‘Simulator’ Democracy: The case of Ethiopia

‘Simulator’ Democracy: The case of Ethiopia

Tariku Abas Etenesh

There is a simple aerodynamic rule that states ‘Every lift is corresponded by proportional amount of drag’. This is to mean that the power generated by an aircraft to fly forward will be met by the same amount of air resistance. In addition to flight, this is the case in every facet of life. Attempts at flying into new ventures, be it personally or nationally, are naturally met with resistance as a positive mark of assumed success. And it is not always external; often times, the resistance comes from within: we could call it self-induced drag. To check this, it would suffice to look back into moments where we, both individually and as a nation, have sabotaged and shot down our own selves not far from the runway of our most coveted dreams because we failed to properly handle resistance.

   

Drag-less Democracy?

The lift –drag principle is true for all governments; especially those who claim to be democratic. By the very nature, the project of building democratic societies largely rests upon accepting the right to freedom of expression as the simple most unavoidable pillar. Be the government performance well or otherwise, in democracies, people will have the inalienable rights to express their feelings and oppositions of their governments.  There will be no way an aircraft of governance could be assumed flying in friendly airs by avoiding drag of opposition as well as  criticisms. 

The only way flight could be possible without the a natural drag generated by the air could be flight in a simulator; because in a simulator, one can choose the weather, the levels of flights as well as scenario to be experienced.  Through the controlled situations one could get the real feel of flying and the skills of flying too.  As experts in the area usually state, simulator gives the chance to try difficult scenarios and to prepare the pilot for the actual flight.  However, any one insisting to master the art of flight only by flying a simulator will have rude awakening in the real aircraft.   

  

Some democracies are like the simulator flight. They have all the controlled scenarios of media, parliament, and different functions of government and the body of the simulator: the constitution. However, no matter what well written a constitution is, no matter how defined the role of the government functions are, and no matter how visible the presence of the media could be,  when they act in a controlled environment, when only the government exercises its will, then such democracy could only be said ‘a simulator democracy’.  Because the real flight, can’t avoid the encounter of the real drag, the real friction, or the real encounter with the air, and real democracies can’t shun the will of the people. 

The Simulated Drag

In a flight simulator one cannot avoid the simulated drag of the type of flight it is exercising. Simulator democracies also do have their own version of simulated drag, a simulated exercise of the will of the people and free expression.  This simulated drags include, simulating the real free debates over policies, by stream of ‘debunking parties’ where the people is given the assumption that it is in control by participating in listening the end results of what the leaders have debated in private; they could also  simulate the exercise of free engagement of the people, by setting the rules for what can and what can’t be discussed to a level of self censorship where the discussion for human solidarity is decried and the ethnicity is glorified. Not ethnicity of one glorifying oneself, which is unavoidable but one which is orchestrated in the climate of only hating the other.

As the philosopher Slavoy Zaizek said about modern men, when people find themselves in a world very much constricting their rights, they search for the easy way out through seemingly not censored and not too much regulated and thus favored issues by the establishment such as ethnic fundamentalism( he said this in reference to the former Yugoslavia). Which is a claim that seems to find its true and functional parallel in the current Ethiopia, where, due to the nature of simulator democracy exercised by the ruling class (i.e. full control of media, restrictions and intimidation on the ‘free’ press, and the insistence to garner only praise about the development endeavors of the nation, and denouncing those who used their inalienable right to criticize ‘their own’ government,) it is evident to see now that the public discourse is being pushed to some fringes of not-so-much-censored but largely encouraged issues such as twenty-four -hours Sports on the media and ethnic fundamentalism. 

Due to the repressive nature of the simulator democracy, discussion on issues that matter and conducting them in a polite, civilized manner, proving dangerous, a new simulated freedom that encourages short sighted, belittling, ethnic fundamentalist, and revenged celebrating, voices is deafeningly controlling the mass and social media: voices that claim to be speaking for ‘the people’ and thus warrant bigotry, denigration and avenging their people.

What such tendencies bring to the fore are precisely those voices that history has seen in many forms and shapes; those who hid in the skin of the ‘the people’ to only serve their wish for power and destruction of the other, like in the middle ages, such voices had used the name of god to perpetrate crime. To use the words  of Slavoy Zaizek,’ for such voices now a days, ‘god’ is substituted by ‘the people’ and in the name of’ the people’ they warrant doing anything.

 Way out?

As an aircraft in the air flies not only because it has wings but also there are forces applied to it including drag, a democracy that grows more and more repressive and controlling is not flying; it is rather simulating flight. A country that fails to honor human solidarity through tolerance and civilized discourse is doomed to repeat the demise of bygone  regimes that traveled the same road f disaster.

     

…TAE...