Referendum on the establishment of the autonomy of the "cedama" in Ethiopia

Ahmed Abdullah-Addis Ababa

Ethiopia's National Electoral Council (NEC) has announced that a referendum will be held in the southern Ethiopian region on November 13 to meet demands from the Cedama, a major tribe, to secede and form a new territory.

The Ethiopian Constitution guarantees all Ethiopian groups and nationalities the right to vote on the establishment of a new territory if requested, and guarantees them rights such as collecting some taxes, choosing the official language of their territory, running special security forces and enacting laws on issues such as education and land administration.

For its part, the Ethiopian Electoral Council confirmed in a statement issued on Thursday that 1692 polling stations were set up and 8,460 electoral supervisors were appointed for the purpose of conducting the referendum process.

He said in a statement that he had received a request from the board of directors of the CEDAMA region in the southern Ethiopia region on November 20, 2018, to establish a separate CEDAMA territory.

According to the statement, the Southern Ethiopia Peoples' Council will allocate a budget of 75.6 million Ethiopian Birr to hold the referendum.

Nationality of Siddama
The demands of the cedama nationalism are old. They were made in 1995 - almost a year after the federalism was enacted - after the Ethiopian constitution was approved, but then, after extensive debate, the Ethiopian Federal Council did not decide on the right to nationalism in its own territory.

After nearly two and a half decades of experimenting with the application of the various regions of Ethiopia in the administration of their own affairs, the atmosphere was created for some Ethiopian peoples living in the south, which contains one region, to demand the transformation of the districts in which they live to the same as the major nationalities in Ethiopia.

CEDAMA constitutes about 4 million of the total population of the region, estimated at 17 million, and is a Kushite people.

The Siddama people speak the language of Sidamo (Cushitic) and have preserved their cultural heritage and well-established administrative systems dating back to the 9th century. They are professions in agriculture, especially coffee and livestock, among many other occupations.

The current Ethiopian regions are 9 provinces: Harar, Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, the peoples of southern Ethiopia, Afar, Ethiopian Somalia, Beni Shankol Gomes and Gambella.

The region includes more than 50 nationalities, most notably: Aldidama, the state, Alhedia, Koraki, Jamo and Celita, all added to the mix of diversity in the field of arts, heritage and culture as a land saturated with customs and traditions of many nationalities.

Observers fear that the demands of nationalities will widen in the territory of the peoples of southern Ethiopia, especially since the state of the state declared last July after the approval of the National Electoral Council to hold a referendum in the province of Siddama on its own territory.