This weekend, May 13-15, Kinijit’s North America Support Committee will hold a very important meeting to discuss and decide on the future of the committee and its organizational structure. Since Kinijit is a popular party that most Ethiopians look upto to lead the struggle to remove the Meles fascist regime–in collaboration with Hibret– Ethiopian Review has been trying to focus its readers’ attention on the upcoming meeting, which will start tomorrow. Some of the valid, fact-based criticisms by Ethiopian Review were taken by a few supposedly Kinijit supporters who did not understand Kinijit’s principles and vision reacted negatively. All the TPLF cadres in the Diaspora also were mobilized to use this opportunity to fan the disagreement and cause division. But most focused on the crux of the matter, and now as a result, there is a healthy public discussion underway regarding Kinijit’s future. The discussion must continue in order to guarantee that Kinijit will stay a strong party that will help fulfill the aspirations of the people of Ethiopia.
In order for Kinijit to archive that, all its branches and support committees must be democratized. Currently, even though most of the Kinijit committees around the world are genuinely democratic, the Kinijit North America Support Committee is far from being one. It is this lack of transparency and democracy that is the root cause of all the problems and the frictions that spilled over onto public forum. What we are hearing currently is not encouraging. Reportedly, instead of democratizing the North America Support Committee, the current executive committee officials drafted a proposal that will allow all ten of them to remain in their position, but add one member from each time zone. This is not democratic, and will hurt Kinijit’s democratic culture. All of them must be up for election. The Kinijit delegates who are coming to Washington DC for the two-day conference need to make sure that they reject this proposal and demand for a genuinely democratic structure, the same as the Kinijit Support Committee in Europe, or Kinijit support committees in Canada and other countries. Ethiopian Review also encourages Kinijit members to contact their representatives and voice their opinion before the conference takes place–today and tomorrow. The trust of millions of Ethiopians is placed on Kinijit, and every one must try to make sure that this party stays strong.
The above is a personal opinion of ER Publisher.
Woyanne jelles stay away