By Kebour Ghenna
What we are seeing unfolding before our very eyes is the epic failure of leadership in Ethiopia. Today, I will limit my reflection to the Tigray crisis.
Yes, it is self-evident that Ethiopia 'lost' Tigray under the tenure of the Abye Government. Indeed, it is indisputable that Dr. Abye Ahmed is a defeated Prime Minister.
To date, not a single official conceded its faults, nor accepted a degree of responsibility. To Ethiopia’s top leaders, accountability remains an alien concept.
This is the normalization of failures, an obvious phenomenon in the institutional and bureaucratic behavior of our country’s state system. Failure, of course, achieves such normalization due to one singular phenomenon: the absence of accountability.
Ethiopia’s system of accountability has hardly kept up with the realities of modern government. It (the concept of accountability) has been a subject of collective mockery, one which the corrupt elite laughed at, the government cronies took pride in avoiding, and the country’s state infrastructure abused in its selective enforcement. Accountability was for suckers: only the “small fishes" get caught or cannot find a way to bribe and cheat their way out. In essence, escaping accountability for failure became ingrained in Ethiopia’s socio-political culture.
But let me ask this question: shouldn’t Ethiopians deserve a historical record of the failure of the Government? Shouldn’t the response of this government, say, to the Tigray fiasco be researched, investigated, and written so there is a definitive and authoritative record. When such failure in government leads to thousands of death and displacement of Ethiopians in less than a year, shouldn’t there be a record of what occurred, who made critical decisions, how the Prime Minister’s office limited or otherwise interacted with the bureaucracy, and how military or other agencies and their leaders acted.
Shouldn’t our citizens demand transparency and answers? Shouldn’t they demand the establishment of an independent commission (by the new Parliament), composed of lawyers, legislative members, academia, government agencies, and leaders from relevant opposition parties, to go over the facts and determine who is most likely negligent for the dire consequences of the war. There should be no room for alternative facts.
Responsibility, in the end, must be taken by someone – some identifiable person must be held to account. Is there someone willing to accept that accountability today? Where exactly does the buck stop, or does it ever stop?
Ethiopia, we have a problem. We must all work to fix this: Holding political leaders accountable.
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