As Prime Minister, you are accountable for decisions, which are made, authorized or sanctioned by Your Excellency individually and decisions made collectively by members of Your Excellency’s government. It is also settled that as Prime Minister, Your Excellency must often delegate responsibility and must rely on the advice of others in making critical decisions.

During the course of the last several years, it has become increasingly evident that the individuals to whom you have entrusted the responsibility to advise you on the particulars of international law and international diplomacy are neither competent nor able as international lawyers, negotiators, or diplomats.

Immediately following the Ethio-Eritrean Conflict, many vigilant international legal scholars, experts, and commentators both in Ethiopia and abroad, voiced serious reservations concerning certain provisions of the Algiers agreement and accurately assessed and predicted the fateful outcome which would ensue from Ethiopia’s faulty legal stance. Written opinions, editorials, and commentaries were expressed and abundantly offered to Your Excellency’s government privately and publicly in various media. Unfortunately, Your Excellency’s advisers did not pay heed to the consensus of the international legal scholars and Your Excellency’s government signed the Algiers Agreement hastily despite the myriad of warnings, pleas and petitions to Your Excellency’s government.

Following the signing of the Algiers Agreement, Your Excellency entrusted the same overconfident advisers the further task of participating in the selection of the members of the Hague Tribunal and representing the interests of the Ethiopian People before The Hague Tribunal. Not surprisingly, the disposition of the members of the Tribunal selected by Your Excellency’s government, the Tribunal’s procedures as agreed to by Your Excellency’s advisers and the transcript of the Tribunal’s proceedings amply demonstrated the reprehensible incompetence of those upon whom Your Excellency has chosen to rely. The inclination of those members selected by Your Excellency’s advisers, for example, could have been easily ascertained from their reputation among international law scholars and written works.

The Ethiopian People clench their teeth and fists with each replay and republication of the false public statements and the infamous words repeatedly uttered by Your Excellency’s advisers on the radio, television, the print media, and before the Parliament. Against this backdrop, Your Excellency’s government chose to sanction and reward this unparalleled misfeasance by entrusting the transgressors with high level choice diplomatic positions in New York, Geneva, and other foreign capitals to represent the Ethiopian People.

Your Excellency’s decision is perplexing and tormenting to the Ethiopian people. In any democratic society, these charlatans would be promptly prosecuted for malpractice, malfeasance, misfeasance, misconduct, and numerous other civil and criminal offences, rather given further opportunity to do more damage. The silence of the perceptive Ethiopian people is a manifestation of skepticism, helplessness, and speechless hostility towards Your Excellency’s government and should not be interpreted as apathy or approval of the government’s action.

Eventually, these notorious advisers will seek refuge in America and fade into obscurity and from the memories of those that witnessed their deceit and their names footnoted in the chronicles of Ethiopian history. However, their misdeeds and the legal and political chaos they have caused have forever blemished Your Excellency’s positive contributions and Your Excellency’s credibility with the Ethiopian People. Regardless of the favorable opinions of the donor countries, institutions, and the two esteemed universities who saw fit to award Your Excellency the Honorary Doctorates for Your Excellency’s presumed excellent leadership, the Ethiopian People feel deceived, betrayed, railroaded, disrespected, ignored, and bullied by Your Excellency’s government and advisers. The unparalleled incompetence of Your Excellency’s advisers and the aftermath will be remembered as the hallmark of Your Excellency’s Government and has assured Your Excellency a most unfavorable chapter in Ethiopian history.

Sadly, Your Excellency has again entrusted these mischievous individuals, and the same team of expensive American Lawyers, to represent the Ethiopian Government and individual Ethiopian claimants in complex proceedings before the Hague Claim’s Commission.

The preliminary proceedings and the first set of decisions of the Claim’s Commission have again raised the banner of concern. It is painfully obvious that Your Excellency’s incompetent trustees have opened yet another chapter with which to besiege the Ethiopian people and those who were victimized by the Eritrean Government. To any observer, the proceedings resonate the absence of competence on the part of Your Excellency’s advisers. Your Excellency’s advisers have again demonstrated not only a lack of competence and commitment but also an inability for thoughtful, methodical, and adequate deliberation and preparation in favor of a hasty mishmash and inferior compilation and presentation of Ethiopia’s collective and individual claims.

1. Basic arithmetic and known facts of the number of persons deported by each side; the relative wealth of those deported by each side; the relative looting and pillaging by soldiers on each side; the number of prisoners of war held by each side; and the number of persons displaced on each side appear to favor Eritrea. This has serious ramifications in the context of both individual and collective claims. Sadly, the scales will only tip in Ethiopia’s favor of Ethiopia’s collective claim if it is demonstrated that significantly more Ethiopian soldiers were killed and wounded than on the other side. Is the demise of Ethiopian soldiers to be the balancing factor for the unrestrained looting and pillaging by Ethiopian soldiers and bad advise of Your Excellency’s trustees?

2. The procedures to which Your Excellency’s advisers agreed and the submission and approach by Your Excellency’s government unfortunately focuses on the government’s collective claim and the comfort and convenience of the advisers and lawyers rather than enabling individual families of Ethiopian soldiers who were killed and wounded to effectively prosecute their claims in the most appropriate venue.

3. The procedures to which Your Excellency’s advisers agreed unfortunately presumes that the Claims Commission will have the exclusive jurisdiction to prosecute claims and presumes diplomatic intrigue in settling judgments. However, the US District Court in Washington DC has held otherwise, concluding that the Hague Tribunal and diplomacy does not afford an adequate remedy for individual claims thereby opening the floodgates to Eritrean claimants who are comparatively better advantaged and have greater incentives to prosecute their individual claims in the US than individual Ethiopian claimants.

4. The Commission has also concluded that Your Excellency’s Government violated basic principles of international law and Ethiopia’s treaty obligations in its treatment of Eritrean prisoners of law for which the beggared Ethiopian Government and People, rather than Your Excellency’s unqualified advisers and well compensated lawyers will now be held to account financially.

THE STAKES ARE HIGH

Is Your Excellency so satisfied to entrust the same people who failed in their duties to properly advise the government to now defend Your Excellency’s government competently and effectively? Can Your Excellency be assured that these unethical and unprofessional representatives will wholeheartedly and skillfully safeguard the interests of the destitute, uneducated, and powerless Ethiopian victims of the conflict before the Claims Commission and US Courts?

Because of these and similar events, like many concerned Ethiopians at home and abroad, recent newspaper editorials such as the Reporter Newspaper have succinctly inquired, “… what should the government do to gain the public’s trust?” www.ethiopianreporter.com/displayenglish.php?id=195)

It is respectfully suggested that it is incumbent on Your Excellency’s government to immediately dismiss from the government ill-suited, self-serving, incompetent, and dishonest public officials and public officials who have lost the trust and respect of the Ethiopian People and the Parliament. By any standards, Your Excellency’s unapt advisers are not sufficiently qualified by character, training, education, and experience to serve the Ethiopian People and Your Excellency in effectively and faithfully discharging your solemn duties as Prime Minister of Ethiopia.

It is also respectfully suggested that it is incumbent on Your Excellency’s government to immediately recruit lawyers and diplomats who have the education, experience, character, skill and commitment to the Ethiopian People in order to mitigate the legal and political catastrophe that looms over this beleaguered land and upon whom the Ethiopian People and government can confidently place trust.

Lastly, it is respectfully suggested that Your Excellency’s Government has a moral and legal duty to provide adequate resources to establish an effective Legal Aid Authority to recruit the best lawyers to effectively collect evidence and prepare cases and represent and prosecute the individual claims of the innocent and indigent Ethiopian victims of the conflict before the Hague Tribunal and US Courts. These lawyers should also be the authority responsible for coordinating, directing, guiding, supervising the work of and controlling the unrestrained American lawyers who have reportedly been paid more than US 7-10 million dollars in fees and expenses. The innocent, powerless, and impoverished victims of the conflict, the impoverished taxpayers, and the Ethiopian People deserve no less from their government.

To empower dishonored advisers and misfits with further responsibilities or to retain, appoint, or promote them into positions of trust or to ignore the indigent and innocent Ethiopian victims of the conflict is unfitting for a Prime Minister who aspires to represent and act for the Ethiopian People. The continued association of these unprofessional culprits with Your Excellency’s government and to keep them on the payroll of the Ethiopian People is an insult and a severe blow to the confidence and dignity of those who look to you for effective leadership, protection, and justice. Allowing these pariahs to freely roam the Halls of the UN and The Hague Tribunals to represent Ethiopia at the expense of the Ethiopian taxpayer is reprehensible and tormenting to the Ethiopian People and will not inspire confidence in Your Excellency’s government.

For a leader to appoint competent advisers, to hold the incompetent accountable, to dismiss the inept and unprofessional and to care for and respect the governed is a cherished tradition and the minimum threshold of leadership in any civilized culture. Without the trust, the respect, the support, the confidence, and the affection of the governed it is not possible to rule a nation in a peaceful, democratic, stable, and sustainable manner.

At the very least Your Excellency’s incompetent, unprofessional, and complacent advisers must be cast out of Your Excellency’s government and held to account for the immeasurable injury they have caused, and fully prosecuted for misfeasance in office, misconduct in lying to the Ethiopian People, and perjury before the Ethiopian Parliament. Unless Your Excellency’s advisers are above the law, it is only then that the confidence of the Ethiopian People in Your Excellency’s government can be inspired and Your Excellency’s expressed commitment to the Rule of Law, Democracy, and Political Stability in Ethiopia can become credible.

Sincerely,

GWG