The tyrant defying the will of the people

By Kahsay Berhe

May 23, 2006

1. Introduction

The Ethiopian people have always been observant of their responsibilities in supporting the state and any opposition force that promised them a better life. They have always borne all the costs caused by the bureaucracy hoping to get education, medical care, and an improvement in their living conditions. They defended the country with all they possessed including their lives. However, Ethiopia has become an example of poverty, civil wars, famine, AIDS and Malaria epidemic, violations of human and democratic rights. The long and bloody struggle for liberty and a better life has not yet produced the desired results, which still has not discouraged the people from pursuing the same goals.

Today, a proxy rules over Ethiopia. A syndicate of ‘donor ambassadors’ runs the internal and external affairs of the nation through the surrogate regime of Meles Zenawi. The Prime Minister often borrows foreign diplomats to represent Ethiopia. Ethiopia does not have a government that stands for the strategic interests of the country. The "achievement" of the TPLF regime consists in the dismemberment of the country and in the status of being a land- locked country and ceding the national navy to Eritrea. It helped Eritrea build its army, militia and air force and thereby changed the balance of power in favor of the latter.

The task of the native regime headed by Meles Zenawi is to look after the interests of foreign forces. Our impotence to solve our internal problems brought us to dependence and foreign intervention, which again exacerbates our internal problems. Several millions of Ethiopians live on handouts even at the best of times. Foreign forces determine the fate of our people and territories. Ethiopia’s domestic and foreign policies are subjected to national security interests of foreign forces. In the recent elections, the Ethiopian people rejected Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his party. They repeated their verdict in the streets by protesting the election fraud and the crack down on the opposition, the media and the entire people.

The reforms initiated at the beginning of the twentieth century in the country did not go further. The Ethiopian peasants had to bear the burden caused by the military and civil bureaucracy and the diplomatic activities. Land owned by the peasants was given to thousands of civil and military bureaucrats as a reward for their service to the state and the Emperor. Thereby, millions of peasants lost their land and subsistence. Dissatisfaction was mounting in the peasantry.

Moreover, the central government deprived most of the regions of their traditional autonomous status. The Eritrean federation was abrogated. Integration of the various religious and ethnic groups was neglected. Social unrest and ethnic dissidence were spreading all over the country. The students and the revolutionary intellectuals emerged as strong political opposition forces to the regime. However, these revolutionary forces showed little interest in Ethiopian history and values. What they had in mind was to replace the old values and relations by a new ideology and doctrines such as socialism or Western values.

The demand of the peasants to regain the right to their land was one issue until the mid 1970s. The revolutionaries who spearheaded the struggle rarely took the peasants as partners. The revolutionaries' idea was to nationalize the land and organize the peasants in party affiliated mass organizations that enable the state to exercise full control over the people and their produce. There were various forms of land holding systems in Ethiopia. The people were not allowed to decide what form of land holding system they wanted.

The ethnic question, in Ethiopia known as national question, was another issue the revolutionaries wanted to settle. The revolutionary intellectuals discovered that Ethiopia was the ‘prison house of nations’. It was alleged that Ethiopia was forced into being by feudal warlords a century ago. They sought the solution in socialism. It runs, ‘self-determination up to and including secession’. So began the parting ways.

The internal divisions and squabbles among the Ethiopian political elite virtually invited foreign intervention. It was not a surprise that the first ever secessionist movement in Ethiopia was formed in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. The Egyptians and the Arab Baath states of Syria and Iraq saw a chance for their scheme in the Ethiopian internal confusion. They helped Eritrean dissidents to launch a secessionist movement in Ethiopia. There were several regional uprisings in the regions of Oromia, Amhara, Tigray, etc. but all were dissidents who demanded more freedom and fair taxation. The ELF was the first ever secessionist movement in Ethiopia.

Strategy of the Egyptian and other forces on Ethiopia was, largely, accomplished with the secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1991. Reduced and weakened land-locked Ethiopia was no longer able to build up a naval power and become a factor of stability in the region. Weak or failed states around Ethiopia could easily be made underlings in the service of Egyptian and other foreign forces against Ethiopia. Therefore, and by controlling Ethiopia's foreign trade, the Egyptians have the whip to prevent Ethiopia from being a stabilizing factor in the region and from utilizing its resources. The present predicaments are mostly home made. Fortunately or unfortunately, we have the means either to heal or deepen our wounds. How to heal them? I think we need to stop talking about each other and to begin talking to each other to find out how we should build a democratic and prosperous motherland in equality, security and stability.

Elections are genuine where the people are not coerced to elect somebody they do not want or prevented from electing somebody they want to; and when the people possess institutional means to enforce their verdict.

The struggle of the Ethiopian people for democracy and equality in the past fifteen years is entering its decisive stage. The Ethiopian people opted for change and elected the opposition in the May 2005 elections. Nevertheless, every step of the election processes revealed the hypocrisy of those who made up the Ethiopian Constitution of 1994 and the shortcomings of the party system in the country.

With the growth of the opposition, especially the multiethnic political groups, the TPLF and its marionettes in the EPRDF resorted to stir up inter-ethnic hostilities. The Prime Minister himself told the people and the world that genocide on the Rwandan dimension would take place in Ethiopia if the EPRDF loses power. The Rwandan genocide was carried out by the Interhawme Militia supported by the state. Genocide could be carried out by governments directly or by proxy forces. The CUD is made up of various multiethnic political groups such as AEUO, EDUP (Medhin), EDL and Rainbow Democracy and Social Justice. It recently formed an all-Ethiopia party, CUDP. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was quick to condemn it as Amhara chauvinists without even touching the program and the ethnic composition of the leadership and its constituency. For the TPLF not all political parties with political programs for all-Ethiopia are welcomed.

The UEDF is one of the major contending parties in the May 2005 elections. Most of its member organizations are ethnic based. The main members of the UEDF with national programs, such as the EPRP and the MEISONE, are denied recognition by the state and therefore not registered as political parties in Ethiopia. Many members of their leadership are in Ethiopian jails for more than a decade. The Ethiopian regime did not recognize the TAND, also a member organization in the EUDF. It means many leading members of the EUDF could not run for their parties in the recent elections.

The TPLF has never accepted free elections whether during the armed struggle nor as a ruling party. The former members of the Central Committee of the TPLF who were purged by Meles Zenawi in 2001, later admitted that the TPLF leadership drew a lesson from the 1978 internal organizational crisis and decided to prevent any person who entertains a different opinion from the leadership from being delegated to a congress and elected to the Central Committee unless he/she repents (Hizbawi, May 2004, volume 7)

Free and fair elections cannot be conducted under a dictatorship. The opposition and the Ethiopian intelligentsia have been demanding for the reform of the ENEB and admittance of domestic and international election observers until the eve of the elections. The Prime Minister rejected the reform of the ENEB and the admittance of domestic election observers to "avoid embarrassment". He did in fact reluctantly accept to invite international election observers knowing he was very well able to manipulate the election any way.

The 2005 election was challenging. The opposition groups demonstrated maturity and skills. Many small groups closed ranks to form two big election alliances against the ruling party. They won international support to press the Prime Minster to allow international election observers. They organized mammoth demonstration rallies at home. They were also able to organize Ethiopians in exile in support committees and task forces for their cause. They successfully challenged the party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Despite the unfavorable structural problems, the opposition decided to take part in the elections. The overwhelming majority of the Ethiopian people made use of their rights, long over-due, to elect their leaders. To begin with, the election results for Addis Ababa were, surprisingly enough, made public. More than 85% of the votes in the capital went to the opposition winning all the seats. Members of the ruling party in high government positions like the minister of information and the minister of defense as well as the Vice Prime Minister and many more lost the votes to the opposition candidates in the regions. In order to lay the ground for manipulation the ruling party immediately declared itself the winner before the ENEB received the results. The ruling party thus rigged the election and the filing of grievances by both the ruling and opposition parties followed.

The dispute was supposed to be handled by the ENEB. The members of the ENEB were handpicked by Meles Zenawi a decade ago. The massive turn out at the polls and the ignominious defeat of the TPLF/EPRDF rendered the ENEB almost unfit to cover the fraud by the ruling party. So the ENEB accepted only 10% of the grievances filed by the opposition while it accorded more than 90% of the ruling party. It became very evident that the ENEB is none other than an organ of the ruling party.

The next step for the opposition was to take the case to the court. Courts are supposed to be neutral and independent. However, the court and the ENEB are closely connected. The chairman and the Supreme Court is at the same time the chairman of the ENEB. All attempts by the opposition in the court failed. The proceedings exposed the dependence of the judicature of the ruling party and few Ethiopians could expect to obtain justice. It is becoming increasingly clear to all that the courts in Ethiopia are not neutral and independent.

Meles Zenawi refused to admit defeat and give up power; he also rejected the offer by the opposition to share power and finally he blocked parliamentary opposition too. He introduced new parliamentary rules whereby one needs a majority of the parliamentarians to put forward a bill for deliberation. This rule denies parliamentary opposition parties any meaningful participation. It was an indication that the so-called People’s House of Representative is nothing but a branch of the TPLF/EPRDF.

Thousands of Ethiopians in many parts of the country took to the streets to protest the rigging of the elections and to show their solidarity with the opposition. The people reaffirmed their vote for the opposition at the polls through massive demonstrations in the capital and in several regions of the country. The regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi mowed the peaceful demonstrators down en masse and banned tens of thousands of them to pest-infested remote areas of the country. Further, Meles Zenawi put many leaders of the CUD and the editors of the free press in jail and he is hunting the dissidents. He shamelessly accused them of treason and genocide. (See part two).

The 2005 election came to a conclusion with the constituting of the ‘new parliament’, election of the Prime Minister and appointment of his ministers. The regime told the elected members of the opposition that they did not have a status of a fraction and their party (CUDP) did not exist. These manipulative activities shattered all democratic rhetoric of the TPLF. The party that boasts to have introduced democracy in Ethiopia shamelessly imprisoned almost the entire leadership of the opposition, many of whom are elected parliamentarians. It also imprisoned almost all editors of the major newspapers, and news magazines and banned demonstrations.

The elections were a referendum on the 14-year reign of the TPLF/EPRDF, which is characterized by deepening poverty, bloodshed, wars, loss of territories and loss of access to international waters. The people of Ethiopia rejected the Prime Minister and his politics. Now, the TPLF seems to go back to the early 1990s and raise the issue of Amhara domination and chauvinism as a common enemy. It wanted to reinvigorate its ethnic political mobilization against ‘Amhara domination’. This policy will not serve the interests of Meles Zenawi because more people are aware of his sinister motives.

3. The question of the incarcerated political leaders and other activists

(To be continued)