Statement from Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ)
June 13, 2008
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
At about 4:00 PM today, the police told Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) — former CUDP — that it cannot hold its Founding Congress which was scheduled to be held at the Imperial Hotel tomorrow, Saturday, June 14, 2008. Their excuse is that we do not have prior permission for holding a public gathering.
Peaceful assembly is guaranteed by the Ethiopian Constitution. There is no law that requires obtaining prior permission for indoor gathering. The hotel reservation was made over two weeks ago. The Hotel Management had informed the relevant authorities on the details of the gathering –- a usual practice -– over a week ago and were told that it could go ahead as scheduled. Then, suddenly, there came this ban on a Friday, at the end of the day’s working hours, followed by a weekend.
We believe that this was a deliberate measure calculated to prevent the Congress from taking place. It is an illegal measure that violated our constitutional right.
Over 400 delegates were to attend the Congress at the Imperial Hotel. Two-thirds of these delegates have come from the Regions. The rest are from Addis Ababa. UDJ had spent over four months painstakingly preparing for this Congress. The preparation started with the gathering of founding-members signatures from throughout the country, the preparation of documents such as the Programme and Bylaw and the selection of delegates.
We started our preparations with the full knowledge of the National Electoral Board. We have invested about 300,000 birr on this Congress and on various preparations leading to it.
We are examining several options on what to do next. One of the options is to hold the Congress in-house: on the premises of our office. The space available is very limited, weather condition is not favorable.
We may have to make drastic adjustments in our programme such as limiting activities, without affecting vital ones, and extending the meeting by a half day. We see the present obstacle before us as a challenge. The Congress will be held, if not tomorrow, then soon.
Unity for Democracy and Justice
June 13, 2008
Addis Ababa
EDITOR’S NOTE: Very sad. Our condolences to his family and colleagues. Tim was a role model for ER as far as making politicians accountable.
By Howard Kurtz and William Branigin, Washington Post
Tim Russert, the Democratic operative turned NBC commentator who revolutionized Sunday morning television and infused journalism with his passion for politics, died this afternoon.
Russert, 58, collapsed while recording voiceovers for his Sunday morning interview program, NBC reported. He was initially reported to have suffered a heart attack while working in his office on Washington’s Nebraska Avenue, but the network said later only that he was “stricken at the bureau” and subsequently died. Further details were not immediately available.
Russert served as NBC’s Washington bureau chief and the host of “Meet the Press,” the top-rated Sunday talk show, which had an enormous influence on politics and was marked by his aggressive style of interrogation. As a frequent commentator on the “Today” show, “NBC Nightly News” and other shows, Russert wielded such clout that when he declared that Sen. Barack Obama had wrapped up the Democratic nomination last month, his pronouncement was treated as a news event in itself.
Russert’s television career was marked by a voracious appetite for politics and a shrewd understanding of how politicians interact with the media. He also wrote a book about his father, titled “Big Russ and Me.” Last week, he moved Big Russ to a nursing facility.
Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw gave MSNBC viewers the news of Russert’s death at 3:40 p.m.
“He worked to the point of exhaustion so many weeks,” Brokaw said, adding: “This news division will not be the same without his strong, clear voice.”
Brokaw said Russert had just returned from a family trip to Italy with his wife, writer Maureen Orth. They were celebrating the graduation of their son, Luke, from Boston College this spring, Brokaw said.
Russert served as host of “Meet the Press” longer than any other person and was “one of the premier political analysts and journalists of his time,” Brokaw said. He began hosting “Meet the Press” in 1991.
Tributes to Russert began pouring in as news of his death circulated.
President Bush said in a statement from Paris, where he is on a European tour, that he and first lady Laura Bush “are deeply saddened by the sudden passing of Tim Russert.” Bush continued: “As the longest-serving host of the longest-running program in the history of television, he was an institution in both news and politics for more than two decades. Tim was a tough and hardworking newsman. He was always well-informed and thorough in his interviews. And he was as gregarious off the set as he was prepared on it.”
Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the Republican candidate for president in the November elections, called Russert “truly a great American who loved his family, his friends, his Buffalo Bills, and everything about politics and America.” In a statement, McCain added: “He was just a terrific guy. I was proud to call him a friend.”
Obama (D-Ill.) issued a statement in which he described himself as “grief-stricken with loss.” The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who met Russert in Boston in 2004 when Obama addressed his party’s national convention, said, “There wasn’t a better interviewer on television, a more thoughtful analyst about politics.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said: “Tim was a warm and gracious family man with a great zest for life and an unsurpassed passion for his work. His rise from working-class roots to become a well-respected leader in political journalism is an inspiration to many. Tim asked the tough questions the right way and was the best in the business at keeping his interview subjects honest.”
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said Russert’s reputation was such that when Kerry announced his decision to run for president in 2004, “the only place to do it was on “Meet the Press.” Kerry said Russert “loved to hold the big guys accountable, and in the original, intelligent, studied way he did it, he emerged as the biggest guy of all.”
One of Russert’s competitors, Bob Schieffer of CBS’s “Face the Nation” program, said the two delighted in scooping each other, the Associated Press reported. “When you slipped one past ol’ Russert, you felt as though you had hit a home run off the best pitcher in the league,” the agency quoted Schieffer as saying. “I just loved Tim, and I will miss him more than I can say.”
“There was no one who studied, prepared and worked as hard on a story as Tim,” said Albert Hunt, a close friend and executive editor for Washington at the Bloomberg news service. “His only agenda was to inform and educate his millions of viewers,” Hunt told the agency. “There was no one more generous or supportive of friends and colleagues; there was no one more fun to talk politics with, or just to be with.”
Michael A. Newman, Russert’s internist, said efforts to resuscitate Russert were begun immediately and continued at Washington’s Sibley Memorial Hospital, to no avail, AP reported. An autopsy is pending, Newman said.
Russert was born May 7, 1950, in Buffalo, N.Y., the son of Irish American parents. His father was a World War II veteran who worked two blue-collar jobs while raising four children in a working-class neighborhood in South Buffalo. Russert attended Buffalo’s Jesuit Canisius High School and went on to study law at Cleveland State University.
He got his start in New York Democratic politics, working on the political campaigns of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Gov. Mario Cuomo. He served as chief of staff to Moynihan from 1977 to 1982 and was a counselor in Cuomo’s Albany office from 1983 to 1984.
Russert was hired by NBC at its Washington bureau in 1984 and became the network’s Washington bureau chief four years later.
The Imperial Hotel in Addis Ababa told leaders of Unity for Democracy and Justice Party (UDJ) today that they cannot hold their meeting tomorrow because the Woyanne regime has ordered them to cancel it.
UDJ has been planning to hold its General Assembly meeting Saturday and Sunday at the Imperial Hotel in Addis Ababa where it would decide on the party’s future course of action and elect its leades. Over 400 UDJ representatives, as well as guests have been expected to attend the meeting.
UPDATE FROM KINIJIT NORTH AMERICA >>
General Assembly of UDJP
The leaders of Unity for Democracy and Justice Party (UDJ) were told today by the Imperial Hotel that they cannot conduct their meeting tomorrow . Clearly the Woyanne regime has ordered the hotel to cancel it. Listen to the following interview with Ato Gizachew Shiferaw with Kinijit North America PR on this matter 
here
EDITOR’S NOTE: Deputy Prime Minister and Agriculture Minister Addisu Legese says figure of needy is deliberate exaggeration by some institutions. There are only 4.5 million people who are hungry, according to Addisu. Read more about what this sick heartless Woyanne says below as reported by WIC (Walta Woyanne information Center).
Addis Ababa, June 13 (WIC) – Institutions that exaggerate the food shortage in Ethiopia and report inflated figures of the needy are intent on belittling the economic growth of the country and calculating their interests, Deputy Prime Minister Addisu Legesse said.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development told journalists yesterday that some institutions engaged in relief work consider the decline in the number of the needy as a threat to their existence.They therefore have been suggesting to report inflated figures so as to get huge assistance, he added.
According to Addisu, the number of people facing food shortage due to the shortage of Belg rains in some areas of the country stands at 4.6 million and the government has been providing assistance for them.
The food shortage has occurred in some woredas of SNNP, Oromia, Somali, Amhara and Tigray states, it was indicated.
Though various institutions have been reporting exaggerated figures of needy people, a study carried out by the government has ascertained that the number stands at only 4.6 million, he reiterated.
The figure includes people living belg growing regions as well as households embraced under the safety net program of the government, the Deputy Prime Minister added.
Of the stated figure, the number of children under the age of five and in need of follow up and support is just 75,000, it was pointed out.
Some 775,000 quintals of food has so far been apportioned to the people since last February, he said, adding that medical care was also given by earmarking 50 million birr budget, according to him.
The government would further enhance the support it has been rendering to the people needy in collaboration with partners, the Deputy Premier concluded.
Source: The Dinah Project
There are some causes of illness and misery that demand advanced diagnostics, expensive medication and even cutting edge technology. There are many other tragic conditions that need information, and care that exists, if only people have the means to reach it and know that it can help them.
This is the case of obstetric fistula, a deplorable trauma brought on by mishandled birth, which leaves its sufferers incapacitated for the rest of their lives. What is fistula?
The conditions that lead to fistulae (or fistulas) can happen to any woman, anywhere, because they are an outcome of a problematic birth process. A famous historical case involved Princess Charlotte of England. As the only eligible heir to the throne, her birth was supposed to be a cause for celebration, but did not progress healthily (obstructed labour). The princess never had to suffer the burden of fistula because she died 50 hours into her labour, after giving birth to a stillborn child.
Today, fistula is still common in parts of Africa and Asia, where access to health care is sorely limited. It results from childbirth taking place without adequate medical or midwifery facilities, where experts cannot intervene and prevent trauma happening. Sufferers who survive the ordeal of obstructed labour, tend to be left untreated. Further, because they remain incontinent they are left believing that they are dirty and unacceptable instead of being informed that their condition is caused by a perinatal complication and it is completely curable.
Ethiopia has recently received special attention in regard to the issue of Obstetric Fistula, because their burning need for help to treat their estimated 9,000 new cases each year and tens of thousands of chronic cases, has begun getting attention from international supporters including Oprah and a fund set up by Virgin.
One particular hospital, set up by Australian physicians Catherine and Reginald Hamlin in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in the 1960’s, is doing a great deal to heal women with fistula in Ethiopia. The procedure costs about $450 but in a country where some woman cannot access medical care when giving birth, it is difficult to bring these women to the caretakers, even when money is raised to cover the procedure. This is what The Fistula Foundation is battling to do.
The real answer, however, lies not in curing all cases, but in providing the medical standards and education that will prevent the kind of births that result in fistulae.
The United Nations Population Fund started a global initiative in 2003 named the Campaign to End Fistula. The monies raised to cover fistula care in 35 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Mideast has been wholly insufficient. With local governments having neither the capability or the commitment to treat and prevent cases, the care is often left to NGOs.
We may be too far away to give help or support, but we can make a small contribution by donating to The Fistula Foundation and by spreading the word.
