http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c45e4b88-e216-11e1-8e9d-00144feab49a.html#axzz23915gUsR
August 9, 2012 4:37 pm Meles absence fuels regional anxieties
By Katrina Manson in Nairobi and William Wallis in London
The prolonged absence of Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s usually hyperactive prime
minister, has sparked a covert succession struggle at home and prompted
fears farther afield for a future without one of east Africa’s diplomatic
and security linchpins.
Government officials say Mr Meles, who has not been seen in public since
mid-June, is recovering from a serious illness, but they deny opposition
rumours that he is dead or dying at a hospital in Brussels.
An African Union official said Mr Meles had been in regular contact with
Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s former president and AU envoy to Sudan, during
recent negotiations between Sudan and South Sudan. He has told AU officials
he will be back next month to play a more hands-on role in the next leg of
negotiations.
His absence has nevertheless launched a covert succession struggle that
threatens to fracture the regime and expose ethnic faultlines at home at a
time when the Horn of Africa is struggling to stave off fresh conflicts and
overcome terrorist threats.
“We are very concerned about developments in Ethiopia, knowing how fragile
the politics are there and the fact there is no clear successor,” Raila
Odinga, neighbouring Kenya’s prime minister, told the Financial Times. He
admitted that he and other regional leaders were in the dark on Mr Meles’s
state of health.
While Ethiopia is a small contributor to regional blocs such as the AU in
financial terms, the Ethiopian premier’s vision and diplomacy have ensured
the country has remained central to security affairs in a region threatened
by terrorism and conflict. He has also become the voice of Africa on wider
issues such as climate change and development.
“The competence vacuum [without Mr Meles] will be serious,” says Mehari
Taddele Maru at the Institute for Security Studies in Addis Ababa.
“Ethiopia plays an important role of balancing,” says Mr Mehari, pointing
to Ethiopia’s pouring cold water on Uganda’s backing for South Sudan
earlier this year, a provocation that threatened regional havoc after South
Sudan had invaded a Sudanese oilfield, Heglig.
Mr Meles’s government has twice sent troops into Somalia to fight Islamist
militants with US support and regularly brokers deals between fractious
neighbours.
“Imagine if that influence is not maintained . . . Will there even be
consensus on Somalia at the AU without him? If it was not for Ethiopia, the
Sudan/South Sudan border conflict that erupted on Heglig could have turned
into regional war.”
The Ethiopian leader’s adroit diplomatic abilities, honed in the 21 years
since he led a Tigrayan guerrilla army to power in Addis Ababa, have
furthered his pan-African role and he remains able to muster international
support despite grave misgivings over his human rights record at home.
He presents a determined front welcomed by the west even though the regime
has long suppressed dissent, closed newspapers and in 2005 shot dead dozens
of protesters after elections marred by fraud returned him to power.
“Ethiopia avoids becoming a pariah like Burma because it’s so important to
the west in the fight against Islamic terror in Somalia,” says a senior
western diplomat who knows Mr Meles. “It is a dictatorship which will keep
the people essentially close to the poverty line but charms people like
Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.”
Mr Meles announced his intention to retire from office several years ago
and had been preparing to step down before the next elections, according to
regime insiders. But they say his continued stay has been motivated partly
by his desire to outlive his arch-rival, Issaias Afewerki, president of
neighbouring Eritrea.
Even government-associated officials now acknowledge Mr Meles may have to
step down sooner, saying the deputy prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegne,
who is also foreign affairs minister and a technocrat groomed by Mr Meles,
would take over.
The country is led by a notional coalition, the Ethiopian People’s
Revolutionary Democratic Front, in which Mr Meles’s Tigrayan People’s
Liberation Front, the guerrillas from northern Ethiopia with whom he came
to power, holds sway. “There will be no power vacuum, no political problem
in the absence of the party,” insists Abel Abate, a researcher at a state
think-tank in Addis Ababa. “Due to the federal system of government, no
group or person will take over power. There is no strong man just like
Meles in the front.”
But while regime stalwarts insist the party is stronger than Mr Meles
himself, critics stress he has constructed an almost exclusive hold on
power, firing senior military figures and stacking the military and
intelligence echelons with young officers loyal to him alone. Succession is
likely to bring strife to Ethiopia’s elite.
Other possible contenders for leadership include Dr Tewodros Adhanom, the
minister of health who is popular in the west, Berhane Gebre Kristos, an
Ethiopian diplomat and senior TPLF cadre member, and Azeb Mesfin, Mr
Meles’s wife.
The TPLF leadership is “campaigning against each other right now”, says
Hailu Shawel, an opposition leader previously imprisoned by Mr Meles’s
regime. “When somebody has moved the country from a party base to an
individual person [Meles], how can you overcome that? Everybody wants to be
that dictator.”
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Received on Fri Aug 10 2012 - 08:41:21 EDT
