Ethnic Federalism in a Dominant Party State: The Ethiopian Experience 1991-2000 Lovise Aalen r 2002: 2

party, which has a strong inner discipline. The party leadership’s view is well
represented through interviews with other top-level party and government
functionaries, such as the Speaker of the House of the People’s Representatives,
Dawit Yohannes.
Of all the opposition parties I contacted (group two) none declined to make
appointments for interviews, and almost all of them arranged talks with their
leaders or representatives of the party leadership for me. I consider the easy
access to party leaders as a result of the opposition parties’ desire to exploit a
chance to make their opinion known. Otherwise they have very few channels to
make their voices heard, since they have no formal positions and the major
part of the media is controlled by the ruling party and inaccessible to them.
I included the political parties that are legal and registered at the National
Electoral Board on my list. They are represented with seven interviews
altogether, five conducted in Addis Ababa, one in Tigray and one in SNNPRS.
The parties are all nationally based, despite the fact that some of them have an
ethnic foundation. They include the All Amhara People’s Organisation
(AAPO), the Council of Alternative Forces for Peace and Democracy in
Ethiopia/ Southern Ethiopia Peoples’ Democratic Coalition (CAFPDE/SEPDC),
the Ethiopian Democratic Party (EDP), the Ethiopian Democratic Union Party
(EDUP), and the Oromo National Congress (ONC). Other political parties,
such as those operating from exile or illegally, were not included, basically
because they are hard to trace. I tried to get hold of representatives from the
Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which was a legal party participating in the
transitional government until 1992, but my efforts did not succeed. Members
of the OLF still living in Ethiopia are persecuted by the government and many
of them live underground. The leadership is exiled in neighbouring countries or
overseas.
The third group of interviewees includes seven academics. Most of the them
are Ethiopians working at Addis Ababa University, while some are foreign
academics who are experts on Ethiopian affairs, working either in NGO’s in
Ethiopia or at foreign universities. During my stay in Ethiopia, I was formally
affiliated to the Department of Political Science and International Relations
(DPSIR) at Addis Ababa University. Through the department, I obtained a
permit to do research in the country, and was given office space and an
academic contact person. Many of the academics who provided me with useful
information about the federalisation process in Ethiopia worked at the DPSIR.
Although the majority of the academics are standing outside the political game
in Ethiopia, many of them were cautious of what kind of information they
would give. The governing party is following the development at the university
closely. In 1993, for instance, more than forty academics were expelled from

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the university after alleged conspiratory activities
10
. A clear exception from the
purported political neutrality of the academics I interviewed is Merera Gudina,
one of the assistant professors at the DPSIR. He is the chairman of Oromo
National Congress, is very active in current political affairs, and is known to
the public as one of the few outspoken. Although his points are academically
valid, the information he has provided is first of all interpreted as that of a
politician. I therefore categorise him among the opposition politicians, and not
among the academics.
The interviewees in fourth group, including eleven representatives from
NGOs, five journalists and ten so-called ordinary citizens, were selected
because they might be expected to take a position between the anti-EPRDF
stance of the opposition and EPRDF-loyal bureaucrats and politicians, and
might therefore give new insights to the issues. Almost all in this group were
approached in the regions, where working with interpreters facilitated
conversations with non-English speaking people.
Table 3.2 Overview of representatives from NGOs, journalists and “ordinary”
citizens interviewed (group 4)
NGOs
Journalists
“Ordinary”
citizens
Total
Federal level
2
-
-
2
Tigray region
5
2
5
12
SNNPRS
4
3
5
12