Ethiopia – Meles Zenawi and Hailu Shawel in hand shake diplomacy

Ethiopia – ‘Historical’ agreement on election conduct reached

By Kirubel Tadesse

Pundits had predicted otherwise – the momentous historical 2005 campaign was said never to be repeated and all major political powers had wounds they blamed each other for inflicting.

But conversely to this assessment, for the first time in the Ethiopia’s modern political history, the leaders from three of the nation’s major political parties, and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, representing the ruling Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), jointly announced the successful completion of a first round of negotiations to seal a landmark agreement on a code of conduct for the elections.

The EPRDF together with the three survivors of the former opposition coalition that performed strongly in 2005, the CUDP – Lidetu Ayalew’s vibrant Ethiopian Democratic Party (EDP), Ayele Chamiso’s CUD, and the opposition’s camp veteran strongman Engineer Hailu Shawel’s All Ethiopian Unity Organisation (AEUO) – jointly endorsed the Political Parties’ Election Code of Conduct and its implementation directive last Friday, October 30, 2009 at the Sheraton Addis.

‘We were thereā€¦we have moved on’ – Hailu Shawel

“We were there,” AEUO’s chair Hailu Shawel said in his speech, referring to others he sees as still consumed by the politics of cynicism, hatred and bitterness.
“We moved on and now we all learn to respect and see each others as friends do. When the negotiations started we were all indifferent to another and now we are all friends,” said Hailu, who for nearly two decades has led various political groups and coalitions in the opposition camp. Now he says the only way forward is cooperation and he believes it has just started.

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