The last wake-up call

Ethiomedia: April 5, 2007

The crime of Hailu Shawel and his Kinijit party is winning the hearts and minds of millions of Ethiopian voters.

Hmm!

They also say 'strength lies in simplicity.'

If I were you, I would go for simplicity, and dump all the complex jargons like TPLF, EPRDF or Woyane and other terms of confusion. Simplicity is clarity, and it is very clear that power in Ethiopia today is absolutely in the hand of one man: Meles Zenawi.

His government is called the Meles Zenawi regime. The other forms or groups or organizations are cloaks of deception like there are powerful organizations with various leaders. Dictators don't share leaderships; if they do, then we've democrats in our hands. Under dictatorship, only one man is the maker and breaker of all life. Do I sound like a lecturer? Don't blame me. I didn't learn about dictatorship from books like American kids. In Ethiopia, we "live it."

Therefore, the first clear question about Mr. Maker and Breaker is: "Why did he declare war on Kinijit? Not the one he declared yesterday when he ordered the court in Addis Ababa to try Kinijit leaders on fabricated charges of 'treason' and 'attempted genocide'...but right a day after the elecion in May 2005? Why did he declare a state of emergency like the sky had come crushing down on him on the election day?"

Indeed, the sky had come crushing down on him when he saw the end of his rule without a single shot being fired from the side of Kinijit.

Meles saw Kinijit destroying his vision of keeping Ethiopia the Wretched of the Earth, and the Paradise of the Lords of Poverty. Meles saw the country he had fought against and conquered and wanted to keep it divided and fragmented and weakened was slipping from his hand by Kinijit whose invincible power was not the kind of arsenal of weapons at the disposal of Mr. Meles but the power of winning the hearts and minds of the Ethiopian people.

The dream of the Ethiopian people for a better future was the nightmare of Mr. Meles.

Kinijt's triumph to turn Ethiopia into a nation at peace with itself and neighbours, into a nation whose youths would be committed to building their country instead of running away from it like a plague, an industrious nation that would cope with the latest advances in science and technology instead of the dumping site of the 'surplus corn of the West,' into a nation where the prevalence of democracy, peace, justice and the rule of law would make mass arrests, torture, detention without trial, solitary confinements, extra-judicial killings as obsolete as the stone tools of the distant past.

Millions of Ethiopians placed their faith in Kinijit. Tens of millions of Ethiopians saw a genuine Ethiopian government was in the offing, and soon enough, peace, democracy and justice would reign in Ethiopia. Those millions of Ethiopians who sent Mr. Meles empty handed from all 23 parliamentary seats and 137 council seats in Addis Ababa alone saw the renaissance of Ethiopia as Kinijit's leadership was crowned with the garlands of flowers made out of the cream of Ethiopia's highly educated class. You may never know without firing a single shot, and just by deploying the country's top-notch diplomats and lawyers, Ethiopia may have - beyond asserting itself as a self-sufficient country - once again become a legitimate maritime power in the Horn of Africa.

However, Mr. Meles once again used the issue of Eritrea, falsely tainted CUD as war-mongering, and turned it to his own advantage. In this connection, a few western diplomats with very close ties to Meles were later heard saying war with Eritrea would have been inevitable had CUD come to power.

Given the closeness the diplomats had with Meles, they were echoing what the prime minister had told them to justify the murder spree he would later launch against Kinijit members and supporters throughout the country and that has continued to this very day.

Actually, Meles was trying to use every possible means to keep himself in power, in addition to safeguarding the business empire he built at the cost of the Ethiopian people but was threatening to collapse if the people's party had succeeded in becoming the next government.

All said, Meles saw in Kinijit an Ethiopia rising from the ashes of defeat to victory, leaping out of poverty to prosperity, overcoming national shame and anger with pride and glory. And the glory of Ethiopia is the enigma of Mr. Meles. And hence all the war to wipe out Kinijit.

All his moves have been crystal clear to anyone who has grasped the nature of Mr. Meles, who is now seeking death sentences to the cherished leaders of the Ethiopian people. He would - in the next court drama - turn the capital punishment into a bargaining chip for the benevolent 'donor groups' whose 'plea' for Mr Zenawi would be to commute the death sentences to at least life terms. His OK would then make him a rising democrat who responds to the worries and concerns of the West.

That is it. One huge, perplexing political chapter is then carefully closed for the Prime Minister who - thirty years ago - set out to liberate his motherland, Eritrea, but now finds himself battling Ethiopians to death to misrule them as his subjects for the rest of his life. The drama in the Addis Ababa court is the last wake-up call for Ethiopians to rise up in defense of freedom and justice. As to Kinijit leaders, they have fought their fight, a brave fight at that. To carry the glorious Kinijit torch of freedom to its destination is a historical-must for those of us still walking outside the barbed wire fence of Kaliti.