And lessons to be learned
Founded 6 years ago today, NAMA was created with the stated goal to defend the interests of Amhara people in Ethiopia, after Abiy Ahmed Ali became prime minister of Ethiopia and promised "broadening democratic space”. As is well known his rule brought a tempest of ethnic animosity, party fragmentations and eventually devastating wars amounting to genocide of several ethnic groups.
The Amhara as one of the most affected ethnic groups had, by this point, pinned their hopes on this new party to bring about justice from the decades old simmering problems. The chair of NaMA at its creation was Desalagne Chanie who was elected by the party. He was succeeded by Belete Molla, who was elected as chair in 2020 with observation from the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEB).
It was at this crucial juncture in recent times that NaMA made history, having a following in the 10s of millions and openly criticising a sitting government despite not having a single seat in parliament. However, the following months would see another key event change the trajectory of Abyssinian history. The Tigray war that started the following month sees the federal government pitting the Abyssinians against each other.
The now sitting-duck regional government of the Amhara State was made to wage propaganda and media war against the TPLF authorities, triggering a vehement response by the likes of Getachew Reda who went onto insulting the Amhara people at large. Hereon NaMA would be dragged into a vacuum where Federal (International) forces and its people’s pressing needs were pulling in opposing directions.
Chanie has since joined parliament in what seems to be a virtue signalling exercise by the ruling party rather than a meaningful move by the now irrelevant and inconsequential politician while Molla remained chairman of a virtually inactive party with a derelict following. In the meantime, the genocidal regime continues its cultural and ethnic cleansing of Abyssinia unabated. Alas, what can the Amhara people learn from this colossal failure?
Firstly, it is important to understand where the Amhara people are in terms of their struggle. There are hardly any Amhara-centric organizations that are dedicating the time and effort to understand the micro-level needs of the people on the ground. In particular, the concerned citizenry, their immediate families and communities. It is of utmost importance to understand this in order to be able to better facilitate their struggle.
Therefore, the take-away lesson there is to ensure that the celebrity culture and politics do not get entangled in our struggle and organisations should adopt a civilian committee to lead the agenda mandated by a referendum. This should not be difficult to accomplish with the technology available today. The committee’s sole job will then be to strictly carry out the agenda agreed upon by the membership of the organization alone.
Secondly, the civilian committees should be replaced regularly and democratically to ensure that power does not stagnate in the power of few experienced professionals. The committee can be as anonymous or as public as the raison-d’etre of the organization but it would be preferable if a degree of openness to the public domain were available. Alas, the success of the organization will likely depend on the transparency of the organization.
Like any other political mission this will require a fine balance of transparency and discretion, however, as the Amhara’s struggle now transcends transactional politics it is unlikely that questions of betrayal, secret information leakage or even leadership failure will deter and stop the Amhara people’s struggle for justice and equality. After all, it is a fact by several metrics that the Amhara regional state has broken the social contract with the Amhara people.
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