Wednesday March 20, 2019
Ibrahim Ousman Farah. Photo: Addis Standard file
On March 12, the Council of Dire Dawa city, a chartered
city in eastern Ethiopia, appointed Mahdi Gire as the new Mayor of the
city after Ibrahim Ousman Farah, who was the Mayor of the city for the
last three and half years, unexpectedly reassigns. Ibrahim Ousman
administered the city in what can safely be argued the most tumultuous
time characterized by persistent anti-government protests and some of
the most vexing violent encounters in the city.
Using a limited opportunity to ask a few questions, Addis Standard interviewed Ibrahim Ousman. Excerpts:Addis
Standard: You are leaving office after three and half years as Mayor of
Dire Dawa, what do you think is the legacy you are leaving behind?
Ibrahim Ousman Farah: We
have brought in a lot of achievements in economic & social sectors.
These include, but not limited to, the construction of city asphalt
road from 1km during GTPI to near 20km during GTPII; rural access road
developments; overall upgrading and expansion of the city’s potable
water project with help of the World Bank; employment opportunities and
job creation for the youth; expansion of small & medium
manufacturing industries ranging from 50 small manufacturing industries
to Dire Dawa multipurpose industry park. These are all achievements we
oversaw in the last few years.
But Dire Dawa is also a city facing major social challenges especially in recent years. What’s your reading of that?
Our main challenges were meeting the demands of the society
against the existing actual resource/ budget. The prevalence of widespread
protests in the past few years were high and to a certain extent constructive in
helping the administration take major reforms, but sometimes these protests
have changed into chaos and have posed major security threat.
We
have seen that in the last one year and half, Dire Dawa was repeatedly
visited by protests, some of which were violent in nature. What do you
think were the main reasons for that?
After the city administration conducted several reforms to
address these protests, some protests continued with different political
agendas. Ethnic and clan based conflicts, most of which are artificially
created with political motives, continued posing major challenges. These
protests have also created a security vacuum and took most of our time in
solving other pressing problems, preventing us from carrying out our
development plans as expected.
But what efforts did your administration put in place to address the recurring of protests? Were you successful?
We
used two approaches. The first was to look into conflicts arising from
frustration and hopelessness of the youth due to lack of employment
opportunities. To that end we have aggressively exploited job
opportunities both in public & private sectors so that the youth
could benefit from the job creation opportunities. We were successful on
that to a certain extent. The second is insuring and implementing law
and order with the help of security, justice and law enforcement
institutions. We were also successful on that, but more work needs to be
done.
One of the rallying points of recent protests in
the city was the 40/40/20 arrangement of the local administration, which
critics say gives unfair advantage to Oromo and Somali residents while
the remaining residents are represented in just the 20% arrangement (be
it in housing provision or job opportunities). Do you think this
criticism is justified? If so, what efforts did you put in place to
address it?
The 40:40:20 administrative arrangement was
corrected from the gate go as 40:60, which stands for Somali People’s
Democratic Party (SPDP) and Ethiopian People’s
revolutionary Front (EPRDF) respectively [and] we have tried to give
more solution in Dire Dawa administration charter with proclamation
number 416/1996. We can see in its preamble that these two parties have
agreed to lead the city in a rotating term since the major constituency
of the city are represented by these two parties. But people with
hidden political agenda have distorted this fact and used it as a cover
to incite discontent, although it served as the most remedial and
effective way of sharing power between groups with as much different
interests and claims as the diverse constituencies they represent. In
fact, it can be used as the best experience for other Ethiopian cities
since we can only find [these multiple] parties that are sharing powers
in Dire Dawa administration and which we can say is the most inclusive
city in the country in terms of representing the diverse constituency of
the city. For that matter this is not the mandate of the administration
to make changes on it.
But how is the city administration planning to address
grievances of its residents who continue maintaining that they are not
represented by this arrangement?
To address the real grievances emanating from this
arrangement, it is up to the two parties (SPDP & EPRDF). There is a solid
agreement made in 1998 between these two parties about the arrangement. In addition
to this, I think there are two solutions for this. The first is representing
those who are not satisfied with current political arrangement in the upcoming
elections. And the second is to look into the new direction, which is
considering to bring EPRDF and partner parties into a single, unified national
party.
Do you think this will be the major challenge for the new Mayor? What do you suggest his priorities should be?
Wishing all the best for the new deputy mayor, my suggestion
for him will be to continue insuring the peace and security of the
administration by finalizing the reform in the security sector that we have
started because there are pending issues there. Promoting and creating
awareness among the diverse residents about the benefits of peace and
coexistence between different ethnicity and religious groups should also be
given a serious consideration. The other is focus on youth and women employment
creation schemes; focus on finalizing problem solving projects; raise the
awareness of the society to participate in development activities to create
belongingness; and finally protect public properties.