“Untold salient feature in Ethiopian Federalism,” State Minister Zadig

The State Minster of the Ethiopian Office of Government Communication Affairs has announced that there are three untold salient features in the Ethiopian federal system of governance as opposed to that of the one based on Neoliberal School of Thought.

The State Minister, Zadig Abreha, described the three characteristics of Ethiopian federalism in his paper entitled as “Federalism and Good Governance in Ethiopia, Theory, Constitutional Framework and Practice”.

According to Zadig, the Ethiopian supreme law of the land creates conducive environment for citizens to choose who they are. It does not impose how to choose who they are. That emanates from the fact that the constitutions presumes that human beings are rational, he said.

However, the neoliberal school of thought provides default choice in that regard. That emanates from the underlying philosophy that governs the schools thought which argue that most humans are rational while some others are predictably irrational that differs Ethiopian federalism from others, he argued.

The second point of diversion of though comes from with land ownership.

According to the State Minster, the neoliberal school of thought advocates the sale of land like other factors of production.

Land is a common resource in Ethiopia while it is a private property elsewhere in countries which advocate the sale of land, he said.

Even the world’s number one advocates of neo-liberalism, United States, has reserved land for its indigenous population; the Red Indians. It is found in Indiana State called Indians Reserved Land, he noted.

Moreover, Ethiopian federalism accommodates multiculturalism not because it is a political reality but because it bears tangible fruits, he said.

He noted Los Angeles and New York as two most innovative cities in the world as a show case to his point of argument. Even London has registered remarkable growth during its industrial revolution of 1850s due to multiculturalism, he said.

The west is feeling the heat of populism at present tearing the social fabric multiculturalism has achieved over the years. That is a danger in itself. However, the Ethiopian federal structure has given diversity a constitutional guarantee, he said.

Plus to that the Ethiopian federalism advocates active state intervention in economy while that of the neo-liberal limit the government role to night man watch.

According to Zadig, applying federalism has changed government behavior, enabled the government to pinpoint good governance problem in the country, and made government accessible at grass root level by decentralizing power.

However, the application of the federal system was not without its own shortcomings. To overcome the shortcoming the current system of governance the State Minister recommended the formation of Good Governance Council, establishing additional research and development institutions, strengthening the media, establishing peace and security think thanks, introducing additional legal instruments and creating both formal and informal cooperation frameworks between federal and regional governments.