The Ethiopian people have been told to show grief regarding the death of Meles Zenawi. This is sadness by government decree and it is not unique to us. We just witnessed it happen in North Korea but it always is a little strange when what you feared happen to you. There is no question the regime under the control of the TPLF party is orchestrating this drama. They are not even trying to hide it. The truth of the matter is they are going the extra mile to make sure the citizen understands it is official government policy.
It took the regime over four weeks to announce the death of the dictator. It looks like they took their time time to plan what to do and how to do it. They are perfectly aware that the individual is not liked let alone loved by the Ethiopian people. Since his illness was hidden from the public his sudden death would have unjarred the population. They know the situation has to be dealt delicately. Their main goal was how to use the unfortunate situation to garner sympathy and good will while at the same time show who the boss is. The fact the citizen loathed the little tyrant was a big hurdle to overcome.
The only way the party can get benefit out of this disastrous situation was to go back into their bag of tricks and revert back to the proven method of bullying by using force and coercion. It has worked since their inception forty years ago and they have become really good at it. The system of bending people’s wills to to fit the tyrants way is the hallmark of all totalitarian societies. The TPLF did not invent it but they are very good students of everything that is bad and toxic to society.
The question in front of us is how and why they do that? I believe this has eloquently been answered by Mr. Anthony Daniels in his book ‘The wilder further shores of Marx’.
‘…..with an established totalitarian regime the purpose of propaganda is not to persuade, much less to inform, but to humiliate. From this point of view propaganda should not approximate to the truth as closely as possible: on the contrary it should do as much violence to it as possible. For by endlessly asserting what is patently untrue, by making such untruth ubiquitous and unavoidable, and finally by insisting by everyone publicly acquiesce in it, the regime displays its power and reduces individuals to nullities. Who can retain his self respect when, far from defending what he knows to be true, he has to applaud what he knows to be false- not occasionally, as we all do, but for the whole of his adult life.’
This is a nut shell describes Woyane kind of mind set. You would think Mr. Daniels has been to Ethiopia. Mr. Daniels’s book is based on his experience of such failed states as East Germany, the former Soviet Union, North Vietnam and North Korea among others. The TPLF controlled Ethiopian government is copying the loathsome practices of the Stasi in East Germany and the KGB of the Soviet Union. Folks like Berket Semeon, Workrneh Gebeyehu, Getachew Assefa are excellent students of such inhuman system that has managed to hurt so many but was at last discredited by the citizen. Our country is back ward, our people are kept illiterate by design our culture still is based on fear of authority, fear of elder and our Woyane warriors found a fertile ground to practice this craft of crime against a nation.
I would like to take one statement from the quotation above and look at it in the context of Ethiopia.
‘…..with an established totalitarian regime the purpose of propaganda is not to persuade, much less to inform, but to humiliate. From this point of view propaganda should not approximate to the truth as closely as possible: on the contrary it should do as much violence to it as possible.’
In life Meles Zenawi was a recluse that disparaged even the word Ethiopia. He lived in a palace surrounded by robust security and never left his compound to mix or associate with ordinary people. The only contact the citizen has with the PM was thru the window of Ethiopian TV. We all know he never allowed open discussion and surrounded himself with people that worshiped him, agreed with him and swore allegiance to him. He is known to be very vindictive, ill tempered and unforgiving. The Ethiopian people, his close associates and his Party feared him. There was no respect or love for the individual. This is the man we all know.
Today Berket Semeon and company are telling us a different story. Mind you not a little different, not an innocent white lie but as outrageous as possible and beyond the truth as much as possible. They just do not want the citizen to cry a little, grief some but they expect some genuine wailing to be recorded and beamed all over the world. Why do you think they do that? It is all about show of power. By forcing us to do what we all know to be false they make us loose self respect and individual will. When you see your family, your neighbor, your coworker being forced to act in such manner when you find yourself doing something you know deep inside to be untrue you die some. The person is reduced to nothingness with no self respect, no spine and no free will. Haile Gebreselassie comes to mind.
It has the same effect on those that watch such spectacle from afar. I have noticed my friends to be confused, unable to understand and finally choosing silence to hide the shame. We all try to explain the phenomena by mentioning culture, being human or religion. It is an attempt to make sense. We are trying to make the irrational situation palatable by injecting some logic into it. It is perfectly understandable. Our brain rejects such dissonance. We get angry, feel confused, embarrassed and helpless.
This disturbing situation in our society is not a natural occurrence or an accident. It is engineered by the TPLF party. In their futile attempt to stay in power they have declared psychological form of warfare on their own people. It is relentless, unmerciful and very lethal. It does not kill you but it reduces you into a state of sub human, void of free will and easy to control. That is what the criminals are doing to us. That is what they have been doing to us with Meles Zenawi as the ring leader. Today he has left his underlings to continue from where he left off. They show no shame, no what is called ‘yelunta’ when they declare black is white, wrong is right and force us to repeat it after them.
How do you fight such form of warfare? There is no need to panic. No shame to being forced to go against our will. A government is a very powerful organization. When a state puts all its efforts to do evil no one is immune. The Russians, the East Europeans went thru over fifty years of hell. The North Koreans are in worse of shape than us. Our tormentors are amateurs compared to the Stasi. The fact that our country is backward and our people kept ignorant is what is giving them the power. On the other hand the world is a different place now. The advent of the Internet, the ubiquitous nature of Social media has given us a slight advantage. The founding of ESAT as I said before is a game changer. The Woyane goons monopoly on the media is no more.
We stop the complaining and work harder to expose, undermine and attack our tormentors aggressively. We encourage those that are trying to organize and work for us instead of second guessing, undermining their effort and splitting hair. We hope those that have been organizing for some time show us sign that they are here and active. There is no need to wait for the most opportune moment rather the job of the activist is to seize the time and make history. My friend Abebe Gelaw did not wait for the stars to line up but rather he forced the issue and made history. The time is now and the place is Ethiopia. We shall win, history is on our side. Stay strong don’t let them break you.
THE death of Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s prime minister dictator, on August 20th reveals much about the country he created. Details of his ill health remained a secret until the end. A short broadcast on state television, late by a day, informed Ethiopians that their “visionary leader” of the past 21 years was gone. He died of an unspecified “sudden infection” somewhere abroad. No further information was given. In the two months since the prime minister’s last public appearance the only local Ethiopian newspaper that reported his illness was pulped, its office closed, and its editor arrested. Further details of Mr Meles’s death surfaced only when an EU official confirmed that he died in a Brussels hospital.
A towering figure on Africa’s political scene, he leaves much uncertainty in his wake. Ethiopia, where power has changed hands only three times since the second world war, always by force, now faces a tricky transition period. Mr Meles’s chosen successor is a placeholder at best. Most Ethiopians, whatever they thought of their prime minister the dictator, assumed he would be around to manage the succession. Instead he disappeared as unexpectedly as he had arrived. He was a young medical student in the 1970s when he joined the fight against the Derg, the Marxist junta that then ruled Ethiopia. He went into the bush as Legesse Zenawi and emerged as “Meles”—a nom de guerre he had taken in tribute to a murdered comrade.
Who exactly was he? As leader of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, an ethnic militia from the country’s north, he presented himself to his countrymen as a severe, ruthless revolutionary; yet Westerners who spoke to him in his mountain hideouts found a clever, understated man who laid out, in precise English, plans to reform a feudal state. In 1991, after the fall of the last Derg leader, Mengistu Haile Mariam, the 36-year-old Mr Meles (pictured above) took power, becoming Africa’s youngest leader. He had moral authority as a survivor of various famines. Western governments and publics, who became aware of Ethiopian hunger through the Band Aid and Live Aid charity concerts, gave freely. Mr Meles was often able to dictate terms under which donors could operate in Ethiopia and turned his country into Africa’s biggest aid recipient.
Where others wasted development aid, Ethiopia put it to work. Over the past decade GDP has grown by 10.6% a year, according to the World Bank, double the average in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa [false]. The share of Ethiopians living in extreme poverty—those on less than 60 cents a day—has fallen from 45% when Mr Meles took power to just under 30%. Lacking large-scale natural resources, the government has boosted manufacturing and agriculture. Exports have risen sharply. A string of hydroelectric dams now under construction is expected to give the economy a further boost in the coming years.
The flipside of the Meles record is authoritarianism. Before his departure he ensured that meaningful opposition was “already dead”, says Zerihun Tesfaye, a human-rights activist. The ruling party controls all but one of the seats in parliament, after claiming 99.6% of the vote in the 2010 elections. It abandoned a brief flirtation with more open politics after a vote five years previously, when the opposition did better than expected. The regime subsequently rewired the state from the village up, dismantling independent organisations from teachers’ unions to human-rights groups and binding foreign-financed programmes with tight new rules. Opposition parties were banned and their leaders jailed or driven into exile; the press was muzzled.
Internationally, Mr Meles made friends with America, allowing it to base unarmed armed drones at a remote airfield. He also liked to act as a regional policeman. His troops repeatedly entered neighboring Somalia (they are slowly handing over conquered territory to an African Union peacekeeping force). Hostilities have at times flared along the border with Eritrea. Mr Meles cowed his smaller neighbour and persuaded the world to see it as a rogue state. This in turn helped him restrain nationalists at home. In his absence, hardliners on both sides may reach for arms once again.
The nature of power in Mr Meles’s Ethiopia has remained surprisingly opaque. On the surface, the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front is a broad grouping encompassing all of the country’s ethnic factions. Like the liberal constitution, it is largely a sham. Real power rests with an inner circle of Mr Meles’s comrades. They all come from his home area, Tigray, which accounts for only 7% of Ethiopia’s 82m people. His acting successor is an exception. HaileMariam Desalegn, the foreign minister, is from the south. His prominence raises hopes that the long dominance of the Habesha, the Christian highlanders of the Amhara and Tigray regions, may be diluted. But few think he has enough standing to exert real control.
Power will be wielded by Tigrayans such as Getachew Assefa, the head of the intelligence service; Abay Tsehaye, the director-general of the Ethiopian sugar corporation; and Mr Meles’s widow, Azeb Mesfin. An MP, she heads a sprawling conglomerate known as EFFORT, which began as a reconstruction fund for Tigray but now has a host of investments. It is unclear whether any of the Tigrayans will seek the leadership of the ruling party or be content to wield control from the sidelines. A struggle among this elite would be a big threat to stability.
NAIROBI (NEW YORK TIMES) — After two months of mysterious absence, Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s prime minister dictator, is finally accounted for: He’s dead.
By seeking medical treatment abroad he won admission to the club of African leaders who fled the health systems over which they presided in order to save their own necks.
Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that Meles died at 57, the average life expectancy for his still underdeveloped country. More telling still, however, was the paranoid bureaucracy that kept the details of his illness out of Ethiopian newspapers for two months. This, too, is the legacy of a strongman wicked man.
Ethiopia, the second most populous nation in Africa, has dizzying economic potential. But its anxiously planned, autocratic governance structure has been jolted by Meles’s death. Even as Ethiopians mourn celebrate, the coming uncertainty illustrates the danger of a personality-centric development agenda.
Since 1991, Meles had presided over the unapologetic consolidation of state power and regional influence, often by force. Few of the region’s affairs unfolded outside of Meles’s personal involvement.
Endorsing the Chinese model of state capitalism and central management, Meles was able to launch ambitious projects. These included an electricity grid connecting the rural areas where 83 percent of the population live to hydroelectric power from the Nile River, as well as a $23 billion pipeline to redirect oil from South Sudan to the port of Lamu in Kenya.
Pressing the flesh at the World Economic Forum or global climate talks in Durban and Copenhagen, he spoke for African interests with considerable slavish charm. His cheerleading of food security in Ethiopia and beyond was genuinely refreshing. And, of course, the G.D.P. growth rates for Ethiopia have hovered in the double digits for the last five years [false].
But Ethiopia, like other “African lions,” has work to do before its roaring economy actually reaches its enormous, impoverished population. Indeed, many of Ethiopia’s recent successes were undergirded less by the country’s inherent promise than by Meles’s personal advocacy, ideology and assurances.
Meles’s noted fluency with culture, economics and regional politics endeared him to China, Turkey and the warring governments in Sudan and South Sudan — not to mention major donor countries like the United States and Britain, which bankrolled Ethiopia’s development efforts in exchange for Meles’s strong hand in regional security policy.
His tenure also saw wars with three of Ethiopia’s neighbors — in the case of Eritrea, partly because of a deeply personal struggle with President Isaias Afwerki. And though Meles’s diplomatic dexterity kept aid coming — and critiques of his human rights record off the table — as Amnesty International points out, Meles’s self-centered reign has left Ethiopian prisons “packed to the seams with suspected political opponents — from urban intellectuals to rural farmers.” With increasing fervor, he pulped opposition parties and erected one of the most restrictive media and surveillance environments in the world.
Even as his East African neighbors leaped ahead on telecommunications and Web infrastructure, Meles stoppered conversation. When I visited Ethiopia in March, the queue for a mobile SIM card was days long; this summer, his government sought to criminalize Skype.
Now Meles’s successors will need to manage his blueprints without the benefits of his unusual mix of erudition and intimidation. [BS]
Dayo Olopade is a journalist covering global politics and development policy. She is writing a book about innovation in Africa.
By the International Crisis Group (ICG) | Africa Briefing N°89 22 Aug 2012
OVERVIEW
The death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who had not been seen in public for several months, was announced on 20 August 2012 by Ethiopian state television. The passing of the man who has been Ethiopia’s epicentre for 21 years will have profound national and regional consequences. Meles engineered one-party rule in effect for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and his Tigrayan inner circle, with the complicity of other ethnic elites that were co-opted into the ruling alliance, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The Front promised freedom, democracy and ethnic devolution but is highly centralised, tightly controls the economy and suppresses political, social, ethnic and religious liberties. In recent years, Meles had relied ever more on repression to quell growing dissent. His successor will lead a weaker regime that struggles to manage increasing unrest unless it truly implements ethnic federalism and institutes fundamental governance reform. The international community should seek to influence the transition actively because it has a major interest in the country’s stability.
Despite his authoritarianism and poor human rights records, Meles became an important asset to the international community, a staunch Western ally in counter-terrorism efforts in the region and a valued development partner for Western and emerging powers. In consequence, Ethiopia has become the biggest aid recipient in Africa, though Meles’s government was only able to partially stabilise either the country or region.
Ethiopia’s political system and society have grown increasingly unstable largely because the TPLF has become increasingly repressive, while failing to implement the policy of ethnic federalism it devised over twenty years ago to accommodate the land’s varied ethnic identities. The result has been greater political centralisation, with concomitant ethnicisation of grievances. The closure of political space has removed any legitimate means for people to channel those grievances. The government has encroached on social expression and curbed journalists, non-governmental organisations and religious freedoms. The cumulative effect is growing popular discontent, as well as radicalisation along religious and ethnic lines. Meles adroitly navigated a number of internal crises and kept TPLF factions under his tight control. Without him, however, the weaknesses of the regime he built will be more starkly exposed.
The transition will likely be an all-TPLF affair, even if masked beneath the constitution, the umbrella of the EPRDF and the prompt elevation of the deputy prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, to acting head of government. Given the opacity of the inner workings of the government and army, it is impossible to say exactly what it will look like and who will end up in charge. Nonetheless, any likely outcome suggests a much weaker government, a more influential security apparatus and endangered internal stability. The political opposition, largely forced into exile by Meles, will remain too fragmented and feeble to play a considerable role, unless brought on board in an internationally-brokered process. The weakened Tigrayan elite, confronted with the nation’s ethnic and religious cleavages, will be forced to rely on greater repression if it is to maintain power and control over other ethnic elites. Ethno-religious divisions and social unrest are likely to present genuine threats to the state’s long-term stability and cohesion.
The regional implications will be enormous. Increasing internal instability could threaten the viability of Ethiopia’s military interventions in Somalia and Sudan, exacerbate tensions with Eritrea, and, more broadly, put in question its role as the West’s key regional counter-terrorism ally. Should religious or ethnic radicalisation grow, it could well spill across borders and link with other armed radical Islamic groups.
The international community, particularly Ethiopia’s core allies, the U.S., UK and European Union (EU), should accordingly seek to play a significant role in preparing for and shaping the transition, by:
tying political, military and development assistance to the opening of political space and an end to repressive measures;
encouraging the post-Meles leadership to produce a clear roadmap, including transparent mechanisms within the TPLF and the EPRDF for apportioning the party and Front power Meles held and within parliament to lead to an all-inclusive, peaceful transition, resulting in free and fair elections within a fixed time; and
helping to revive the political opposition’s ability to represent its constituencies, in both Ethiopia and the diaspora.
As the Executive Director of the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE), I want to call on the Ethiopian people to remain calm and cautious during this time of unknown certainty.
Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia—the darling of the West, but a ruthless strongman to his own people—has passed away. After two months of rumors and speculation about his death or incapacitation, the government of Ethiopia finally announced his death. No one expected, even two months ago, that Meles’ 21-year long, iron-fisted control over the one-party government of the Tigrayan Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF)—which controlled the coalition government of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)—would come to such an abrupt end. Meles’ absence will challenge the entire system and we must be ready, but patient.
For years, opposition groups, as well as key stakeholders within and outside of Ethiopia, recognized the ability of this one man to either hinder or advance agendas of others to his own benefit, whether in Ethiopia or in the region. Now that he is gone, the TPLF/EPRDF system that maintained him and dominated every sector of society in Ethiopia, although still in place, may have taken a deadly hit. The future is uncertain as the new regime faces new challenges from inner TPLF power struggles, splits between Tigrayans, the renewed vigor from opposition groups and now, new demands from religious groups, both Muslims and Christians, for freedom from government interference in their religious affairs.
As our dictator has been taken out of the game, Ethiopians may suddenly have a unique opportunity to win their struggle for a healthier, more inclusive and more prosperous Ethiopia. Today is a new day. We are not going to celebrate the death of somebody but must still carefully appraise the real obstacles ahead that may not have been clearly revealed to outsiders or understood by us.
Meles had two faces—one for outsiders and one among Ethiopians. To outsiders, like within the African Union, Meles was perceived to be a “uniter” but to Ethiopians, he maintained his power through fomenting division. He was the architect of the Ethiopian system of ethnic federalism, which discouraged a national identity as it accentuated ethnicity; all used as a divide and conquer tactic to maintain control of the majority by a minority group comprised of only 6% of the population. As a result, we all know that the Ethiopia of today is more divided by ethnicity than ever before.
To state players concerned about global security, Meles played a role in the War on Terror and in sending troops to Somalia; but to his own people, Meles was our home-grown terrorist who most threatened our lives and futures and radicalized neighboring Somalia.
Development assistance from outside nations and organizations flowed into the country and Meles was seen as a “new breed of African leaders,” but to the people, especially outside of Meles’ own region, outside of Addis and outside of special project areas; development monies were often linked to political views or lost to corruption.
Repeatedly, outsiders have given Meles an unchallenged legacy for bringing millions out of poverty; but on the ground, the money has not trickled down to the people. Global Financial Integrity instead gave recent documentation of billions of USD dollars leaving the country in illicit capital leakage—$11.3 billion from 2000 to 2009— money from economic growth confiscated by cronyism rather than inclusive capitalism. Yes, Meles has secured large amounts of foreign investment, especially in agricultural land and resources, but millions of Ethiopians have or eventually will be forced off their land; with no say, no compensation and no provisions for starting a new life. These small farmers are now becoming dependent on foreign aid for the first time.
These are great challenges for the future for any leader. The newly appointed transitional Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, will have a critical role to play. Whether he will take the side of the people or will attempt to continue the status quo, is unknown; however, if he rises to the challenge of advancing the interests of the people, it will require undoing the machinery of suppression so carefully put into place by this regime—like the Anti-terrorism law that has imprisoned democratic voices and the Charities and Societies Proclamation that has eliminated civic institutions, replacing them with pseudo organizations controlled by the regime.
It will require implementing broad reforms: creating an independent judiciary system, freeing the media, advancing the Internet, forming an independent election board and initiating all those key parts of any well- functioning democratic state. He must also release thousands of political prisoners who are only imprisoned because they became enemies of the regime simply for living out their consciences.
As we face these next, uncertain days and weeks ahead, if we are to succeed as a people and avoid violence and revenge after years of simmering tensions, anger and frustration among us, we Ethiopians must see each other as one people—the Ethiopian people—and part of our family of humanity. This is not a time for vengeance or destruction, but is a time to start reconciling with each other for the sake of the whole country. This is the beginning of reform.
We are calling for dialogue among Ethiopians. We are also calling on those western state players, who supported Meles, to now support the organizations who are working to establish democracy, to preserve the territorial integrity of the country, to build institutions and to reject appeals of ethnic-based violence. We know that Meles received that support, despite his many human rights abuses and the repression of his people, because of the perceived greater interest in global security and stability in a geo-politically strategic region; but now it is time to reassess who will be the best long-term partners. It is the Ethiopian people. The man that charmed the west is now gone. It is a critical time to support genuine reforms and the people and opposition groups working for broad-based and meaningful change that can galvanize the people and serve their interests while enhancing the mutually shared interests of global partners and foreign investors.
From the beginning, the SMNE was established as a non-violent, non-political social justice movement to bring the diverse people of Ethiopia together; creating security, stability and greater prosperity through the restoration of justice, built on the principles of putting “humanity before ethnicity” and caring about “others” within Ethiopia and beyond because “no one is free until all are free.”The SMNE was also created to strengthen institutions which would promote truth, freedom, democracy, equality, civility, accountability and transparency in order to bring about a more robust society that could move from its dependency on others for its basic daily needs to greater independence.Ethiopia is a rich nation in people and resources. Good governance, democratic values, ethical practice, industry and inclusive capitalism can transform Ethiopia from its image of starvation, misery and suffering to a country that can contribute to the well being of others. Ethiopians want to seize this opportunity now.
We in the SMNE call for calm among the people and restraint for the defense forces. Meles had a choice to be loved by the people when he ousted Mengistu in 1991, but he did not take it. We must be careful now to not create ingredients for fighting against each other either now or in the future. Ethiopian Defense troops and security forces with guns should not use them against the people. The taking of one life is too many.
We Ethiopians have already shed too many tears; we have already spilled too much blood; we have already lived with too much pain and sorrow; we have already felt too much desperation; and, we have already lost too many of our people to death, abuse or hardship while trying to find a better life outside of Ethiopia. It is time to reclaim, rebuild and transform Ethiopia into a New Ethiopia where people want to stay. It will require all of us working together by each doing our share.
In conclusion, everyone knows how Meles favored his own ethnic group, the Tigrayan, and his own region, Tigray, and even more his own birthplace of Adwa, but the Tigray should not be afraid. If you have not committed crimes, you have nothing to fear. You are part of us and will be part of the New Ethiopia. As we have said before, the SMNE stands to defend and to protect the well being of each and every Ethiopian individuals and groups. You are part of that. We cannot build a New Ethiopia without you. Our enemy is the system, not an ethnicity, a region, a town or a religion. You do not have to hold back. You are our brothers and sisters. With God’s help, we can find healing for the past, reconciliation for the present and hope for the future. May God bless Ethiopia!
By Mohammed Keitha | CPJ Africa Policy Coordinator
August 21, 2012
Ethiopians awakened this morning to state media reports that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, 57, the country’s leader for 21 years, had died late Monday in an over
The late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, shown here in 2010. (AFP/Simon Maina)
seas hospital of an undisclosed disease. Within seconds, Ethiopians spread the news on social media; within minutes, international news media were issuing bulletins. Finally, after weeks of government silence and obfuscation over Meles’ health, there was clarity for Ethiopians anxious for word about their leader. Still, it was left to unnamed sources to fill in even the basic details. Meles died in a Brussels hospital of liver cancer, these sources told international news organizations, and he had been ill for many months.
“Death of yet another African leader highlights secrecy & lack of transparency when it comes to ailing leaders,” CNN’s Faith Karimi noted on Twitter, where the hashtag #MelesZenawi was trending globally.
After Meles failed to appear at July’s African Union summit in his own capital, Addis Ababa, spokesman Bereket Simon was forced to acknowledge that the prime minister was ill. Still, he asserted that Meles would be back to work soon, a claim does not seem to have been credible. The government went on to consistently play down reports that Meles had a life-threatening condition, even as it refused to disclose his exact whereabouts or the nature of his illness. Authorities blocked distribution of the one local newspaper, Feteh, that tried to publish more detailed information about Meles.
The government’s handling of Meles’ health situation reflects its culture of secrecy, as Bereket acknowledged last month, along with its heavy-handed tactics to control news and information. Yet for all its efforts, the government could not control the public’s hunger for information. The official secrecy merely fueled rampant public speculation and fears about the country’s future.
The government’s tactics are a product of its long-time leader. The paradox of Meles is that he was a formidable politician who nonetheless feared criticism in the Ethiopian press.
To the world, Meles projected the image of an engaging intellectual, a bespectacled bureaucrat who championed development and fought climate change. Meles had the “ability to understand what foreigners wanted to hear. He spoke their language,” said Ethiopian journalist Mohammed Ademo, referring to Meles’ mastery of the politics of aid, poverty, and the global fight against terrorism. “In English, he was soft-spoken and appeared to be willing to consider and tolerate and debate all arguments freely,” said another Ethiopian journalist who spoke on condition of anonymity.
But Meles adopted a very different tone domestically. He continued the Mengistu regime’s censorship of famine and drought coverage, and he ruthlessly stamped out dissent. “He was often arrogant and rude when speaking to Ethiopians. Threatening in parliament,” said Mohammed. In one of his last speeches, Meles lashed out at critics, real and imagined, and accused independent journalists of being “terrorists.”
The new prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, has an opportunity to break with this fear and embrace openness to the press. He can start with the unconditional release of at least eight journalists now behind bars, among them the independent blogger Eskinder Nega, who is serving an 18-year term on baseless terrorism charges.
The nature of power in Mr Meles’s Ethiopia has remained surprisingly opaque. On the surface, the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front is a broad grouping encompassing all of the country’s ethnic factions. Like the liberal constitution, it is largely a sham. Real power rests with an inner circle of Mr Meles’s comrades. They all come from his home area, Tigray, which accounts for only 7% of Ethiopia’s 82m people. His acting successor is an exception. HaileMariam Desalegn, the foreign minister, is from the south. His prominence raises hopes that the long dominance of the 
