The Ambassadors Donor Group said that: "The ADG reiterates its support for the electoral process in Ethiopia, and underlines the importance of the June 10 Joint Declaration by political parties in which they committed to use only the established legal electoral mechanisms, including the courts, to determine the outcome of the elections and affirmed their commitment to abide by the results."

We can make the following points:

1. The June 10th agreement was reached in a state of duress when hundreds of the Opposition representatives and supports were detained, harassed, tortured, intimidates, disappeared, and in some cases assassinated by the regime/ruling party. Under contract law, any agreement reached by "duress" may be nullified. How much an argument can we make in order to nullify the June 10th Agreement?

2.When the June 10th Agreement was reached, the European Union said, "all parties should be able to act in an environment free of intimidation and threats." We have now seen what the National "Election" Board has decided, and the mechanism has been extrmely flawed with harassment, intimidation, torture continuing, and the NEB becoming a shameless tool of the regime. Wouldn't you think the envirnonment which the EU required has not been achieved for the process to continue?

3. Agreements / contracts are to be abided by, as the Latin maxim, pacta sunt servanda is a universal maxim imposing an obligation on all sides to respect their word. But the policy underlying contract also provides that when parties come to the contracting table, they come in good faith to perfom in accordance with the contract. While the Opposition, although aware of the beast it was dealing with, it nevertheless expected a certain amount of fairness and good faith from the other party, the regime/EPRDF. Woyane has clearly failed to perform in accordance with the needs of good faith. It has failed in its perfomance of the end of the bargain. Under such circumstances, is it fair for the Ambassadors Donor Group to demand the Opposition to go to court, when it is clear that woyane has failed its end of the bargain?

4. The idea of submitting to court has as an initial requirement that you don't know what the judgment of the court would be. If you know what the judgment of the court is, that basic requirement of the expectation of impartiality does not exist. In Gore v. Bush, when the issue was submitted to the Supreme Court, while it was known how some may decide the matter, there were others whose vote could be a swaying one, so impartiality was expected. In Ethopia, that does not exist. The regime is going directly to impose its preference throug the judges it has appoined. Should the Opposition then submit to this court whose decision is predictable?

5. Normally in civilized countries, judges who have interest in the outcome of a decision or those with a confilict of interes or who have spoken in certain ways before would normally recuse themsleves from sitting in a panel since this would be unjust for the other party. Here the woyane NEB chairman Kemal Bedri has not promised to recuse himself so that an independent judge coulr look into the matter. In such a situation is it worth to go to court.

6. If the Opposition refused to go to court, it appears from the above statement of the Ambassadors Donor Group it is going to charge the opposition to have failed to abide by an agreement it entered into. Should the Opposition be careful not to make the Ambassadors angry?

Your comments please

City: Anywhere

Very well presented, Teodros.

I think it's a difficult question to answer for those of us outside the inner circles of the opposition. Decisions in a strategy game require as much knowledge as possible of the variables in question. The opposition party leadership are the ones with this information, and I trust them, and I think we should all trust them, to make the rational decisions.

Note I say rational decision. They must ensure that emotions of any kind must be absent from their analyses. The opposition should not go to court out of fear, but only because it is the rational choice. Or it should not stay away from court because of pride or spite, but only because it is the rational choice.

Looking in from the outside, all the signals I see from the EPRDF are confrontational and have been for a while. The EPRDF, instead of winning a decent majority gracefully, have opted to show their muscle by their completely unnecessary actions on Oromia HQ, weakening Addis city govt, weakening parliament, taking seats away from the opposition, and so on.

If the donors are willing to let the EPRDF continue in this manner, then I believe the opposition must play with the goal of destroying any hope of the EPRDF and the donors attaining the veneer of democracy that they so badly wanted. The opposition is left with no choice, because the EPRDF would be showing that it does not want democracy, and without a tangible move towards democracy, the opposition will only be placeholders in parliament and Addis.

If the donors are willing to pressure the EPRDF to retract its totalitarian move of the last two months, then the opposition can consider another end-game.

But this doesn't look like the way its going. I must reiterate that it is extremely unfortunate that the EPRDF is attacking democracy so vehemently when it could have easily won 55-45% or 60-40% and easily governed the country for five more years at least.

Email: a@b.com