A Vote against Meles is BY NO means a vote for DERG!!!

By Ephrem Madebo

This past weekend, as I always do, I skimmed over aigaforum (unofficial site of TPLF) and read two articles scribbled by Engineer Ghrima. Since I have a great respect and appreciation for engineers, I took time and read the two articles. Though I always read, I usually don’t bother myself replying to aigaforum articles; however, I decided to reply to Engineer Ghrima because I thought the title of his name might have conned many innocent people [like me] to read his insidious article. I do believe this response serves as an antidote to those who might have been contaminated by Engineer Ghirma’s venomous article.

In one of his articles, Mr. Ghrima said; "Yes, the DERG may now be lying in repose. The relevant question however, is a matter of whether the Ethiopian people will allow it to resuscitate" Dear engineer, why would the Ethiopian people resuscitate a dying giant that devours them if resuscitated? In the history of man kind, no nation has collectively allowed evil to prevail over good. Ethiopia is no different. Ethiopians have neither the need for resuscitating DERG nor the desire to nurture TPLF. I have a grandfather who is at odds with TPLF and the two preceding regimes. When I call him on New Year’s day and ask him how he feels about the new year, he consistently answers - "Son, this year seems to be better than next year" My grandfather is a very optimistic person who expected better governance when Mengistu came to power, but he helplessly watched a wave of children including his grandsons marching to a never ending war. Mr. Ghrima, in May 2005, my grandfather went to his precinct [may be for the last time] to elect his representatives, but your boss denied him his life long wishes! So aren’t you ashamed when you tell me that my grandfather voted to resuscitate DERG, a government that confiscated his son’s hard earned wealth and forced almost all of his grandchildren out of their country? Do you think a vote against Meles is a vote for Mengistu? If you think so, you are more catholic than the Pope. Meles himself doesn’t think so!

Mr. Engineer, you said, "His [Mengistu’s] followers won significant number of seats in the 2005 elections" Time and again, we Ethiopians have shown to the world that we are forgiving people, but after 17 years of social and economic terror, I don’t think we have the heart that wants Mengistu back. On Election Day May 2005, the Ethiopian people did not vote for Mengistu, nor for Meles, they voted for candidates whom they entrusted to represent them in the national parliament. Unlike your deceitful claim, the opposition was more than a match to a one man show party of TPLF; however, in political games; it is not only size that matters the most, but the rule of the game and the behavior of the players. In the Ethiopian case, the rules of the game were written by Meles whose behavior invariably varies like a stock market price. In deed, as you said, there was no way the peaceful Ethiopian opposition could have been a match to the savage Agazis who like the "Toro Bravo" bulls are trained to kill.

My dear country man Ghrima, I am not as rowdy as you are to repeat the sexist and chauvinistic words you used on Anna Gomez. In my opinion, the only interest of Anna Gomez is to see Ethiopians (including you) endlessly enjoy the same peace, justice, and democracy that Europeans enjoy. If you think otherwise, what is the tangible or intangible advantage the respected Anna Gomez would gain if Ethiopia is ruled by CUDP/UEDF, or by any party for that matter? She is a person of high moral standard; unlike your TPLF scamps, she doesn’t bend her values for a moment of pleasure. You said, "EU deserves a more mature person in its parliament". Oh! What a joke! Are you a stand-up comedian from Dedebit that we never had a chance to watch on ETV, or are you the hilarious "Mamo Qilo", a character from the epic story of "Lemma Begebya"? Which ever you are, instead of talking about the European Parliament, why don’t you talk about your own parliament that coughs when Meles sneezes? Do you remember when the incongruous representative from Bademe voted for a resolution that in due course separates his constituency from Ethiopia? Imagine this is the same representative that voted to authorize war that eventually liberated Bademe from the bad man of Eritrea. Is this what you want the European Parliament to look like, or is this what you call maturity? What a shame!

You said, "I believe the time is now, for Ethiopia to become whole again" You must be one of those " F or D" grade engineers whose purpose in AAU’s School of Technology was pure political. What does "....Ethiopia to become whole" look like to you? Don’t you know that Ethiopia is a fraction of what it used to be just 17 years ago? You may forget about Ethiopia since it is not your cup of tea. How about Tigray becoming a ‘whole’ after losing Bademe? The Ethiopia of Haile Selassie had a seaport, and the Ethiopia of Colonel Mengistu did not compromise on Bademe. Today, thanks to the TPLF leadership that you praised, Ethiopia has no sea port, and Meles is on the verge of handing out the "Aceldama" of Ethiopia to Eritrea. Is this the type of whole you learned in one of your engineering classes? You also said, "However, the break-up of Ethiopia is not in the people’s mind right now" Did you say right now? Aha! So this must be a sneak pre-view of your diabolic plan! You are a true graduate of the TPLF School of Engineering! By the way were you a valedictorian? How can you realize the whole you mentioned above if your constitution allows every ethnic group to secede from the whole and go its own way? How can you even talk about Ethiopia’s unity by crafting a constitution that disintegrates Ethiopia? My poor engineer of calamity, you have no moral foundation to call any one a "bum", because you yourself are an intellectual drifter who leans on who ever drops food in your constantly open mouth.

You said, "I am proud of where Ethiopia has been throughout ancient history" Good job! So am I and so are many Ethiopians; but how about our modern history? Ethiopia’s past has never been a worry to any of us; our grave concern is its future. Ethiopians are not trying to pull Ethiopia back in time, fix her past problems, and propel her to the present time. This is your type of ill-advised reverse engineering, and this is exactly what worries me. What worries me and what worries millions of Ethiopians is the wrong path our mother land is heading. What worries me is not federalism, but ethnic federalism. What worries me is not economic development, but the lopsided development that favors the few. What worries me is not the existence of multi party democracy, but the action of a misguided ruler who uncovers every stone to stay in power. Ideologically, die-hard supporters of TPLF do not worry me much because I’m in a constant state of war with them. Wishy-washy gluttons like you worry me a lot because you’re with me when your belly is half full, and you burp with the enemy when you’re full.

You said, "Young people were butchered by Mengistu" you’ re right many people were massacred by Mengistu. How about those young people who were equally butchered by Meles on the streets of Addis Ababa, Awassa, Ambo, and in many localities of the Oromia zone? Mengistu killed in the pretext of defending the mother land, Meles killed in the pretext of defending the constitution. Didn’t these two evil men kill to draw out their dictatorial rule? Like the analogy you used in one of your articles, both Meles and Mengistu walk like a duck and quack like a duck, so why don’t you call both a duck?

I really don’t know about your engineering skill, however, you seem to be very good in MS Word because you have properly bolded half of your two articles. Mr. Ghrima, your education was financed by the poor Ethiopian tax payers, not by TPLLF. You may serve as a civil servant in the TPLF government, I have no problem with that; but please don’t impair the very people who financed your education and who are paying your salary now. Our poor mother of antiquity can’t anymore afford giving the lion’s share of its rare resources for a group of muggers that ramble in the Menelik Palace every other decade. Finally, you concluded one of your doodle articles by saying the following; "Some would say I am being a bit too harsh. Damn right I am". My fellow engineer, my generosity surpasses your selfishness; therefore, I have no intention of denying what you asked for. Yes, you’re right; you have been extremely unsympathetic to the Ethiopian people like your role model Meles and like your nemesis Mengistu. You’re damn right, you are too harsh, too rubbish, too blandish, and too selfish.

Get Out of Somalia!

By Ephrem Madebo

In May 2003, President George Bush addressed the world from the Aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and said the following:

“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country”.

Today (Tuesday May 15), four years after George Bush’s speech, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi addressed reporters from Menelik Palace and said the following:

The "organized resistance" of the Islamists had now been broken. Things have improved significantly in Mogadishu”

The United States and Ethiopia may be countries of different political and economic significance, but the public lie and the rhetoric by their two leaders are the same. When political leaders are determined to carry on their personal agenda, they take no notice of reality, they ignore the lessons of history, and pay no heed to the difference between military power and the people’s power. Historically,humanity has witnessed great armies decisively defeat another army, but no one has ever heard any army defeating the will of the people. If Military power by itself was a means to an end, Alexander the Great’s Macedonia would have been the largest country of the world, the northern expansion of the Moors could have ceased the existence of Churches in Europe, or Adolf Hitler could have ruled Europe at least for the duration of the war.

The inability of mighty US to heal its own mess in Iraq could have given a clear lesson to the Ethiopian aggressor not to plunge his poor nation in to the internal affair of another country. Both President Bush and PM Meles sent their military forces to another country in the pretext of protecting the interest of people in those countries. Well, a good cause, but not quite true. When one uses force to change the status quo, the changed state of affair of the entity should by no means be worse than the status quo. In Iraq, more Iraqis died after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and in the last16 years, more Somalis died in Mogadishu after the recent Ethiopian led military surge. Both Iraqis and the people of Somalia are fighting the presence of foreign forces on their land.

AU Commissioner Oumar Konare, and US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jendayi Fraser, warn that the Ethiopian forces must stay in Somalia until the AU force jumps in, an incident that could take months. In December 2006, the Ethiopian PM told the world that his forces will withdraw from Somalia within weeks, but more Somalis and Ethiopian soldiers were killed after the Prime Minister’s promised withdrawal timetable. Ethiopia is a poor country with multiple social and economic problems; it can not afford a continued proxy war, more over, Ethiopia should be a responsible peaceful neighbor to all. Our history in Congo and Korea shows that we died for the freedom of others. We Ethiopians should not die to just kill Somalis, if we have to die; we should die to give them new life. As of now, the Somalis don’t see it that way; therefore, the Ethiopian force must withdraw from Somalia starting today. Mr. Prime Minister, you are the one who sent the Ethiopian troops to Somalia, please call them back immediately and unconditionally.

A Call for 2010

By Ephrem Madebo

Two years ago in the month of May, Ethiopia and the political process in Ethiopia was at the center of international spotlight. From the Washington Post to the LA Times, from the Le Monde to the Le Figaro, and form the Daily Nation to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, all newspaper columnists from around the globe converged on the political arena of Ethiopia to delight their readers with a uniquely different news from a country known for its intermittent war, devastating famine, and mind numbing malnutrition. More than 75 million Ethiopians from all walks of life and in every corner of the world were on their feet for days to witness a western style democratic transfer of power from the old to the new, from the few to the many, and from the voted out to the voted in. Unfortunately, the man who assumed power with the aid of gun failed to understand the language of the people and spoiled the international party from the get-go. PM Meles, the universal prince of turmoil, scrubbed the pre-election blueprint of the democratic process, and changed the streets of Africa’s capital in to an open air slaughterhouse. Today, two years after the infamous May-05 election, party leaders and elected Parliament members whom many Ethiopians entrusted to overhaul the corrupted justice system are languishing in jail with no due process. Article 17 of the constitution states: “No one shall be arrested or detained without being charged or convicted of a crime except in accordance with such procedures as are laid down by law.” But, in a city where the constitution was authored, defenders of democracy were thrown to jail in November 2005 and they were indicted a month ago in 2007.

May 2005 has come and gone, we have said a lot before it and left with a broken heart after it. But, in real terms, what have we done to correct our mistakes? What steps have we taken to avoid the repeat of May 2005? All in all, what is our strategy to build a transparent democratic process in Ethiopia? I am not a political strategist, however, I do believe I can throw mind provoking ideas and see provoked minds synthesize a winning strategy. Any political party that lacks strategy and a roadmap to the strategy is doomed for failure. No matter how good words and propaganda statements we use against our enemies, and no matter how many members and how much money we have; we can’t plan in to the future with out strategy. Let’s remember that failing to plan is planning to fail. Retrospectively speaking, had we planned ahead and coordinated our efforts, most of our failures of the past would have been victories. We all run individually to meet similar objectives, and we all fail because our enemy(s) is [are] greater & stronger than us individually. When do we put our pieces together and face our enemies as a single unit? I know the answer to this question is full of ambiguity because our enemies do not fight us face-to-face; all they do is make us fight and draw out the time that we need to stand as a unit. PM Meles is a man of “principle”; whose cardinal principle is - “If you can't convince them, confuse them” Do we all understand what this is? This is the strategy of our enemies, they have strategy; we don’t. We keep on loosing as long as we lack a better or a matching strategy that out maneuvers our enemies.

In the late 1970s, Deng Xiaoping, the de facto leader of the People’s Republic of China (late 1970s to the early 1990s) promoted the following pragmatic slogan: “Seek truth from facts”. The slogan advised the Chinese Communist party to look for economic and political solutions that have practical application rather than those based on the political ideology of Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong’s China did not change much of its political ideology, it is still the symbol communism in our planet, however, in just 30 years; China’s economy has transformed from agrarian commune based farm to the industrial envy of the whole world. Today, China’s economy grows at unprecedented rate of 10% per annum. Can we Ethiopians emulate the Chinese? Can we seek truth from facts? When do we start gathering facts that point at the truth and stop making an emotional walk to arrive at our own truth, and look for facts to support them? In the context of social communication, emotions are not inherently bad, wrong, rude, or immature. Emotions are good, they can often add valuable context to our social understanding, making the human element impossible to ignore. However, they can derail communication and become overpowering if we emotionally react to daily events and plan our responses based on our emotional reaction.

The May 2005 election has devoured a good number of heroes; yes, it is true that the life of heroes is short, but we need to understand that an instance of a hero comes only once, when he/she is gone, we should be looking for another hero. Is it morally acceptable to sit back and watch when heroes vanish and demand their replacement? How about sometimes we die for our heroes instead of them always dying for us! In the aftermath of the election when the Agazis killed in hundreds, we made a momentary scream and went back to our comfort zone. TPLF responded by arresting the very people that we entrusted to lead our nation. We denounced the arrest and alerted the entire world, we called our local and national representatives, and demonstrated in front of a non-responding Whitehouse. The Ethiopian people (inside & outside) have always initiated the right response to every evil act of the TPLF regime, but lack of strategic continuity from our political parties and civic organizations killed all of the initiatives. I hope we all remember how the people of Nepal forced king Gyanendra to bend for public demand when he declared a state of emergency after sacking his government and assuming direct powers. The tanks of Nepal roamed the streets of Katmandu just like the Agazis did in Addis Ababa; but the curfew, the street killing, and the mass arrest did not keep angry Nepalese from demonstrating and imposing their will on the king. When compared to Ethiopians, Nepalese are not extraordinarily courageous or exceptionally patriotic. The marked difference between the two movements is that the political parties in Nepal (including the radical Maoist rebels) were ready to halt their differences and work together for the national interest. As the last thirty five years political history of Ethiopia would indicate, political alliances in Ethiopia have a prohibitive overhead cost. The debacle of EPRP in the 70s’, the bloody alliance of Dergue and MESION, the 1991 honeymoon of OLF and TPLF, the post election meltdown of ONC & SEPDC, the unstable existence of UEDP-Medhin in CUD, and the recent Merry-Go-Round alliance of Kinjit with OLF are evidences that demonstrate the pre-mature death of political alliances.

In Ethiopia there are many political stakeholders that follow different paths (peaceful, non-peaceful) to solve their problems. Just to name a few, we have Kinjit, UEDF, OLF, SLF, ONLF, AJC, ENUF, EPPF, etc. The infallible fact in the existence of these political organizations is that all of the above organizations are Ethiopians and fight for the segment of Ethiopia that they call home. They all have individually been bleeding fighting a common enemy, but their scrappy effort failed to stop the bleeding collectively. Last year Kinjit tried to break the vicious circle by joining AFD, but most members of the old guard condemned it and warned the public of such alliances with secessionist forces. We all knew AFD was composed of LFs. In fact, ONLF, an organization that carried out one of the most dreadful killings in our nation’s future development effort is part of AFD. However, as the most recent experience of the Irish peace accord to share power explicitly indicates, peace is made between enemies and groups that have deep rooted contradiction, not with friends. Compromises are negotiated between competing factions, not between groups of similar principle. OLF and the other liberation fronts, Kinjit, UEDF and other political entities should learn from the forty years old Irish movement that ended with an accord to share power. As the old saying goes, political power might come from the barrel of the gun, but political stability and economic growth will never come through the use of gun. Guns kill people, but they can never kill the will of the people.

Today, we find ourselves two years after the May 2005 election and three years in front of another election. What were the internal weaknesses of the opposition that kept it out of power that it arguably won? What were the opportunities that the opposition camp failed to materialize? What are the external threats that impede the progress of the opposition camp? What is the strength of the opposition that should be augmented? To stay ahead of events and lead the popular movement to victory, the Ethiopian opposition should understand and complete the above SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threat) analysis and develop an elaborate and systematic plan of action to accomplish its objectives. Such an elaborate plan is nothing, but strategy. In one side, we have an impoverished country and 77 million people who live in sub-human conditions; in the flip side, we have a ruthless dictator determined to perpetuate misery among Ethiopians. To make things worse, we have most of our elite political leaders awaiting fabricated trial. What should be our strategy that enables us to face such a multiplicity of problems? Do we as a society have problems? Yes, we do have many complex problems, but our resolve and common endeavor dwarfs all of problems combined. Do we learn from Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatic slogan of “Seek truth from facts”, or do we let our emotions rule over our intellect? I will leave the answer to our political leaders. My advice to our political leaders: Don’t think of the next election like a politician, think of the next generation like a statesman. You should say good buy to the era of noisy politics. Noisy politicians are like an air conditioner that makes a lot of noise but doesn't keep the room cool.

The next three years should be times of reconciliation; in deed, they should be years of converging towards unity, and a time to stop throwing mud at each other for those who sling mud generally lose ground. As we move to the new millennium, our resolution should be to change our old mode of thinking and make a transition to the third millennia with a “let’s do it” attitude. We should not be fascinated by the millennium change; naturally, it changes every thousand year. To have control of our destiny in the ever changing millennium, the real change should come from our inner most. Some of us may hate our enemies more than we love our country, but such a hate by itself does not do any good for our country – We need to change! Most of us love our country more than anything, but such a love is empty if it is not accompanied by a real positive contribution– We need to change! Some of us are preoccupied with “my way or the high way” attitude and don’t give value to the idea of others – We need to change! Some of us are endowed with excessive wealth, but we live a parsimonious lifestyle totally forgetting our roots– We need to change! We shouldn’t blame past generations for the current backwardness of Ethiopia, like wise, we shouldn’t be overwhelmed by what we can do for the future generation. As a society, let’s pay back the debt we owe to our country. Let’s diligently and genuinely do what is expected from us and pass the rest to posterity. Nation building is not the responsibility of one generation, but the initial step of laying the foundation must be handled by one generation, we are that generation.

Like any society on earth, the pursuit of happiness is the ultimate goal of all Ethiopians. If the pursuit of happiness is a radar that guides the endless journey of our society, the task of our political leaders is to build the radar, not to guide society throughout its journey. Today, our people are being forced out of their desired destination at gun point. They are being told to “shut” their mouth and go where ever they are told to go. All of these awful things are done in the name of freedom and democracy. Among the TPLF gangs (current Ethiopian government), justice and democracy are the two things that everybody wants to have exercised, but nobody wants to exercise. This is a bad taste of democracy that our people are forced swallow for the last sixteen years. If we are not willing to change such acts of evil, then lets not be stones on the path of the willing. I will again make a call to all political actors of Ethiopia, and specifically urge Kinjit, UEDF, and OLF to avoid their differences and work together for the sack of the national interest. Please start your effort now, running around like a mad cow in 2010 will only repeat the failure of May 2005. Regardless of your political affiliation, your short term plan should focus on the release of the CUDP leaders and other political prisoners. In the long run, you should be able to forge an alliance that can decisively defeat TPLF in the next election.

As is everywhere in any society, there are some of us who live to eat, and many of us who eat to live. I guess we’ve both eaten enough. Let’s all live every single day of the next three years to build a political system that ensures a peaceful transition of power, lay the foundation for a transparent legal system, and erect an economic institution that guarantees basic necessities to our people in the foreseeable future. The pitiless crime of the TPLF regime is that it governs people without their consent. As Abraham Lincoln said: “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent” In 2010 let’s ask the Ethiopian people the privilege to govern them…Amen!