Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s dictator, died last month – in a Brussels hospital. Why didn’t he get medical care at home? Look at the state of his people’s health, and you’ll understand.
The government provides vaccinations for only 5 percent of the children. Fewer still receive antibiotics when they contract pneumonia. Only 20 percent of teenage girls are educated about AIDS. Is it any wonder that Ethiopia’s average life expectancy is 56 – among the world’s lowest?
Eleven years ago, 53 African nations signed a pledge to spend at least 15 percent of their national budgets on health care. Almost no nation has lived up to that. Right now, Ethiopia dedicates 3.6 percent of its budget to health. So no one was surprised when the president went abroad for care.
In fact, across the developing world, whenever a president or potentate gets sick, he travels to a more developed state for care. That boldly displays the heedless view these leaders have of their own people. Perhaps if they were required to use their own hospitals, they might be more inclined to improve them.
Many of these reprobates find they can’t step on the plane as blithely as Zenawi did. To get away often requires stealth and deceit.
Not long ago, Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president, wanted to go abroad for an unspecified, apparently minor health issue. So he directed doctors at a Karachi hospital to forge a report saying he had a more significant illness: prostate cancer. Dr. Ghayur Ayub, a former national director general of health, had a look at the lab results and on his blog declared the diagnosis “ludicrous.” Zardari left anyway.
Last year, he decided to spend some time in Dubai. His spokesmen said he’d gone to visit his children. But that was proved to be a lie after he entered a hospital. The rambunctious Pakistani press declared that he was being treated for a host of different problems: a heart attack, a clot in his neck, a dangerous reaction to medicine.
After he’d been away two weeks, the news media began writing about the political message Zardari was sending. Pulse International, Pakistan’s most prominent medical journal, wrote that Zardari’s trip demonstrated a “lack of trust and confidence in Pakistani healthcare professionals and healthcare institutions.” It turned out he’d had a minor stroke.
Zardari is hardly alone. Since Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan strongman, took office in 1999, he has bragged ceaselessly about improving health care for his people. But when he contracted cancer, he flew off to Cuba – twice. That’s a telling statement about Venezuelan medicine. Cuban doctors say they earn about $24 a month.
In Venezuela, rumors are rife that Chavez’s cancer is terminal, though he denies that. Is he lying? You decide. Chavez suddenly decided to build a $140 million mausoleum for Simon Bolivar, the 19th century political and military leader Chavez reveres. The Venezuelan press notes that the building has room for at least one more resident.
Hun Sen, Cambodia’s prime minister, visited constituents a while back and noted that he had a minor wound needing treatment. He insisted that only when “doctors in Cambodia say they cannot deal with it will I go to a hospital abroad.” He failed to note that a few years earlier he had traveled to Tokyo for what the government said was a two-day “checkup.” Cambodian doctors aren’t capable of even that? Like the other leaders who travel abroad, health and welfare conditions in his country are no better than those in Ethiopia.
But in Saudi Arabia, an exceedingly wealthy state, Prince Nayef said he was traveling abroad for “medical tests” last spring. He was gone a month and said he’d been in a Cleveland hospital but provided no other details. He died in June – in a Geneva hospital.
Dictators always seem to be traveling abroad for simple tests or checkups. Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s president, insisted he was in a German hospital for a “checkup” last year – though he had issued a press release saying, “I suggest everyone have routine checkups here in Kazakhstan.” A German paper reported that he was treated for prostate cancer.
This spring, a South African newspaper reported that government leaders from Malawi, Gabon, Togo, Nigeria and Tanzania all had died in foreign hospitals. The paper then made a note of a fact that every one of those leaders’ constituents ought to stand up and shout about: These heads of state “prefer to pour taxpayers’ money into overseas medical facilities rather than spending it on improving health care at home.”
Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times.
The Reporter, a TPLF-affiliated local newspaper, reports that the late Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi has been buried, even though the burial will actually take place tomorrow, Sunday. This is how the TPLF media fabricates news. They prepare news about events before the actual events have even taken place.
The editor, Amare Aregawi, might have inadvertently pressed the ‘publish’ button instead of the ‘draft’ button after writing the news and that could be how it appeared on the web site two days in advance.
We have taken a screenshot of the webpage where the fabricated ‘news’ appeared, and as expected, a few minutes later the page was removed. See the screenshot below.
The late Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi’s funeral Sunday has been scaled down because of security threats, according to an Ethiopian Review correspondent in Addis Ababa.
The gathering for the funeral at the Addis Ababa Holy Trinity Cathedral has also been reduced to a small number of foreign dignitaries and senior members of the ruling party, while the people are being ordered to go to the various tents that has been set up through out Addis Ababa and watch the ceremony on TV.
The number of people coming from other regions of Ethiopia for the funeral has also been reduced to 200 per region.
The main fear on the part of the junta is that a riot could break out if there is a large crowd and things could easily get out of hand.
It is not clear where Meles Zenwi will be buried, but we have been informed that it will not be at the Holy Trinity cemetery. There is a wide spread speculation that his body is placed inside a freezer at a secure location and may be set to this birth place, Adwa.
This is an extremely stressful time for the TPLF junta. … stay tuned for updates.
EDITOR’S NOTE: There is a total clampdown on the independent press in Ethiopia. Even foreign correspondents are working under constant threats, frequently being called into Bereket Simon’s office to be threatened with expulsion from the country. In the report below by William Davison of Bloomberg, we removed all the junk that he was forced to add to his report in order to placate the junta and kept only the few hard facts.
By William Davison
ADDIS ABABA (Bloomberg) — [ … ] Throughout the capital, the mood is somber as Sunday’s funeral looms. Normally deafening bars keep stereos switched off. State television offers blanket coverage of the mourning. There are few outliers. An articulate young journalist – as appreciative of Meles’s rules as millions of his compatriots – reports on Facebook of the intimidation he suffered when he sat on a poster of the premier outside the palace after paying his respects to Meles.
“I was mad that my respect for the late PM could be simplified by the manner I treated a poster,” he writes.
One individual was hauled to a police station for disrespectfully listening to music on headphones, another user alleges below. […]
In an afternoon of stalking the mini-city of flats freshly hoisted by the government and now cluttered with barbers, bars, grocery stores and hordes of people, just one person expresses some doubt. “The EPRDF [Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front] is one party. They dominate everything,” a Russian-educated trader says in perfect English about the Meles-led ruling coalition. “There is no freedom for journalists. A lot of them are in prison.” Those would include dissident Ethiopian writer Eskinder Nega, who was recently sentenced to 18 years in prison for terrorism offenses.
The trader then requests to remain anonymous.
The system’s excesses are also on public display. The mobilization skills of the 6 million-strong party, previously used to permeate state and society, bolster crushing election victories, and encourage donations for Meles’s political masterstroke, the damming of the Nile, are in overdrive. Colleagues cannot travel to Addis Ababa for a meeting next week, one individual informs: all public transport is tied up busing people in for the funeral. Teams of government workers were parading through central Addis Aug. 31, chanting slogans and brandishing placards about the necessity to keep Meles’s dream alive.
The dynamics are similar to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam fundraising campaign: Both Meles and the Nile hydropower project – which signaled Ethiopia’s intention to use a huge asset historically monopolized by Egypt – would be staggeringly popular without any leverage being applied by the EPRDF’s leaders and cadres; yet they still turn the screw in order to strengthen their grip on power.
Critics sneer at some of the party’s alleged tactics: “they’re all receiving per diems”; “homeless beggars on television are praising Meles”; “they’re wheeling the sick out of hospital to join the crowds.”
A leaked letter purportedly from university administrators demanding that staff attend a mourning ceremony makes its way round the Web. “Got it. The North Korean comparisons are justified,” pontificated a media advocate from New York, suggesting that the mourning was not sincere.
But Kemal indicates otherwise. “I cried. Nobody pushed me, nobody paid me. I cried,” he volunteers about his response to Meles’s death.
[…] Away from the public pomp, nervous Ethiopians and Addis’s chattering classes opine that the future is uncertain. Very little is known about the inner workings of an opaque ruling party. Only time will tell whether its stability and thus the country’s is wrecked by factional squabbling. Only the years and decades to come will define his legacy […]
TPLF junta officials in Ethiopia are fuming over the decision by the U.S. Government to send Ambassador Susan Rice, instead of the vice president or the secretary of state, or another more high-profile official, to the late dictator Meles Zenawi’s funeral according to Ethiopian Review Intelligence Unit sources.
Apparently, the idiots believe their own propaganda that Meles is the greatest leader Africa has ever had. The U.S. is indirectly telling them, no he was a disposable tin-pot dictator.
The U.S. seems to have more respect for the late Ghanaian president Atta Mills who died in July. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton represented the U.S. Government at his funeral.
Brave Ethiopians in Houston, Texas, prepare to confront supporters of the late dictator Meles Zenawi at a mass crying festival they have organized for Saturday (see more details here). The following paper has been distributed throughout Houston today by patriotic Ethiopians. Bravo Houston!
