Open letter or open pandering to corruption?
“As I look around the EITI implementing countries, I do not accept that the situation for civil society in Ethiopia is worse than a great many of them.” That was the didactic pronouncement of Ms. Claire Short, Chair of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in her “Open Letter” to Ali Idrissa, Faith Nwadishi and Jean-Claude Katende who are civil society representatives on the EITI Board and the Outreach and Candidature Committee. Short penned her bizzare “Open Letter” to announce her resolute conviction that EITI should give Ethiopia the green light because she “passionately believe[s] that the entry bar to candidates should be clearly and simply whether there is enough space for civil society to work with EITI, and that compliance and validation should be a test whether civil society participation is free, fair and independent.”
Ms. Claire Short, Chair of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)
Short’s “Open Letter” was stunning for its temerity, effrontery, insolence and sheer arrogance. Short went to extraordinary lengths to browbeat the civil society representatives and EITI’s “civil society partners” in her “passionate” appeal for the admission of Ethiopia. She made a thinly-veiled accusation that EITI’s civil society representatives have effectively become the patsy of the international human rights organizations allegedly opposed to Ethiopia’s admission to EITI. She accused them of being “unhelpfully influenced by strong voices from a special interest group with perfectly well-meaning intentions but who have too much of a ‘north telling the south what to do mindset’”. She intimated that they were in flagrant dereliction of their duties by falling under the spell of the civil society partners, and hectored them that the fate of EITI itself hangs in the balance on their decision to admit or reject Ethiopia’s application. Short enlightened the civil society representatives that “EITI is not a human rights standard. Our job is to ensure that there is enough space for civil society to work with and around the EITI and help drive reform in the extractive sector for the benefit of the people.” She apocalyptically warned that the decision on Ethiopia’s application shall determine whether “EITI is an international coalition with a Standard that serves all countries that seek reform in extractives, or an organization that is driven by campaigners.”
