Open Letter to Mr. Ishac Diwan

May 25, 2006

Dear Mr. Diwan:

I am a member of the Ethiopian Diaspora and the following is a brief comment on your May 17, 2006 letter written to the Editors of Ethiomedia. My comment is brief due to the fact that Ethiopian American Civic Advocacy has provided a detailed response to the issues raised in your letter. I fully concur with the response and the analysis. Now to my comments:

First, I believe you are aware of the fact that there is no local and regional autonomy or jurisdictional independence in Ethiopia. Local and regional administrations are ran by PERDF cadres handpicked by Mr. Meles. If you hand the money to these cadres, you have effectively handed it to Mr. Meles. Thus, you are trying to tell us to take comfort in the fact that the money is going to be channeled through the backdoor. This, in my view, is an unseemly act on the part of a great institution.

Second, you are telling us this budgetary support is for basic services such as education, health, water and agriculture; and abrupt withdrawal of significant aid amounts to inevitably hurt the poorest of the household. I would like to suggest to you that these services would only take the nature of “basic” if the money you intend to give the Meles regime were meant for the construction of schools, clinics, water well and irrigation projects and subsidies and direct support to farmers. None of the money you intend to give the regime is earmarked for such projects. If they are, the disbursement should be made directly to the contractors who undertook to build the projects. The poorest of the household are not any better off if the cadres of the regime are not paid their salaries. We are tired of hearing that withholding budgetary support will hurt the poor. It is a common strategy for the supporters of the regime to invoke the plight of the poor. The poor in Ethiopia are worse off today than they were 15 years ago, despite the $19 billion of budgetary support the regime has received. Remember that it is the poor that you refer to so passionately who rejected the regime on May 15, 2005. There will not be any development without freedom and democracy.

Third, the Bank is supposed to be a vehicle for freedom from poverty, illiteracy, and poor health. As such, it should avoid being what Mr. Stephen Lewis describes in his book Race Against Time (2005) that "the Bank and the Fund were fully told about their mistakes even as the mistakes were being made. It’s so enraging that they refused to listen. They were so smug, so all-knowing, so incredibly arrogant, so wrong. They simply didn’t respond to arguments which begged them to review the human consequences of their policies.”

Mr. Lewis’s remark reminded me of the comments Mr. Graham Hancock made in his book, Lords of Poverty (1989): “ … the policy dialogues undertaken during the 1980s between the men in suits from Washington and the men in uniform from Santiago to Kinshasa, or whoever, have been utterly disastrous for the worst-off and most vulnerable groups in the Third World.”

As if to confirm what both Lewis and Hancock have observed, you pointed out in your letter that “There is also consensus among the development community that Ethiopia, under this Government, has made progress on several key human development fronts…which cannot be allowed to be rolled back. Finally, our collective assessment is that the Government’s commitment to poverty reduction and broad-based growth remains strong.”

Mr. Diwan, the 'progress' this government has made in those fronts must be a top-level secret to the people while it is crystal clear to the outside world. Perhaps they may have been contained in those double-digit economic growth numbers the Government has been issuing lately.

I found it quite perplexing to try to justify budgetary funding for a government whose rhetoric is to have a strong commitment to poverty reduction and broad-based growth, but has nothing to show for it after 14 long years. Unfulfilled commitment is no better than no commitment at all. Those unfulfilled commitments are not acceptable to Ethiopians – the real stakeholders.

The Development Assistance Group in Ethiopia may not care about what the stakeholders want or say; and may proceed to give the budgetary support to the brutal regime. The last 12 months have clearly shown where the interest of the Group lies. It is not support for democracy and the rule of law in Ethiopia. It is not sustained economic development in Ethiopia. It is not eradicating famine from Ethiopia. It is not good governance in Ethiopia. It is not building infrastructure. It is not curbing corruption. It is not peace and unity in Ethiopia. It is keeping a murderous dictator in power and having ones interest served. If those interests are enduring, they can only be best served by a nation, but certainly not by a murderous rejected dictator.

The integrity and reputation of a great institution is at a stake. We, as well as historians are watching.

Sincerely yours,

Worku Habte Mariam
Toronto, Canada