The Parliamentary Centre in Ethiopia

Ethiopian MPs Build Understanding, Consensus

Since participants in January’s discussions on committee work identified consensus-building as a priority, Ethiopian MPs have worked hard to come together across party lines to stake out common ground. Their efforts and achievements have been considerable and Canada’s Parliamentary Centre has been privileged to work with them.

One of the main points of contention among political parties in the House of Peoples’ Representatives (HPR) concerned the rules and procedures that govern the House. The Speaker, Hon. Ambassador Teshome Toga, recognized that the issue needed to be addressed. According to his terms of reference, foreign consultants were invited to complete comparative studies, two of which, the Indian study and the Canadian study, were supported by the Parliamentary Centre’s project. Mr. G.C. Malhotra, a former Secretary-General of the Lok Sabha of India and Mr. W.H. (Binx) Remnant, a former Clerk of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, along with colleagues from Germany and the UK, submitted their joint analysis to the Speaker in February. When the time was right, this analysis was used as a basis for negotiations that, by June, would result in a breakthrough agreement (see below).

Ethiopian MPs have a strong interest in matters of economic integration. Supported by the Parliamentary Centre, a workshop on the Cotonou Partnership Agreement was held in March and one on the World Trade Organization was held in May. The former offered more than one hundred MPs an opportunity to deepen their understanding of Cotonou and discuss how they could oversee the implementation of the agreement in such a way as to accelerate poverty reduction in Ethiopia. The latter brought together a total of thirty MPs, including members of the HPR Trade and Industry Committee, in order to increase their awareness of WTO rules and their capacity to monitor the Government’s preparations for WTO accession.

Again in cooperation with the HPR, the Parliamentary Centre brought together parliamentary leaders, party whips and key committee members in Adama ( Nazareth) from May 26 th to 28 th for a multi-party dialogue on consensus-building. Along with counterparts from Canada and Kenya and Ethiopian scholars, the participants discussed local traditions of consensus-building, principles and methods of committee-level decision-making; and issues of cross-partisanship, public participation and gender. In addition to sharing perspectives on each theme, they developed a shortlist of guidelines for the HPR, with a view to encouraging attitudes and behaviours conducive to consensus-building. The guidelines will be disseminated more widely later in the year.

As important an output as increasing technical knowledge, members of governing and opposition parties worked at improving their rapport. “We’ve reflected,” one MP said, “and we’ve changed our assumptions about one another.” “I can now communicate at a personal level with people that I did not communicate with before,” another wrote afterwards. As the May 31 st editorial in The Ethiopian Herald put it: The coming together of the ruling party and opposition political parties to take part in a workshop aimed at national consensus is quite encouraging. These parties do not have to agree on every detail and every policy they forward for them to be able to work together. As long as they agree on the basics of national interest, there is a lot of room for them to work together and advance national and public interests.

One senior parliamentary official has suggested that the activity has already led to several bills being adopted by consensus.

Although the bill concerning the revised Working Procedures and Members’ Code of Conduct was not one of those adopted by consensus – it was passed by a majority vote on July 5 th – that the analysis of the foreign consultants was reviewed thoroughly, that June’s negotiations ended in an agreement, and that the bill came to the floor of the House are, in themselves, signs of a culture of openness, trust and mutual understanding that MPs, themselves, have begun to develop. As Ethiopia’s Fortune magazine observed, “The negotiation over the Parliament’s code of conduct could end up being a milestone in Ethiopian politics. Politicians (showed) an unprecedented willingness to hammer out a deal.”

Notably, the bill will, among other things, establish a Public Accounts Committee chaired by a member of an opposition party, make allowances for Private Member’s Bills and for Opposition Days, and increase the frequency of Question Periods in the HPR.