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Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Enset on the Future of Kinijit

Fikru of Enset.blogspot.com has an article about the future of Kinijit. I can't link it because of the incredibly slow internet connection today here in Addis. You can find it on http://enset.blogspot.com/2007/10/boycott-of-parliament-and-future-of.html.

I agree with Fikru that the South will be the battle ground state in a lot of future elections. This is a region where integrationists have more support than unitarists and disintegrationists. This means that many people have unwavering commitment to both Ethiopian unity and self-administration.

I think if Kinijit works hard in the region, it can come out top. I have observed the last election very closely. Kinijit did get a fair number of seats in the South without a lot of hard work and organization. Kinijit should aspire to be a 50+1 party. In the last election using a charitable estimation (with the rigged constituencies shared between UEDF and Kinijit based on claim and prima facie evidence), Kinijit would have gotten 259 seats. That is 16 seats short of the majority needed to form a government. It could, of course, have formed a coalition government with UEDF. Kinijit can become a 50+1 party if it has an appeal to all Ethiopians beyond the cities, the Amhara region and some parts of the South. To make inroads to those constituencies, Kinijit should show that it is inclusive of the many in its appearance and policies.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kinijit was voted for its non-ethnic based politics! Hence, no self determination! Don't Hijack the unitarist movement!

Anonymous said...

EZ,

As they say in America as Iowa goes so goes the nation. In the same token as Addis goes so goes the nation. Addis Ababa is a bellwether as to how the voters felt about Kinijit. You are mistakenly attributing Kinijit's
popularity only yo the Amhara region. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Among the 256 seats won, it is vital to ask who won it where? The
people who run for those seats are the local Kinijit candidates. You need to rewrite your blog becuase you are insinuating something that is not correct!!!! EZ retract!!!

Anonymous said...

You are of course assuming there will be future elections (is that 2010?) where Ethiopians will freely participate, where the winner leads, the loser concedes and we live happily ever after.

How naive can you be my friend? The problem was never about winning the minds of one region or another, Amhara or Oromo, Gurage or Hadiya. Any party going against Woyanne will win hands down because people are tired of Woyanne period. The problem is about providing a level playing field in the election game which Woyanne seemed to do in pre-election period. When they saw their assumptions about winning was dead wrong, they unleashed all the power in their disposal for an outcome in their favor.

- Do you really believe Woyanne will make any structural changes for a level playing field?
- Do you believe Woyanne is ever ready to accept loss as an option when entering a race?
- Do you believe they are ready to hand over power through elections?
- And finally, do you think it is fair to set the Ethiopian people up for another round of disappointment and possibly mass killings and imprisonment in this phantom idea of a free and fair election?