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212 Diagnosing Corruption in Ethiopia
indications of a political element in selection, promotions, transfers, and
discipline. The courts, and especially the federal judiciary, are remarkably
nontransparent in their personnel management—not even (in contrast to
the prosecutors) advertising openings. 20
However, for both agencies, there is a perception among current and
former professional staff as well as among outsiders that since about
2004, there has been an effort to recruit judges and prosecutors who, as
one informant noted, are active rather than passive members of the ruling
party (or its regional affiliates). This may mean—as several commented
of the federal courts in particular—that better-qualified
candidates are passed over in favor of those with political ties. A few
interviewees mentioned this as a particular problem in regard to assistant
judges hired several years earlier but not promoted, for reasons that
remained obscure.
Informants also mentioned an increasing tendency to favor federal
candidates with degrees from the Civil Service College. Such candidates
are regarded, at least by the Addis Ababa graduates (and two professors
interviewed), as inferior students who need party ties to get into the program.
The federal judiciary’s efforts to “nationalize” the bench by drawing
in judges from other regions also came under attack for (a) the nontransparency
of the process, and (b) the suspicion that political connections
counted here as well. However, the major problem may be a reliance on
personal recommendations, for want of a better screening process. For
example, the recent recruitment of several judges from the Amhara
region (already overrepresented on the federal bench) was attributed to
the prior transfer of the former regional court president who naturally
recommended colleagues he thought worthy of consideration. 21
The less-than-spontaneous participation in the two focus groups, combined
with comments from most of the one-on-one interviews, do suggest
that, whatever the truth of the matter, members of the public and
the judges and prosecutors themselves perceive that loyalty—not just “to
the constitution” but also to the administration—counts, and that an illconsidered
comment or decision could have serious career impacts.
Post-1991 (after the EPRDF came to power), the only large-scale
purge of the bench (and prosecution) occurred in 1996, when the
government not only dismissed 336 judges from Addis Ababa and
Amhara National States and 270 from Oromia (Kitaw 2004)—removing
many incapable and probably corrupt officials—but also, it is believed,
some judges who simply incurred the displeasure of those responsible
for these decisions. However, interviewees also referenced subsequent