 Thank you. OK, my paper, the title of my paper is Ethnic-based Politics and Class Solidarity in Ethiopia, The Missing Link of Political Relations in Contemporary Ethiopia. This is a working paper written as I was traveling from Addis to outside of Addis, and I encountered a certain political conditions. So based on that, I tried to write this paper wondering how emancipatory politics such as ethnicity failed to bring horizontal solidarity in Ethiopia. So my aim as a paper is more theoretical and also it's historical. It is a conversation between history, ethnography, and theory. So let me go to my ethnographic entry point. Aren't you gone yet, it says? Aren't you gone yet? Was a regular question a young Shushain boy in one of the towns of into Ethiopia encountered from politically-mobilated youth whom they call themselves natives by calling him and other underclass workers Shushain boys, porters, and et cetera, as a non-native. I met this young boy in 2017 when I was traveling outside of Addis Ababa, where this is a southern part of the country. I do want to mention the town because this is an encounter in many towns of Ethiopia. So it is better to silence the place because it's a similar situation is happening in many places in Ethiopia. So aren't you gone yet outside of this town? This is a point in which I convinced myself I should write something about this because I felt it. So in this town, I was crossing. I met this Shushain boy working at the gate of one of the hotels where long distance travelers stopped by for lunch. I had a conversation about this, his livelihood. He narrated how he came from one of the rural areas with his elder brother and other older boys for work and alternative livelihood in the town. He and his friends found a small town suitable for their survival. It has been more than four years since he started life in this town. He attends evening class while working at the daytime as a Shushain boy at the gate of the hotel. He also serves the hotel as a porter. He is grateful for the town which he calls it a home and a working place. The only problem he recently facing is the use of the town began to hustle him and always giving him an ultimate attempt to leave the town as soon as possible. Aren't you gone yet was a regular question he was hearing from the youth. He knew he does not want to leave the back to rural village. He was not interested to go to another town or a big city such as Addis Ababa. He sees the town as his universe, not just a place but a home. This has become a normalized news of many towns and cities in Ethiopia where a federal structure is designed and implemented to resolve what is known in the country the national question or the nationalist question through identity based demarcation of regions. So we see if you travel to many places outside of Addis even in Addis also people are being labeled as non-native and become victimized by these politics. This I encountered this since in 2017 but since then we see we hear a lot of news about this occurrence between the meeting place of people called the natives and non-natives is becoming a political category. So I have to talk something about Ethiopia federalism. I think most of you know the Ethiopia Federation is a response to the nationality questions or the questions of nationality which was one of the popular question during the Ethiopian revolution in 1970s. So the question that challenged the project of national state building based on the Westphalian model which aimed building one Ethiopian nation out of different ethereal linguistic groups otherwise known as nationalities. The nationality question in Ethiopia preceded in the 1970s revolution. Even articulate long before the Ethiopian student movement usually we see it is the beginning of the nationality question is Ethiopian student movement but it is not because only in the late 1960s that Ethiopian student consider the nationality question the question of nationality as a major concern of their movement. The question preceded the peasant movement or the peasant rebellion of the 1940s and the 1960s. I'm not doing genoa here, you know as a search for the origin but I want to share with you that there is important work by one of the scholars of early 90s, early 20th century. And before the first decade of the 20th century a scholar called Gabriel Baikadai from the Tigray region wrote two books, important books which many people made and share. So Gabriel is one of the pioneers intellectuals who traveled to Europe and come back and wrote theories, histories and politics in Hamarik in the local language. So I see the national question in the articulation of the nationality question and his work which is published in the first decade of the 20th century. Gabriel critics emperor Manilik for marginalization of his home region Tigray which become battleground for shifters and lords. So he disproved many rumors about Manilik's involvement in that intra-regional conflict but he also critic Manilik for his reluctance to stop the conflict and create condition for development in Tigray region. It is a similar situation, he studies repeating itself in his work. Today also the federal government is also, there is a tension polarization between the federal and the Tigray region which for Gabriel is marginalizing the Tigray region or the delinking between the Tigray and the federal, as the central state is a wrong politically. So he advised the central government to engage the Tigray region politically. So it's a very, it's a kind of history is repeating itself today where I'm not saying the central government is marginaling but the politics seems similar at least a polarization. So in Gabriel's work clearly shows that the hegemon of the Shor region, the city of Addis geographical situation as a center of the present the Addis Ababa and surrounding sociologically dominated by Amhara and Orumu population. As his imagined state is symbolized through association, he expects the leadership of the association to be inclusive of all its parties. A nationality question for Gabriel was the quest to have an inclusive and non-part partial state apparatus. The configuration of the political is defined to make it more inclusive and participatory to the extent limit the power of the king in that time. So limiting the power of the central government and in making itself, making it democratic and a nationality question for Gabriel in that time. So he used the concept of association and democratizing the state of Penn State and making it more representative of nationalities and region was his prescription. So this was Gabriel Tvaikari writing in the beginning of the first as a 20th century, 90 or 506. So then what happened is after that long in 1960s and 70s we have witnessed the Ethiopian student movement, a journal of Ethiopian student movement called The Challenge published articles particularly written about what most writer term is a nationality question or regionalism in that time or national question. Andreas Scherte, Hagos, Gabrielsos, Malasai Ali, Alen Mouhab Tu, Alen Limakon and many of them wrote and debated about the nationality question before the coming of the revolution then even after it during the revolution. So the debate between these students of the nationality question was articulated articulation of historical contradiction born with the fore-motion and the constellation of the Ethiopian modern state that is the last 90th century. The national question is fundamental for them central sacred and delicate issue of Ethiopian people's movement. The most dialectical of all questions I said during in the literature. So from this debate, I can't summarize the debate here but to share with you what I have read from them is most writers, most writers of the student movement uses a nationality question rejecting most tribe in the nation as a concept they call it nationality question or the question of nationality. So they first clarify the conceptual and theoretical standard. Most also argues that the nationality question is subordinate to class struggle and self-determination must be exercised with anti-feudal, anti-perilist outlook as well as with the political imagination of socialist construction. And in resolving the nationality question mainly in regional form, all rights such as equality, self-rule autonomy and democratic participation in the political space must also consider the right of minorities anywhere in the country above all self-determination as a resolution of nationality question is the role towards building democratic, egalitarian, secular national state out of the empire of the Ethiopian. What Gabriel articulated 50 years before or at the beginning of the century is similar with what Marcus is the radicalized student imagine the sort of the language of different. Few organized only behind the nationality question and the standard solution of self-determination after the session, the guerrilla fighting then we see a socialist movement which history also favors them defeating the dirt and numerous resistance movement mobilized against the dirt behind the nationality question. I think now when I understand it retrospectively disregarding the class question. So the federal system is a response as a policy side identity nationality created homelands for selected majority communities otherwise known as nation nationality in the peoples. Some national mother state is created for linguistic groups such as the Tigray, Amhara, Harari, Oromo, Somali and Afar while mixing two or three in Gambila and Ben-Sham. The exception in this federalism is the southern nation nationality peoples which is now become the hub of many types of questions created one region comprising more than 50 communities with their own language. Therefore by granting at least to the major ethnic groups their own mother or sub national states and to others to the right of self-administration at local government level, the federal system tries to enhance a regional autonomy and also answers a question of inclusiveness, the avoid exclusion and democratize the state in a certain way, at least you're at it. These mother states created an assuming a homogenous group in everything that defined territory connecting culture and territory. Federalism, federalism, regionalism for granted take regionalism for granted and it also creates where never existed. So this is what's happening. So it took for granted the national, the region, regionalism, create identity and the territory together. So now it is trying to reproducing itself in multiple ways. These regions and local states become homelands as a mother state for those who know linguistic groups. So other states who don't have mother states they want a mother state now. So Ethiopia is now full of these type of questions. It is not about self-administration. It's about ownership of the land, ownership of a home which where nobody will say, aren't you yet gone? This historical reading of disregard territories inhabited by Ethiopia and heterogeneous heterolinguistic groups who often become marginalized minorities, non-native, non-indigenous subjects of the Ethiopian Federation. The ruling party PRD for the last three decades tries to use other measures to unite, to calm down these type of questions through one party system, through developmental state, through developmental discourse, it united this, it silenced this type of question. It divided communities, essentially through state power, through a party system, a centralist physical system, the developmental state. All these tries to depoliticize the mass, tries to silence the mass from asking similar question for the last three, 20 years. But now, with the popular protest and the political... Thank you. Popular protest and a political transition. So Ethiopian experiment federal system for the last almost three decades. But for the last four or five years, we have witnessed popular protest that intensified for the last five years. It checked the federal system. It checked the EPR, the whole deal of decentralization and centralization. Decentralization one way and centralization the other way. This in turn result in the, brought a transformational politics, reform politics opening up in the recent moment. A new reformist group with an EPR, they've emerged out of the ruling party and mainly from the two largest communities, the Oromo and Zahmara, that lead the transformational priorities from the above and also from below, from the popular use from the two regions, Oromo and Zahmara. I'm not saying other elites and other popular forces are not participating, we're not participating in the protest. Protest has been widespread in Ethiopia, any different overt and hidden maze. So the protest symbolize communities determination to resist depoliticization, which I was talking about. It began the self repoliticization while transformational period signaled the re-beginning of politics in post-protest Ethiopia. The protest also signaled the polisibility of trans ethno-linguistic solidarity when the Oromo and Zahmara communities act in concert under the motto of Amaroma. However, such solidarity appears tactical and accompanied by essentialist assumptions like brotherhood, eternal friendship, and so on. So it's not a solidarity, it was a tactical alliance to defeat the Ethiopian Tigrian ruling party. So the issue of solidarity is one origin of all Ethiopians mainly from Amaroma and the Oromo, they had one unity and so one origin. And during the protests, and however, this didn't avoid violence after the post, in the post, in the protest, it was very successful. But in the post-protest, and in the politics of transformation, transition, we see, we witness violence, and this tactical alliance is no more existence at least in the popular arena. The mobilization of native and non-native become a trend in the contemporary Ethiopia and many parts of Ethiopia. Despite foraging reform process, democratization and the beginning of politics are accompanied by the discourse of what we call the Mademma from the ruling party or the leader of the prime minister which is solidarity, unity, synergy, harmony, and italy conflicts erupted causing large number of internally displaced people in the country. Many people were told to leave the town, the city, the place they were inhabiting. Aren't you yet gone is a question which many people faced and they were forced to go out from the different people, from the place they used to live. The federal structure which set out to answer to the national equations gave birth to the native question. Nationality question without class solidarity led to native question and horizontal competition, polarization and conflict in many parts of Ethiopia. Class blindly deployment of the national equation produce the native and non-native category of political subjects and the question appears to be native question which defined non-native as the other if not as an enemy. So what is a missing link? This is my, I don't know. I like history, I like ethnograph but this is the core part of my thesis of the presentation. This is a product of the missing link between the nationality equation and the class consciousness. It is a pitfalls of national and class consciousness in Ethiopia today. The student movement or Gabriel Baikadan articulated how they should democratize Ethiopian state without horizontal conflict at least without horizontal conflict. But the student movement also articulated class solidarity is important to protect the people of Ethiopia from class, from capitalist, global capitalism. Otherwise it will be creating a bourgeoisie state or it's creating a lot of political elites in different parts of Ethiopia. Even if the session is possible it is creating the bourgeoisie state that doesn't help the Ethiopian people. So class consciousness, so the pitfall today is both national and class. So my point there is about the missing the absence of class consciousness in Ethiopia despite the inequality despite many people share the leverage in similar level they are not targeting the ruling class. They are not articulating the ruling class is manipulating the politics, controlling the politics. So self-determination in Ethiopia today is translated as determination about nativeness of a community. The claiming of a territory according to accordingly to make a mother state or homeland. The native question is a quest for sub national state construction based on nativity with no articulation on the nature of the national state domestically or its role is a global capitalist. Maybe it is a way capitalists is penetrating in the global south of the moment in which by creating a lot of fragmentation polarization capitalism is penetrating the globalist. I don't know that is a very straight reading. The question has completely forsaken class analysis as a national question, the native question. For second class analysis the issue of self-determination is articulated only as a means of resolving the native question by forming a regional state or district or local state in the name of a nativity or a cultural autonomy attached to a territory called homeland today or Killing or Waredah or so on. The land question which was inseparable from the nationality question in Ethiopia is reduced to demarcating the native homeland irrespective of the nature of land relation and that historically emerging in the country. With no relevant debate on the role of the nationality within the global capitalism, anti-capitalist emancipatory politics state to be absent in Ethiopia today. Even in the context of global capitalist crisis today there is no discussion or the opportunity to exploit the global context with the leadership of the national state. Even the development of state project with its catching up project face the challenge with domino effect widespread of the quest for motherland to the nationality than as to the natives or nationalities. Moreover, while the nationality question was articulated towards democratizing the Ethiopian state, the tendency now is to create a perhaps the most decentralized despotism with its double authoritarian future. Manifested both at the national level, state level against the popular masses or at the local level against the native minorities. So a kind of decentralized despotism is emerging in Ethiopia today. At local level or at the Zola level or at the regional level power is dispersant but despotism together dispersant. So democracy is compromised at the national level or so at local level and the class question is absent and that is where the political pre-comment in Ethiopia. Thank you very much.