person that is being given such open endorsement? Did he or his group practice fair and free elections in the past? Why did they refuse to take up their parliamentary seats after they were elected and chose to create terror in Addis and as a result spent two years in prison. How did they get out of prison and what are they doing now in Washington, badmouthing the Ethiopian electorate system from a distance?

What is Guinbot 7? and what does it advocate? Good Governance with elections or Bad Chaos via terror?

Does James Butty understand what is he is writing about? or is he part of the Counter intelligence network under the guise of the VOA trying to pre-empt Ethiopian elections with supporting and promoting a terrorist group?

Is this like the brother of the Afghan President Karzai taking bribe from the CIA and supporting the Taliban who are killing US and Allied Soldiers? Is this in short a terrorist group using American tax payer Broadcast the VOA whose aim is to improve US Diplomatic relationship with the world, but is being abused by such counter-inteligence and counter-diplomacy outfits with hidden agenda?

Who is after all the man and the journalist James Butty to abuse the VOA for such perverted sense of democracy and good governance.


By the way, can he comment about the elections in the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen and show us with details how Ethiopia fairs with these Great Democracies according to James Butty- the Pseudo Democrats?

I trust you will read his piece and give him your piece and the VOA in general.

with regards

Dr B

http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/2009-10-29-voa4.cfm


VOA



October 29, 2009



New Rules for Ethiopia's 2010 Elections Reportedly Agreed On



James Butty

Opposition groups in Ethiopia and the ruling party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi have reportedly agreed to new rules for next year’s elections.

The new electoral laws reportedly outline campaigning, voting and party symbol guidelines and how to deal with intimidation and violence and call for the establishment of a panel to handle election disputes.

Berhanu Nega, a former leader of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) and now a member of the Ginbot 7 said Ethiopia is not a conducive country for democracy.

“All the issues that make a democratic election do not exist in Ethiopia at this time, starting from the independence of the election board, the independence of the military and the police, judiciary all are in the pocket of the ruling class. And in the absence of a fair and leveled playing ground there is no meaning in an election,” he said.

Nega said the 2010 election will most likely be similar to the 2008 local election when he said Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling party won 99 point nine percent of the vote. He said two of the opposition parties that reportedly agreed on the new rules for next year’s election were created by the government.

“You know there are three parties who participated in this. Two of them are the parties created by the ruling party. So these are not serious parties. This is just simply to show to the gullible international community that there is some election taking place. But nobody in Ethiopia is taking it seriously at all,” he said.

Nega said his party would not take part in what he described as a sham election in 2010 election.

“I think by now Africans are aware what actually is going on in the name of elections. Elections are supposed to be mechanisms through which popular will would be reflected. But in our continent in most countries, especially in Ethiopia, it has become an exercise in futility,” he said.

Nega was elected mayor of Addis Ababa in the 2005 election, but he and other opposition leaders were later jail after the government charged them with genocide and treason. He said since 2005 Ethiopia has turned into a totalitarian state and that the only option for most Ethiopians is to remove the government.

“Even by African standards, this is a suffocating dictatorship that has completely the life out of Ethiopian politics and for most Ethiopians now the only way out of this political quagmire is to get rid of this government by one means or another,” he said.

Nega concord his comments would be interpreted as seeking the overthrow of the Meles Zenawi government.

“I am very, very clear and ardent than this. Unless otherwise people are free they cannot solve their basic economic problems...we have a very unpopular government, despotic government. Unless otherwise people start to take responsibility for their lives, I don’t think you’re going to make significant change in the economic wellbeing of the people,” Nega said.

He said the recent famine in Ethiopia is the result of the Meles Zenawi government being much more interested in staying in power rather than developing the country and saving the people.

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http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion%20&%20Analysis/-/539548/678556/-/twwxenz/-/



Business Daily, Kenya



October 29, 2009

How to stabilise Horn of Africa
CHARLES TANNOCK
Tannock is Spokesman on the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee for the European Conservatives and Reformists Group.

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Photo/REUTERS

Militants patrol a road in Mogadishu.

After almost two decades as a failed state torn by civil war, perhaps the world should begin to admit that Somalia – as it is currently constructed – is beyond repair.

Some of the country, however, can meet at least a basic standard of governance.

The northernmost region, Somaliland, situated strategically at the opening to the Red Sea and home to roughly 3.5 million of Somalia’s 10 million people, is more or less autonomous and stable.

But this stability fuels fears that Somaliland’s people will activate the declaration of independence they adopted in 1991.

At the end of September, Somaliland will hold its third presidential election, the previous two having been open and competitive.

Unlike many developing countries, it will welcome foreign observers to oversee the elections, though, unfortunately, most Western countries and agencies will stay away, lest their presence be seen as legitimising Somaliland’s de facto government.

But Somaliland’s strategic position near the world’s major oil-transport routes, now plagued by piracy, and chaos in the country’s south, mean that independence should no longer be dismissed out of hand.

Indeed, following a fact-finding mission in 2007, a consensus is emerging within the EU that an African Union country should be the first to recognise Somaliland’s independence.

Ethiopia is the obvious candidate to spearhead recognition, given its worries about jihadi unrest within Somalia.

Moreover, landlocked Ethiopia uses Somaliland’s port of Berbera extensively.

Yet Ethiopia may hesitate, owing to its fears that formally recognising Somaliland’s independence could undermine Somalia’s fragile Western-backed Transitional Federal Government.

But, as Somalia’s new president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, is a former head of the Islamic Courts, Ethiopia may choose the current status quo in Somaliland over the dream of stabilising Somalia.

The key regional obstacle to recognition is Saudi Arabia, which not only objects to the secular, democratic model promoted by Somaliland, but is a strong ally of Somalia, which is a member of the Arab League (despite not being Arab) and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

Saudi Arabia supports the TFG financially and politically.

Saudi pressure on Somaliland has ranged from banning livestock imports between 1996-2006, to threatening to reject the Somaliland passports of Hajj pilgrims.

When Somaliland’s people vote at the end of September, they will not be deciding explicitly on secession, but their steady effort at state building does amplify their claims to independence.

Does any self-selected group anywhere have the right to declare independence?

If so, the richest parts of any country could decide to go it alone, thus impoverishing their fellow citizens.

Even if greed is ruled out as an acceptable motive, in favour of traditional ethno-cultural nationalism, a profusion of tiny tribal states might make the world far more unstable.

Clear principles are needed, as neither self-determination nor the inviolability of national borders can be treated as sacrosanct in every case.

So let me attempt to outline some basic principles:

· No outside forces should either encourage or discourage secession, and the barriers for recognizing secession should be set high. Secession is in itself neither good nor bad: like divorce, it may make people more or less content.

· A declaration of independence should be recognised only if a clear majority (well over 50 per cent -plus-one of the voters) have freely chosen it, ideally in an unbiased referendum.

· The new state must guarantee that any minorities it drags along – say, Russians in the Baltic states, or Serbs in Kosovo – will be decently treated.

· Secessionists should have a reasonable claim to being a national group that, preferably, enjoyed stable self-government in the past on the territory they claim. Nations need not be ethnically based; few are entirely.

But most nations are unified by language, a shared history of oppression, or some other force of history.

Given the interests of all the world’s great powers in stabilising the Horn of Africa, there does seem to be movement toward accepting Somaliland’s claims.

An independent Somaliland could be a force for stability and good governance in an otherwise hopeless region.

So the world may soon need to test whether the controversial principles it brought to bear in Kosovo have the same meaning in Africa.

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