Abstract:
This paper investigated whether the FDRE constitutions has clear legal standards so that regional
constitutions can emulate in their endeavor, if any so far, to ensure the realization of the right to
political participation as well as the right to promote and protect identity rights by the nonindigenous groups, who are currently co-habiting with the regionally empowered indigenous groups.
Of course, the function of this legal standard, if it exists , beyond assuring those rights for the nonindigenous groups at the same time it is also required to guarantee that the exercise of the same right
by the indigenous groups remain intact.
The analysis of the paper reveal that because of failure on the part of the FDRE constitutions to
envisages clear legal standards for the aforementioned urgent task has resulted in nothing but, in the
disfranchisement of the majorities of the urban dwellers from partaking in the conduct of public
affairs. To explain this a little bit, in the regional states dominated by the titular groups such as
Oromia, because of the adaption of the language of the empowered ethnic group as the language of
government business, the non-indigenous groups’ rights to political participation has been effectively
curtailed. In conforming to this Yonatan also argue that this has yielded in the disenfranchising a
large number of the population in most urban areas of the different regional states from partaking in
the conduct of public affairs. This undermines the constitutional commitment to equal respect for
individual and group rights. That is why it is said that the major limitation of the federal system is
that it does not adequately address the plight of ethnic migrants in terms of the right to use their
language for government business. Therefore, corollary to this while the writer recommending the
designing of legal standards for the alleviation of the gloomy situation, he notifies any move in this
frontiers should strike a balance that would accommodate the same interest harbored by the so-called
the indigenous ethnic groups in particular in urban cities where the number of the non-indigenous
groups far more greater than the latter.
In the multiethnic Cities of Hawassa, as the analysis of the paper unequivocally speaks, though the
decision taken by the regional council in 2002 confers a right for the ethnically mixed urban dwellers
(i.e. non-indigenous groups ) to equally partake in the governance of the city, thereby entailing them
the corridor for political participation in the city executive and legislative councils as well as in the
civil service Sector, absence of a legal scheme devised in detail to institutionalize power sharing ( i.e.
non- allocation of executive seats for each ethnic residents pro-rata to the population size each group
commands in the city via the introduction of proportional electoral system, while in mean time
reserving considerable seats for the Sidama's in both councils) in those institutions has produced
unwanted results namely; the dominance of the city governance by a single indigenous group (
identified as indigenous group in this paper due to the possession of indigeneity character in the view
of the writer ) Sidamas. On the part of the indigenous group Sidama too, there is insecurity of being
exposed to out numbering and out outvoting in lieu of the opening up policy followed by the regional
council (the governance of the city by all segments of the ethnic dwellers of the city) and
untrammeled migration of internal migrants from the adjacent zones.
In due cognizance of the aforementioned problems encountered Hawassa City, but a kind of problem
exhibited elsewhere too where cities located under the self-determination rights of the titular groups
are facing, the tasks a head for the SNNP Regional Council are so tough that it is urgently required to
institutionalize power sharing through detailed law by taking the federal standards to be mapped for
country wise as reference point.
The schemes to be designed for this purpose shall strike out the balance between the quest of the
Sidamas peoples for preferential treatments because of their indigenousness in terms of political
participation and promotion of their language and culture in the city as well as the desires of the city
majority (the non-indigenous groups lumped together) for equal consideration in the power
arrangements. If the federal government does not move forward to set forth the milieu and linchpin
necessary for regional constitutions to take into account, while designing legal devises for the
governance of the multi ethnic cities located under their peripheral limits, the regional councils shall
contemplate the designing of legal touchstones via taking into consideration the way forwards and
foreign experiences dwelled in this paper as part of their of residual power. |
