11 oktober 2019
On 11 October 2019 the Nobel Prize Committee awarded the Nobel Prize for peace to Abiy Ahmed, who is Prime Minister of Ethiopia since April 2018. He received the prize because in his short period as Prime Minister he succeeded in making peace with Eritrea, thereby ending a war that lasted 20 years, and because he initiated liberal reforms in Ethiopia itself.
The case of Abiy Ahmed and of Ethiopia is of great interest to us because now already the comment is made in the press that the liberal democratizing reforms seem to unleash etnical strife which was suppressed under the dictatorship of the military. Oromo and Amhara and other names of tribes might become familiar in the coming months and years.
Ethiopia might become the most recent proof that “plural societies” which democratise, fall apart in many pieces, which was the main proposition of my book “liberal quicksand”. My hart hopes that I’m wrong ; My brain already knows I’m right.