Addis Voice Digest
6 August, 2010 | created using fivefilters.org
EPRDF’s myth of brutal
invincibility
Aug 6, 2010 03:44PM
Eskinder Nega, Addis Ababa
Medrek announced plans to transform its loose coalition to the
elevated status of a “front” at the end of last week. Its
constituent members dipped to six from the original eight, after
dropping one of its two Pan-Ethiopian groupings and its lone
Somali based organization. The rotating presidency has now
gone to UDJ’s deputy, Gizatchew Shiferaw; a position he will hold
for four months.
Few of the opposition’s even most ardent supporters clamored to
celebrate, though. The painful delay notwithstanding, the public
was still aching to hear about plans for resistance against this
year’s vile “election results.” Anything else was unavoidably an
anti-climax.
But the announcement was deliberate for the leaders of Medrek.
Having decided against resistance, news of an impending
restructured alliance, which the public has long supported,
seemed a fitting surrogate to placate public mood. “The election
was stolen. But we will not engage in a scuffle with (the)
muggers,” said Dr Beyene Petros, Medrek’s new spokesperson.
The opposition’s response is to acquiesce to the new reality, not
lead a peaceful heroic resistance as many of its supporters— and
some in the international community, too— had anticipated and
hoped. The opposition is in fact already looking ahead. As one of
the leaders of Medrek informed local media this week: “We
would like to negotiate with the EPRDF about the
upcoming election.” (Local elections are due in about two years
time. The last time they were held, the EPRDF “won” 100 % of
the seats.) And thus, the spirit of resistance, which attained its
apex in 2005 when the CUD, Press and Diaspora trio challenged
the election results, has been bluntly rejected by all political
parties in 2010. Not a single party has opted—and dared— to
carry the mantle of resistance.
What happened? Is this really a strategic retreat warranted by
lack of reparedness? Or does it denote a state of psychological
vulnerability that is incapacitating Ethiopia’s opposition?
Ethiopia’s opposition is no match to the EPRDF. Even absent the
opposition’s conspicuous military muscle deficit, EPRDF’s
discipline, grassroots presence, and quality of middle rankers
gives it a decided advantage. In sharp contrast, the opposition is
undermined by a variety of inadequacies: lax discipline, weak
grassroots, lack of finance, and more seriously, the stigma of
recurring failures. But it is exactly the need to beat these
shortfalls and save the legal opposition that the inspiring weight
of its leaders is now much in demand. Only one election season
has elapsed since the inspirational power of few opposition
leaders was able to score a seemingly impossible electoral
victory. They were constrained by the very same limitations that
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hamper the opposition now. Resisting a fraudulent election by
the same means is no more difficult nor any less achievable.
No mass mobilization relies exclusively—or even mostly—on
party machine in modern times. As has become of modern
politics itself, mass mobilizations are focally media driven in this
age of satellite radio and television and the internet. It is the
preserve of the best politicians to know how to use them. The
tide of Nazi victory at the beginning of the Second World War,
for example, was reversed by the ardor of Churchill’s rhetoric
and the allure of Roosevelt’s fire–side chats, both conveyed to the
people over the radio, not by the military prowess of the UK, the
US or any of the other democracies. None of them were prepared
for the brutal efficiency of the Nazi war machine.
Resistance seemed futile, and the cries to give up were strident
and seemed more attune to the rapidly unraveling reality. But
Roosevelt and Churchill eloquently differed, and went on to
famously win the century for democracy. The lesson they left
behind for future generations reverberates till the end of time:
An inspired people will always beat the odds. Lack of
preparedness is an obvious disadvantage but it does not
necessarily have to be an incapacitating one.
We know from the 2005 election that a sizable segment of the
opposition—even within the CUD, including some who were
imprisoned— had already been rendered motionless by a state of
psychological defeat. To this group, any altercation with the
EPRDF is perceived as an overwhelming encumbrance. In its
mythologized world the EPRDF is invincible, positioned always to
win. All attempts to successfully face up to it is deemed as
impractical and emotional. The imprisonment and subsequent
implosion of CUD’s leaders is the irrefutable evidence for the
veracity its conviction. Such helplessness dominates its every
calculation. And in its state of psychological melancholy, it is
temperamentally unable to comprehend
the merits of resistance. Its despondency is hostile to every
precept of resistance. There is, in other words, a discernable
class within the Ethiopian opposition that has internalized
helplessness. That much is certain. The question is: has it been
allowed to hold Medrek—whose working ethos is the impractical
consensus rather than the practical majority vote—hostage?
One could not help but suspect so. There is no other plausible
explanation for the paralysis that has afflicted the opposition. It
is high time to address the problem of defeatism within the
opposition.
Such defeatism has cloaked the EPRDF with a myth of
invincibility. Such myth is already being energetically expressed
by many of EPRDF’s supporters amidst the public. The series of
events in which “the EPRDF triumphed over the Derg, defeated
the Eritreans in the border war, and cleverly maneuvered the
collapse of the CUD” are promoted as confirmation of EPRDF’s
irrefutable superiority. And when the opposition demanded re-
run of the election, EPRDF supporters could not help but mock it
for daring to flirt with resistance when all evidences, as they see
it, caution against it. But what is troubling is not that gullible
grassroots believe the myth, but that its leaders have also come
to believe in it. Their intransigence is now intertwined with this
self-perception.
At the end of the day, myth will not get the EPRDF very far. Its
potency is limited to the extent that it is believed by the
opposition and the public. This is where the role of opposition
leaders becomes critical. The admixture of the opposition’s
perceived helplessness and the EPRDF’s aura of invincibility has
suddenly crowded public discourse after this year’s election. And
it is threatening to grow in to a mortal threat to the legal
opposition. This is no problem for a party machine. It could only
be overcome by a lucid inspirational display of will to
resist—peacefully and legally— by the opposition. It is necessary
and possible.
Meles Zenaw’s disingenuous
peace deal
Aug 6, 2010 03:21PM
By Sadiq Abdullahi Abdirahmann
In Ethiopia, Al-Itihad, a notorious former religious group led by
Sheikh Ibrahim Mohamed, who was deported in a few years back
from the United States, had unequivocally accepted to surrender
the group to Ethiopia.
Despite a mindboggling editorials bombarded via the internet by
Al-Itihad supporters which tried to hide facts that the peace
negotiation between Al-Itihad and the Ethiopian government
signed at Ghion Hotel was in truth a public humiliation for the
group. According to BBC Somali reporter present at the signing,
Mr.Abdirizaak Atosh stated that “the negotiation seemed
lopsided and there were nothing to the effect of the peace treaty
that is literally a meaningful to the group, except a single
stipulation to release prisoners lingering in government jails”.
Moreover, the Ethiopian Federal Affairs Minister Dr.Shiferaw
Teklemariam confirmed that the government had agreed to grant
amnesty to all leaders of Al-Itihad, and as he put it, agreed to
rehabilitate and integrate Front’s soldiers into the community.
At the outset, the shameful surrender and humiliation of the last
remnant of Al-Itihad seems a win for the government. But, aside
from orchestrated handshakes that were conducted in the view
of media, which is choreographed to mislead the international
community to presume the government is finally taking steps to
encourage dialogue, and is willing to negotiate. This is something
that the government falsely wants to project to the international
community. The Ethiopian government fears the crimes they’ve
committed against the Ogaden civilians is now being discussed in
the world stage. Both United States and European Union had had
a hearing on the crimes against humanity that are taking place in
Ethiopia. Therefore, the government wants to redeem its
shattered image as the international community gains awareness
and it is beginning to demand an end to the genocide taking
place in the Ogaden.
The problem with the Ethiopian government is that it has in the
past successfully used Al-Itihad for its own domestic and foreign
policy benefits. Ethiopian government has intentionally hyper
inflated Al-Itihad’s capacity and overreached as an organization.
They had painted the group as a religious fanatic’s danger to
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Ethiopia’s territorial integrity. The government claimed Al-Itihad
practiced irredentism policy, and were eager to wage
a protracted war against them in Ogaden. Even though, this was
in fact a false, Al-Itihad was never a threat to Ethiopia, and it was
indeed Ethiopia who attacked the group inside Somalia in 1996.
The Ethiopian government’s dishonesty received a sympathetic
ear among the unsuspecting power heads in the West who
flooded with a large financial assistance. The Ethiopian
government wanting to keep these financial incentives going had
practically made Al-Itihad, its number one enemy. They used to
amplify the danger the group posed not only to Ethiopia, but to
the whole region. For many years, the government did not
relinquish talks of eradicating Al-Itihad from the region. Even as
to greater extent, when the accusation from the government got
more and more outrageous, it still continued to find a receptive
ear among the Western counterparts who granted billions of aid
money going to Ethiopian government every year. Those funding
were used to build, one of the mightiest military machines in
Africa. Ethiopian government had forcefully used to guard their
power and dehumanize population in the country.
The purpose of the Ethiopian government’s deception also has
a hidden domestic agenda. The government wants to use Al-
Itihad to show as one tired group who had carried out an endless
armed struggle it could not win. This is what the government
wants in this so called negotiation with Al-Itihad; a good PR, full
of a misinformation that it could perfectly use towards the public
as a campaign to discourage any future armed struggle. The
government is specifically targeting those pro-democracy
Ethiopians who lost faith in the peaceful struggle, averted by the
government. They are now contemplating if such option is vital to
liberating themselves from the current dictatorship. The
government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has intentionally
closed down all paths leading to any genuine dialogue to take
place in Ethiopia, and has so far not shown the willingness and
care to end the tension that is ravaging under his leadership.
It is for this fact that the sentiment in the wider Ethiopian public
is boiling. They are fed up with a fake democratization process
that has made it possible for this brutal régime to remain in
power for almost twenty years. They are now fuming for
a positive change by any means, including conceding to an armed
struggle as a way to defend their rights. And to stand up to this
undemocratic power that holds them for hostages. It is well
published and well known fact that the government of Ethiopia
has discouraged dialogue, good governance, and the supremacy
of law. It has closed down all avenues leading to a genuine
reconciliation to end old and new conflicts that are eating up
Ethiopia’s future. It has disregarded the democratic rights of the
people to peacefully elect their government which is enshrined in
the constitution.
The will of the pro-democracy groups have been lost in the 2005
election when the government stuffed the ballot box and stole
votes belonging to the opposition. In the run off to the election,
the Ethiopian government practiced intimidation, arrest, killings
of the opposition members, and their supporters. They had
members of the opposition who won arrested and put in jail for
winning their seats and contesting the results after it had been
illegally taking away. This is a clear indication on why the
simplest hope of democratization ever taking its root in Ethiopia
had been unjustly repealed. And for one last time, those who had
any doubt that this government was undemocratic had to rethink
their steps. Even when it became clear that, the Ethiopian
government was fooling no one including the international
community, the Ethiopian public was willing to give a second
change to right government wrongs. The Ethiopian government
did not recuperate considering the repeat of the same result had
transpired in 2010 election, only this time in much worst form.
The government has all together buried any hope for
democratization and good governance to evolve in Ethiopia. It
had posted results that will make Zimbabwe’s Rober Mugabi as
an amateur in stealing elections. The government claimed it won
99.6% including every seat except one in the House of
Representatives. In the proceeding to the election, the Ethiopian
public was privy to conduct of the government and knew any
opportunity for a free and fair election was slim.
peacefully participated in the process until the government
started to kill its elected representatives who actually worked for
them. Therefore, the question needing answer is how the
government can justify on burning civilian homes, raping
innocent women, starving young children, kicking out NGOs,
killing and displaying corpse of young men, and refusing to allow
an independent observers to investigate these horrific
conditions? The human rights abuses taking place there are the
substance behind the problem not the surrender of Al-Itihad. If,
the Ethiopian government is serious about peace negotiation, it
must end this nonsense and address the real issue with those
stakeholders who can bring peace to the Ogaden.
The writer, Sadiq Abdullahi Abdirahman is a Human Rights
activist and can be reached atsabdira@gmail.com

Meles Zenawi came to power through an armed struggle and Defeat division to see
miracles of unity
therefore understands the public sentiment against his
government is growing and fears it might be tilting in favor of an
all out armed struggle. During the 1970s and 80s Meles himself
Aug 5, 2010 07:55PM
was a rebel leading his Tigray People’s Liberation Front against
the former Marxist leader of Ethiopia, Col. Mingistu Haile By Abebe Gellaw
Mariam. Mengistu’s biggest enemy besides Somali was his
group, the TPLF who were ingrained in Tigray. The Mingistu On Thursday two Ethiopian groups with conflicting interests held
army launched continues offensives against TPLF rebels. They two different
attacked, and attacked to destroy the rebels. The brutal fighting
created a massive displacements, hunger, and killings of
innocent civilians.

In his own tribute, Dawit Wolde Giorgis who was a member of

Mengistu’s Central Committee, and probably still leaving today,
made a tour to inspect the region as the head of Relief and
Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) a government agency set up in
Addis Ababa in the aftermath of the 1973 drought, and said, they
were aware of an impending crisis in Tigray. He recalled
witnessing the plight of thousands of refugees crowding into the
relief centers, but in fear of repercussion from Mingistu, had
gutlessly attributed the cause not to the army’s campaign of
repression but to the long-term failure of rains in the Tigray.
What TPLF juntas who governor Ethiopia today is doing to
Ethiopians, particularly the Ogaden civilians is exactly what
they’ve been on the receiving end. What is very difficult to
absorb is the fact: how the victim grows to become the
victimizer, and never attempts to learn from its own past.

If anyone, the Prime Minister Zenawi must remember to learn

from his own past, and try to find a better ways to break the
cycle of violence in Ethiopia. Resorting to the same old strategies
he fought against will only accelerate the downfall of his
government. Moreover, the questionable tactics such as using
ineffective organization like Al-Itihad as a propaganda tool will
not provide a lasting solution to Ethiopia’s problems. If the Prime
Minister and his government want to pursue the right course of
action to resolve these issues, it has the power to reverse the
past for Ethiopia, including the Ogaden.
The Ogaden conflict needs a comprehensive undertaking that
requires an international mediation. A third party mediator is
a must, to facilitate the agenda and to enforce results for parties
in the conflict to honor it. The Ogaden Somalis aren’t threat to
Meles Zenawi’s center of power. They have no ambition of taking
over his government to rule Ethiopia. In the past, they have
rallies in Washington DC. The first one was organised by tyranny
lovers, those mostly associated with the ruling party with an
ideology called opportunism. It is not that they never know what
is going on in their country, but they have chosen to deliberately
deny and distort the reality in the service of tyranny. The
majority of them are in fact members and supporters of the
hegemonic Tigray Peoples Liberation Front. So what they are up
to is no secret.
The tyranny lovers tell the world an amazing story, just like
a fairy tale. They say that Ethiopia is on the path of democracy,
peace and development. According to a press release issued by
“Ethiopian American Ad Hoc for Democracy”, which claims to
have organised the rallies at the White House and U.S. State

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Department, the pro-tyranny marchers “urged the U.S. Secretary miracles. And in fact, “Unity to be real must stand the severest
of State to take supportive steps to have a fair and equitable strain without breaking,” as Gandhi righty said. 
resolution in the horn of Africa Nile basin Countries agreement
and to continue the long-standing global security relationship
with Ethiopia in fighting terrorism.” In other words, they are
calling the U.S. to continue propping up tyranny at the expense
of the rights and freedom of the majority. Obviously, they never
worry about the Nile while they deny the existence of oppression,
inequality, repressions and injustice against fellow Ethiopians. 

On the opposite side, a group of vocal advocates of democracy,

freedom, justice and equality chose to organise a protest rally at
the Chinese embassy in Washington DC. Angered by the
repressions going on in Ethiopia with the support of the Chinese
government, they demanded China to stop aiding the tyrannical
régime of Meles Zenawi, who is muffling and censoring the
whole nation. After closing down the most popular newspapers in
the aftermath of the 2005 elections, he has resorted to blocking
websites, jamming radio and TV transmissions that are critical of
his myopic policies. Allegedly, the Chinese have been providing
the technology and technical support that has enabled Zenawi to
commit criminal repressions including the jamming of the
Ethiopian Satellite Television (ESAT). 

A government is supposed to unify a nation at least on the basic

national issues. Today, more than ever before, the nation is
speeding towards another cycle of violence. The difference
between the oppressors and the oppressed has proven to be
irreconcilable. Those who are for freedom and those who are
against it have never tolerated each other anywhere in the world.

The tension between freedom lovers and those who make every
effort in their power to sustain the oppression of the masses has
been a cause for wars and violence throughout history. Divide
and rule has done a favour to tyranny and benefitted Meles
Zenawi and his cronies more than anyone else. An oppressive
minority régime, as is the Meles ethno-fascist junta, founded on
deception, injustice, inequality and repressions, can only lead
a nation into another cycle of tragic conflict. The reason why
TPLF is trying to contain the resistance of so many political and
ethnic groups, armed and unarmed, is due to the fact that it
cannot survive without oppression. It sees freedom as a danger
to its very survival.

It must be emphasised that an oppressive régime cannot be

defeated by fragmented and inimical groups with conflicting
visions. Finding a common vision and mobilizing the Ethiopian
people to confront tyranny for the final showdown should be
a priority for those who are leading the struggles against the
brutal régime in and outside of Ethiopia. Common visions,
realistic strategies and mass mobilization are extremely
important in the struggle. Most importantly, unity serves as
a glue to hold divided freedom fighters to march under one
banner. Some groups are preoccupied with secondary agendas
that can only be addressed after the freedom of the Ethiopian
people is fully guaranteed. Differences aside, Ethiopians should
fight for their freedom first.

The tyrannical régime has been standing on one leg since it came
to power. Its last hope for survival is none other than the division
of those fighting against it. It must be the priority of those who
are fighting injustice to deny the régime the source of its
strength. Division needs to be defeated before unity starts doing