Note: In my first commentary [1] on the theme, “Where do we go from here?”, I suggested that the ruling dictatorship in Ethiopia following its 99.6 percent “victory” in the May 2010 parliamentary “election” will continue to do business as usual in much the same way as it has over the last two decades. In the second commentary[2], I focused attention on the Ethiopian opposition collectively and argued that they must atone to the people and reinvent themselves if they hope to play a significant role in that country’s future. In this commentary, I accuse Western donors as accessories to the crime of democricide in Ethiopia and argue for greater accountability in Western aid and loans to the dictatorship in Ethiopia.[3]
Accessories to Democricide in Ethiopia
In the criminal law, an accessory is a person who assists in the commission of a crime without actually participating in it. Those who are “accessories before the fact” assist in the commission of a crime. “Accessories after the fact” help the criminal conceal his crime and escape liability. In a perfect world, Western donors in Ethiopia would be prosecuted for being accessories before and after the fact to the crime of first degree “democricide” and for aiding and abetting a ruthless kleptocracy. But we live in an imperfect world, and must be content with bringing them to trial in the court of world opinion.
For the past two decades, Western donors and the international banks have nurtured, coddled and sustained some of the most brutal and tyrannical regimes on the African continent. They have done it rather craftily. First, they created the fictional character of the “new breed African leaders” and promoted them as Africa’s saviors. They were presumably much different than the old style in-your-face dictators like Robert Mugabe, Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin and the self-coronated Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa. The “new breeders” were said to be committed to multiparty democracy, economic reforms and civil liberties. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair lionized Meles Zenawi and his ilk (Yoweri Musaveni of Uganda, Kagame of Rwanda, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa). Of course, Clinton and Blair knew they were selling the natives the same old rancid wine of dictatorship in a new bottle labeled “New African Democrats.” Zenawi gloated and basked in the sunshine of Western praise and used that fame devastatingly against his opposition: “I am the one, and only one. So I am by the grace of the Western donors.”
Ethiopian Mortality = Western “Stability”
The primary explanation for the silence of Western donors in the face of gross and massive human rights violations, corruption and electoral fraud in Ethiopia is “stability”. On May 24, 2010 Agence France Press quoted a Western diplomat in Addis Ababa saying: “It’s a great thing if there are several opposition parties, but when it comes to the long-term stability of the country and the region, Meles is still your best bet.” Such anonymous diplomatic statements are repeated with such nauseating frequency that one is confused about the meaning of the word. We know the diplomatic justification of “stability” for Western donor inaction in Ethiopia has a long and ignoble history. In the early 1970s, they failed to act against the imperial regime because doing so could destabilize the country. They said the same thing about the military junta that overthrew the Ethiopian monarchy, except they wanted to maintain stability in the cold war balance of power in the Horn. Now, they are pulling out the same old tired rabbit out of their hat. “Meles is the best bet for the long term stability of the country.”
Zenawi has cultivated and foisted the “stability” canard on the Western donors for years. He has tried to convince them that he is the glue that keeps the 80 million Ethiopians from exploding into ethnic warfare and civil war. The donors know it is all a grim fairy tale, but they go along with it. The facts speak differently. It was Zenawi who created ethnic Bantustans to keep the people corralled in homelands as part of his divide-and-rule strategy. He is the one who facilitated the process by which the country lost its outlet to the sea. He is the one giving away territory secretly to neighboring countries and selling the country’s best land to outsiders. By the time Zenawi is done with Ethiopia, stability will be the last thing Western donors will be concerned about.
The second justification for Western donor inaction in Ethiopia has to do with Zenawi’s cooperation (particularly with the U.S. and the U.K.) on the war on terror. In 2006, Zenawi proxied a war for the U.S. to wipe out al-Qaeda terrorists in Somalia. He got bogged down in a war he promised will take only a couple of weeks; he found few, if any, al-Qaeda terrorists. Two years later he suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Somali fighters and exited leaving behind a rap sheet of untold war crimes against Somali civilians. The Bush Administration lionized him for making “monumental advancements in the political environment” and “opening up political space.” The third reason for inaction is said to be the impracticality and futility of ending or suspending aid. Significant cut backs in economic aid and loans would not be practical because of the nature of the needs on the ground; and using aid to leverage change could invite condemnation by other poor countries. The carrot and stick approach is said to be unworkable in the Ethiopian context.
True Lies
As Helen Epstein has shown in her recent meticulously researched and cogently argued piece “Cruel Ethiopia”[4], since 1991 the Zenawi dictatorship in Ethiopia has received some $26 billion in development aid from Western donors including the US Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the European Union, and Britain’s Department for International Development. By 2008, Ethiopia was the highest foreign aid recipient in the African continent with an inflow of $3 billion in foreign aid. The obvious questions are: 1) What really happened to all of the aid money? 2) Did it do any good?
Supposedly all of the aid money and loans have helped produce “double digit economic growth” and spawned a variety of social programs. Do Western donors know the real truth about the efficacy of their aid money and loans and the real growth of the Ethiopian economy? Of course, they know; but prefer to play dumb. The truth is that Zenawi’s claim of “double digit economic growth” is simply FALSE! As I have recently demonstrated in one of my commentaries, all of the figures about double digit growth over the past half dozen years or so years were simply and literally cooked up in the regime’s statistics office[5] and served to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a silver platter with garnish. It is a simple trick not known to many: The IMF asks its client states to provide economic performance statistics. In Ethiopia’s case, they pull numbers out of thin air or their back pockets and give it to the IMF, which in turn incorporates it in its official reports. Zenawi turns around and tells the world that the IMF said the country’s economic growth has been in the double digits. It is just that simple!
But the story of “economic growth” goes beyond fabricated statistics to the story of a chokehold on the economy by a full fledged kleptocracy. As Helen Epstien describes[6]:
According to the World Bank, roughly half of the rest of the national economy is accounted for by companies held by an EPRDF-affiliated business group called the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT). EFFORT’s freight transport, construction, pharmaceutical, and cement firms receive lucrative foreign aid contracts and highly favorable terms on loans from government banks. Ethiopia is not a typical African kleptocracy, and there is no evidence that Meles personally benefits from these businesses. Rather, they are part of a rigid system of control that aid agency officials, beguiled by Meles’s apparently pro-Western exterior, have only recently begun to recognize.
What about the health programs that have been touted as the crown jewels of so much aid effort? The evidence on those programs is no less shocking. Helen Epstein who actually completed a first hand investigation of aid supported health and social services reported:
I first traveled to Ethiopia in 2008 to study the country’s new public health strategy. Nearly every government and aid agency official I met expressed enthusiasm for the many programs underway. Rates of AIDS, malaria, and infant mortality were falling and Ethiopian health officials told me that there was no corruption; medicines were always in stock, even in faraway rural clinics; and community health workers were trained, efficient, and never absent from their posts….. Most of these programs were in rural areas far from the capital, Addis Ababa, where my interviews took place. I wanted to see them for myself, not least because I knew that some of the claims I was hearing weren’t entirely true. Government officials claimed that in 2005, 87 percent of children had received all major vaccines, but an independent survey suggested that the figure was closer to 27 percent. Similarly, the fraction of women using contraception was 23 percent, not 55 percent as government officials claimed. The annual growth in farm production was also probably nowhere near the government’s own figure of 10 percent.
… One day, I heard an aid official give a lecture about a small nutrition project in one of the poorest regions of the country…. A few days later I visited the region myself. I was amazed by what I saw there. Roads were under construction, a university had recently opened, and crowds of children were on their way home from a new school. Health workers spoke enthusiastically about the malaria bednet program, the immunization program, the pit latrine program, and the family planning program… But when I went to visit the nutrition project, my enthusiasm faded. It was intended for children, but many of their mothers were also malnourished. Several had obvious goiter, and a few were so anemic they nearly fainted while they were speaking to me. When I asked these women why they could not adequately feed their children or themselves, most replied that they didn’t have enough land, and therefore couldn’t grow enough food either to eat or to sell.
Hanna Ingber Win’s recent five-part analysis of maternal health care programs in Ethiopia supported by the U.N. Population Fund paints a similar picture of failed international aid policy[7]. In my commentary on Win’s report, I noted: “It is simply preposterous and irrational to talk about economic growth or development when a country has ‘one of the world’s worst health care systems.”[8]
Western Donors Through Zenawi’s Eyes
In a recent commentary, I outlined my views on what I believe to be Zenawi’s strategy in dealing with the Western donors[9]. The fact of the matter is that Zenawi knows the Western donors very well; and he anticipates and plans for any moves they are likely to make on the aid and loan chessboard. He knows what makes them tick and not tock. He knows they want two things: 1) “stability” (whatever it means) and 2) plausible deniability (that is if something goes wrong, they can say they did not know about it). Zenawi’s logic in dealing with the Western donors is demonic, but flawless in execution. When he massacred hundreds of unarmed protesters in the streets and imprisoned some 50 thousand political prisoners (by official Inquiry Commissions accounts) and stole the 2005 election, he was rewarded with hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and aid. When he herded and jailed nearly all of the opposition leaders, he was given more aid and loans. When he passed a repressive press and charities law, he was showered with more aid and loans. Every time the international human rights organizations issued reports of gross violations of human rights, Western donors rewarded Zenawi with more aid and loans, NEVER less. The best the Western donors have done in terms of bringing pressure on Zenawi has been to windbag about human rights, democracy and all of that good stuff. Lesson learned: Getting aid and loans from the Western donors and banks is like taking candy from a child. There is nothing to it!
Zenawi knows the Western donors so well that he now openly shows his contempt for them by getting in their faces. He jammed the Voice of America and came out in public and told the U.S. that it is no different than the genocidal interhamwe maniacs in Rwanda. American taxpayers dropped a cool $4 billion of their hard earned dollars in Ethiopia in the past few years, and they get spit in the faces. What a shame! The point is that Zenawi will continue to taunt and play confrontational with Western donors until they put a stop to it. That will happen when hell freezes over and the devil goes ice skating!
It’s All About Mind Over Matter
The bottom line for the Western donors it that it is all a simple problem of mind over matter. They don’t mind the dictatorship and its corruption and human rights violations, and Ethiopians don’t matter. In other words, they don’t give a damn if there is democracy, dictatorship or despotism. They are all words that start the letter “D”. They just want a “stable” government that will let them do their thing. Millions are dying from starvation? Send a few boatloads of grain to ease their consciences. Human rights violations? Stolen elections? Political prisoners? Suppression of press freedom? Issue a few public statements expressing dismay. Otherwise, have breakfast with the dictator in Stockholm, lunch in Toronto and dinner in Pittsburgh. It is all about mind over matter. Western donors and international banks don’t mind, and Ethiopians don’t….
The Need for Greater Accountability for Aid and Loans
Few are foolish enough to believe that Western aid and loans alone could develop Africa. In fact, the evidence is entirely to the contrary. In her recent book, Dead Aid, Dambissa Moyo has made a compelling argument to “cut aid to Africa” not only because it has not promoted development, but also because it has compounded Africa’s problems. Moyo argues that aid helps create kleptocratic governments in which powerful elites embezzle public revenues. William Easterley in his book The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, has shown the incestuous relationship between the international aid bureaucracies and corrupt local officials that benefit from aid funds.
High aid revenues going to the national government benefit political insiders, often corrupt insiders, who will vigorously oppose democracy that would lead to more equal distribution of aid. Systemic evidence in a couple of recent studies suggests that aid actually decreases democracy and makes government worse. Steve Knack of the World Bank finds that higher aid worsens bureaucratic quality and leads to violation of the law with more impunity and to more corruption.
Both Moyo and Easterly have argued for more accountability and tougher scrutiny of the “foreign aid industry.” The problem of accountability is complicated by the fact that the aid and lending agencies have a vested (conflict) interest in proving that their programs are working, and the dictatorships want to show that they are using the money well. It is a well known fact that the performance of the aid agencies is judged primarily by short-term criteria such as how much aid is disbursed, rather than longer-term effects on accountability. Aid and lending agencies are also insulated from the consequences of their failures. This often makes it difficult to implement a structure of accountability and transparency in recipient countries. For instance, the IMF has no mechanism to hold its client states accountable for the economic data they collect as I have demonstrated in my recent commentary . USAID performs perfunctory annual program evaluations that are self-serving and intended to show that U.S. tax dollars are actually doing good in Ethiopia.
In the short term, the best that can be done is to demand transparency on the part of the donor countries in the administration of their aid money, and in seeking greater accountability on the part of the multilateral lending institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. For instance, there have been numerous recent allegations of U.S. aid being used to buy votes and influence elections in Ethiopia. In the U.S., Congress has the power to look into such allegations of abuse of U.S. aid money. The second area of action should focus on demanding imposition of “governance conditionality” (reasonable conditions on grant of aid). H.R. 2003 (Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act) is a good example in this regard.
Those advocating for change in Ethiopia should take heed of the words of Helen Epstein:
The problem with foreign aid in Ethiopia is that both the Ethiopian government and its donors see the people of this country not as individuals with distinct needs, talents, and rights but as an undifferentiated mass, to be mobilized, decentralized, vaccinated, given primary education and pit latrines, and freed from the legacy of feudalism, imperialism, and backwardness. It is this rigid focus on the ‘backward masses,’ rather than the unique human person, that typically justifies appalling cruelty in the name of social progress.
The question is simple: When we witness the crime of democricide being committed against the “backward masses,” we have the choice of acting to stop it, or being accessories before and after the fact. I can imagine the thunderous crescendo of 80 million people shouting with index fingers pointing at the Western donors: “We accuse!”
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/of-elections-and-diapers_b_595203.html
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/ethiopia-speaking-truth-t_b_602507.html
[3]See also, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/western-diplomatic-omerta_b_453003.html
[4] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/may/13/cruel-ethiopia/
[5] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/ethiopia-the-voodoo-econo_b_542298.html
[6] See footnote 4.
[7] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hanna-ingber-win/mothers-of-ethiopia-part_b_300333.html
[8] http://www.abugidainfo.com/?p=11726
[9] See footnote 1.
Editor’s Note: There is a saying in Ethiopia — Ye Ayit Misikir Dinbit or Liju Dagna, Abatu Kemagna.
National Electoral Board of Ethiopia rejects election rerun call
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – The National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) rejected opposition demands for a fresh election after the government last month won a landslide victory that the Europe Union and the United States said failed to meet international standards.
The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and allied parties won 545 seats in the 547-member parliament, giving long-serving Prime Minister genocidal dictator Meles Zenawi another five years in power.
The Horn of Africa country’s largest opposition coalition, the eight-party Medrek, won just a single seat in parliament. Medrek and the smaller All Ethiopia Unity Party called for a rerun claiming vote rigging and widespread intimidation.
“We have looked at the application of the parties Medrek and the AEUP and neither of them came up with any evidence,” Addisu Gebregziabher, vice chairman of the National Electoral Board (NEB) told Reuters.
“We have discussed their request for a rerun and we have made a decision contrary to their desire. They brought only allegations, not evidence.”
COURT CHALLENGE
The aftermath of the May 23 poll is being closely watched by foreign diplomats in a country that is a growing destination for investment and Washington’s key ally in the Horn of Africa, where it is seen as a bulwark against Islamic militancy.
At Ethiopia’s last elections in 2005, an opposition coalition cried foul after the EPRDF and its allies won 327 seats. Riots erupted in the capital on two separate occasions. Security forces killed 193 protesters and seven policemen died.
Medrek immediately rejected the NEB decision and said it was now considering mounting a challenge to the election result through the courts.
“It is simply not true for them to say we submitted no evidence,” Negaso Gidada, a Medrek leader and former Ethiopian president, told Reuters.
“We submitted proof of ballots being thrown away, of our members being intimidated on voting day and in the run up to the election, and of people losing their food aid privileges if they refused to vote for the EPRDF.”
A European Union observer mission said the election was marred by the EPRDF’s use of state resources for campaigning and the United States said the government’s next steps could shape the future of U.S. ties to the country.
(Report by Barry Malone. Editing by George Obulutsa and Ralph Boulton)
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (Sudan Tribune) – A second British citizen is reported having been shot to death in the volatile Ogaden region of Ethiopia bordering Somalia, a source said.
The report can’t independently be verified at this point but unconfirmed sources said that “the Ethiopian Woyanne Police in Ogaden Region had killed a British Citizen”.
Ms. Muna Cabdi Faarax, 21, had traveled from London to Ethiopia last month to visit her relative in Ogaden Region,”
The incident happened on Thursday in Capital of the Ogaden Region, Jigjiga.
Sources didn’t indicate the intention behind the killings; however a witness is reported as saying that “the incident shocked the local people and it was deliberately carried out by the Ethiopian Police in Jigjiga.”
Despite the murder claims that point fingers at police, a different report received today by Sudan Tribune shows that Muna Cabdi was not yet fully a British citizen and she was killed during a robbery.
Reached by phone, Ethiopian government spokesperson, Bereket Simon earlier told Sudan Tribune that he has no knowledge of the report, but he said that the Ethiopian government will do the necessary investigations.
Muna had come to the region to visit relatives.
It is reported that her family is now in contact with the Biritish Embassy in Ethiopia.
Last month a British man named as Jason Read, working for an oil company, was killed in Ogaden region.
The Indian Ocean Newsletter (ION), whose sources include French intelligence officials, has just published an analysis of what is next for the Meles regime in Ethiopia. The ION agrees with Ethiopian Review’s prediction that the genocidal regime is now setting its sight on Asmara after emptying the rubber stamp parliament in Addis Ababa of any opposition. The following is posted from the current edition of ION:
Zenawi wants to turn the page on 2005
For Several months Prime Minister genocidal dictator Meles Zenawi has been actively working to protect his position in the 23 May general election to turn the page on the insult in 2005 when the opposition won the poll in the capital. He succeeded beyond his hopes: the turnout was reported to be a massive 90% of the 32 million electors registered, with 95% of them voting for an EPRDF (governing coalition) candidate. The opposition was annihilated by this vote. The federal parliament was already a chamber to rubber-stamp government decisions; it will now become a place where no voice of discord is tolerated. The systematic intimidation of opponents and the widespread usage of State institutions and funds for the EPRDF election campaign are the main reasons explaining this outcome. Nevertheless, by closing the door on the legal opposition, Meles Zenawi is de facto putting his regime on track for a one-party State. The only people to be pleased by the outcome will be the armed opposition, which thus sees the justification of its prediction that any attempt at legal change in Ethiopia is doomed to failure.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Sophisticated and suave when he is in international circles, a supporter of the free-market when it comes to the economy, Meles Zenawi has remained very inflexible on matters of domestic policy. He has been reinforced in this view by his experience in the 2005 election, when he found that giving lee-way to the opposition mainly profited the latter. Since then, he has constantly repeated that he would not renew the experience and putting his money where his mouth is, has done all he could to restrict the opposition’s political space. International donors are generally little aware of this “dark” side of the Ethiopian prime minister, which regularly makes its appearance in meetings among EPRDF dignitaries that he generally chairs in an authoritarian manner. In one of them, at the beginning of May, attended by several ministers (Addisu Legesse, seyoum Mesfin, Bereket Simon, Tefera Walwa, and others), he accused the legal opposition parties (Medrek and OFDM) of being infiltrated by illegal organizations (Ginbot 7, OLF, EPRP) and had called for them to be investigated. He even went so far as to say the same about ANDM (the Amhara component of the EPRDF), some thing which Tefera Walwa opposed stating that the difference between Meles Zenawi’s TPLF and ANDM did not mean the latter was an opposition Trojan horse.
Intimidated and humiliated opponents
Since the vote on 23 May, the prime minister has threatened everyone who dared to criticize the conditions and results of the general election. In his view, the warning is equally valid for the opposition leaders and for European Union observers. The African Union observers as usual had nothing to report on the elections they observe. Anyone considering calling for the vote to be invalidated was warned that he risks imprisonment. But on the other hand, Meles is fully aware that the non-re-election of most of the opposition leaders will give his regime a major problem. Consequently, secret negotiations are underway to give the opposition a handful of seats. EPRDF representatives contacted Merera Gudina to promise him a recount and to be elected to parliament if he distanced himself from the other opponents. He has so far declined this offer. A post in government was similarly promised to Lidetu Ayalew. For his part, fearing arrest, Beyene Petros asked during a Medrek meeting on 24 May that the opposition coalition no contest any election results until they have sufficient evidence of irregularities.
Heading for Asmara
Meles Zenawi will no doubt not leave matters there. He will try to push home his advantage, not only against the legal opposition but also against the various Ethiopian rebel groups that are waging sporadic armed struggle against his regime (OLF, ONLF), backed by Eritrea. That is probably the reason the EPRDF leaders keep insisting at the moment that an Eritrean opposition conference that had been on the cards for years should finally be held in Addis Ababa in July. Their idea is to put the conditions in place as soon as possible that could lead to a future overthrow of President Isaias Afwerki.
If you define election to mean what it means – freely choosing between choices, and tell me that there was an election in Ethiopia on May 23, 2010, you must either be crazy or think I am crazy to believe you. The whole charade, people going to the polls, the choreographed celebration and condemnation of Human rights Watch and “foreign forces” and the craftily worded statements of the election monitors and the “concern” expressed by donor country officials about the uneven playing field, is therefore simply a massive pile of joke on a captive population. The praise profusely showered on the Ethiopian people by the officials of donor countries about holding a peaceful election, as if election day under dictatorships is always a day of violence, is an insulting patronization to people who have been mugged of their basic rights. That there was no violence on Election Day is proof of the level of control by the regime more than anything else and has little to do with the fairness or unfairness of the election. How often do elections under Saddam Hussein, Mengistu Hailemariam or Castro turn violent? In fact, a record of some protest may be an indication that there is some level of freedom and free organizing.
That dictators are often delusional is known. At some point they end up believing their own lies. But the willful ignorance of our Western friends is dumbfounding. We all have seen it in broad daylight when the Ethiopian people were herded like cattle and driven to polling places to vote for their tormentors. I am disappointed that the EU-Election observers couldn’t go a little further and blunter on their assessment and call it a piece of crappy joke on democracy. I only hope they will say this in their final report if they are honest. I mean, this doesn’t even deserve any diplomatic lingo and finessing. As to the AU observation group, I can only say that a few trained chimpanzees from the Congo would have produced better reports. These buffoons make me hate that I am an African, frankly. In fact, they show me the reason why Africa finds itself at the tail of human progress on this planet. This election is a violence committed against the Ethiopian people in order to steal their free will and their aspirations to join the community of civilized nations.
Let me share with you a snippet of an email I received a few days ago from an old friend living in Addis Ababa. Read it and tell me if it shows you a people at peace with the election or the regime:
I envy you for not being here and watching this farce my dear. I just came back from the Meles’s victory parade where my blood was boiling all day. …My dear, we are reliving Mengistu’s darkest days. The demonstration today is a picture perfect copy of what Mengistu used to do. I hope you will see the video. It was organized by the kebele and the “Ternnafi” and the government officials before any vote was cast. The only difference is that Meles is now Mengistu. Another difference you see is Meles is standing in a bulletproof glass booth and does not throw blood filled bottles on the stage. This coward does know that the people he gathered there all hate him.
It was on government time and since I have to save my job I had to be there. You see in this country you are forced to celebrate something that even disgusts you. Not only they steal your vote, they make sure they also humiliate and dehumanize you. If that was their intention, they succeeded in doing that to me today. I am burning inside out and don’t exactly know what to do. … Fear is everywhere, even the fear of appearing unhappy about the results of the election….. I hope you people living outside can be our voices. You can at least freely cry on our behalf.”
I know my friend is speaking for many. This flame burning inside millions of people may not be visible to the naked eye, particularly to the casual observer. If history hasn’t stopped to be a lesson, we will soon see it raging in the open. Spin it all you want, there was no election conducted on May 23. It was a ritual held for the coronation of Meles Zenwi’s one man rule. Now that he has began hanging his pictures where Mengistu’s were once hung and even employed Azmaris to sing how handsome he looks (don’t laugh), Meles has fully joined the club of Africa’s legendary delusional dictators. Those who died fighting to get rid of the dergue thinking that they were doing it to bring democracy to their people must be rolling in their graves.
Everything that happened on May 23 and the run up to the day, the five years of intense repression since the May 2005 debacle, is so public and on record for anyone willing to see. If you think Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups have axes to grind because their plan of colonizing Ethiopia is thwarted by Meles Zenawi and Bereket Simon, just have a quick look at the annual Human Rights Reports of the US State Department, the most important friend of Zenawi’s government. It is replete with accounts of gruesome repression, terror, killing and torture, many of which amount to crimes against humanity. I sometimes wonder why our Western friends are often heard condemning Issayas Afeworki of Eritrea for not holding this periodic ritual they call election. It appears that they are accusing him for being honest and refusing to spend millions of dollars for a useless ritual. I am sure he can hold similar elections and get himself easily elected. Look at the difference with Ethiopia now. Why does Meles destroy the lives of thousands of Ethiopians over conflicts with these fake elections and spend millions of dollars that could have been used to feed hungry children only to arrive at the same result as his former idol. Oh, I forgot, our lords of poverty want this shameless ritual to hoodwink their own tax payers to dole out their handouts that perpetuate our dependency on them.
The Facts:
During the run up to the election, Meles has been locking down on all space for the exercise of democracy while at the same time suppressing democratic expressions and oiling his machine of repression with western aid. The lockdown on all civic society and the already feeble institutions that could at least grow into some pillars for democracy were being systematically dismantled one by one through decree after decree. The Civil Societies Law, the so called Anti-terrorism Law, that defined even minor civil disobedience as an act of terror, the draconian press law and the closure of independent newspapers that silenced journalists and sent many of them to exile, the jamming of prodemocracy radio stations including the Voice of America, critical websites, the complete blurring and then merger between the TPLF/EPRDF and the government, the use and establishment of neighborhood party watchers already experimented and pilot tested on the people of Tigrai, Meles Zenawi’s ethnic homeland, for nineteen years etc , were not done for fun. The imprisonment of Birtukan Mideksa, the Chairwoman of UDJ and a rising young political star was not because she broke any law? She has to get out of the way and suffer so that Meles and his cronies get their way. All of this was done for 99% control and 99% result.
According to sources from inside the government, the order was given out to local authorities that they will lose their livelihood if any opposition wins and that they will be rewarded if they deliver victory. Cadres worked their butts off, killing and imprisoning political opponents when they can, chasing opposition election observers, filling out voting cards and stuffing them, telling a terrorized people that it was easy to find out who they voted for from finger prints and hidden cameras in voting booths and that they will be a heavy price to pay latter if they vote for any opposition. If this is not a mafia like muggery then tell me what it is.
The 99.6% Surprise:
Many people seem to be surprised about the 99.6% “victory” margin. Some may have believed the well oiled repressive machine Meles Zenawi built was not as extensive. But many are surprised that Meles, the clever politician they know, failed to donate some “votes” to the opposition to make the ritual look like there was an election. Meles is a coward person even by standards of other dictators, as many of his former comrades testify. A slight opening of the door for democratic election five years ago has scared the living daylight out of him. That is one reason he chose calculated a zero risk and came up with this embarrassing result.
The surprise over the 99.6% margin also comes from some level of ignorance. This farce is not the only 90+% achieved by the regime. According to researchers, over the last five years Meles has purged the leadership of the national defense forces of all other ethnic groups and put 95% of it under the leadership of loyal members of his own ethnic party. For the first time since Emperor Menilik, there is no a single Oromo, holding a single key position in the national army. Of 61 key military positions identified by the researchers, 58 are from Meles Zenawi’s ethnic party. Now, that would be surprising. It is even more surprising when you think that the Oromo are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia that provide nearly 90+% of the export earnings and most of the food produced in the country. Researchers have also found out that some 90+% of the chiefs of the Ministry of National Security (the spy agency) are people from Meles Zenawi’s loyal ethnic clique? We are now told that 99% of young people who are allowed to attend graduate studies are members of the party, many recruited outside of their will. With the requirement for higher education becoming membership to Zenawi’s party and preference for government employment being given to party members, 99% of people with graduate degree in the country and all civil servants will soon be members of Zenawi’s party. These things should surprise all descent people much more than the 99.6% “vote margin.
What is perhaps even more surprising is this endless ritual of election observers and officials of the donor countries, the enablers of the suffering of the millions, issuing carefully worded reports and statements telling us that they are “concerned’ about the undemocratic practices, but that they love us and our country so much that they will continue to extend their helping hand. This is what the EU Chief foreign officer Anita Ashton did minutes after the she was told that her election observers have issued a preliminary report that angered Meles Zenawi. Her disregard for the facts and the speed with which she swung to whitewash the mild criticism was an expression of her bigotry towards Africans. She was actually saying, “You are Africans and the ritual is enough for you”.
The Net results:
Nearly everybody including Meles has lost this election. Peaceniks like me and many Ethiopians who have been sitting on the fences have also lost the argument that there is hope in democratizing Ethiopia though a peaceful process. In a perverse way they have made it easier on all of us now. The unnecessarily fragmented Ethiopian opposition should cease this opportunity to rethink its tactics and strategies, find its voice, and mount a vigorous common resistance to this inhuman system. Will the donors of Meles Zenawi who oil his machine of repression continue to help him after fully knowing that they are accomplices in the crimes being committed against an entire people? We will see. If history is any lesson they would. But they will soon see that they have achieved neither democracy nor stability in that part of the region. They will have a smaller mouth to open against a people who are left with the devils alternatives. Meles Zenawi and the house of cards he is built has peaked and can go nowhere but downhill from here on.
Meles and gang are committing such crimes with impunity. Some times they are even rewarded by the World Bank and others. The U.S. Government alone gives Meles over a billion dollars per year. Most of this money goes to buy weapons that are used to oppress and brutalize the people of Ethiopia.
ADDIS ABABA (IRIN) – After harvesting just 50kg of grain last year from his tiny plot in an arid corner of Ethiopia’s Amhara region, Asmenaw Keflegn knew he would have to ask for help. But when the 44-year-old member of the opposition All Ethiopia Unity Party asked his village chairman to put him on a list of those eligible for emergency food aid from foreign donors, he was refused. The chairman told him, “Let the party that you belong to give you aid.”
Prime Minister Genocidal dictator Meles Zenawi’s ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and its allies won 545 out of 547 seats in the parliament in May elections, amid opposition charges – dismissed by the government – that it employed a broad-based campaign of harassment, intimidation and coercion, including the systematic denial of food aid to opposition supporters. Despite annual economic growth of over 7 percent in the past five years, about 13 million Ethiopians – nearly one-sixth of the population – receive some form of foreign aid.
The ruling party vigorously denied the reports and said the opposition was fabricating such evidence to discredit the elections and undermine the government. The accusations are “outrageous and stupid”, Meles told reporters. “There is no such system. There will never be such a system.”
“The government at this level of development doesn’t need any coercive measures [in order] to be elected,” says Bereket Simon, Minister of Communication Affairs. “Regarding governance, regarding social development, the people of Ethiopia know for sure the future of Ethiopia lies with this government and so we have no need to compete in an undemocratic way.”
However, a March report from New York-based Human Rights Watch, A Hundred Ways of Putting Pressure, states that government services, including food aid distributions, are “tools used to discourage opposition to government policies, deny the opposition political space, and punish those who do not follow the party line”.
Food for votes
In the district of Tembien in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region, Seeye Abreha, a losing candidate from the opposition Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) party of jailed opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa, said the two main donor-funded relief programmes were manipulated by the ruling party before the election.
From 17 May, farmers who were owed three months of relief payments under the Productive Safety Net Program, a western-funded food-for-work scheme, were given one month’s payment and told by local government officials they would receive the remainder after the election “provided they let down Seeye and vote for the EPRDF candidate”, says Seeye, a former minister of defence under Meles.
“Emergency food aid and Safety Net were very much employed as a tool for influencing the result of the election,” he added. “I am not against the distribution of food aid because there are a lot of people who need it very badly. My point is that the food provision should be independent of politics.”
Donors say they have no evidence to prove their aid has been used as a campaign tool. The US, which gave Ethiopia US$937 million in aid last year, sent a team to southern Ethiopia accompanied by government officials in December to investigate the allegations. US efforts have found “no evidence that food aid is being denied to supporters of the opposition”, wrote Alyson Grunder, a spokeswoman for the US embassy, in an e-mail to IRIN.
A team led by the World Bank analyzed data on aid distortion from the PSNP and found no widespread pattern of aid misuse, said Kenichi Ohashi, the World Bank’s country director for Ethiopia.
Paying the price
Noting that Ethiopia is a major ally in western counter-terrorism efforts in Somalia and one of the largest aid recipients on the African continent, rights groups and opposition leaders suggest such investigations have been half-hearted.
“When all of their development programmes are being administered by the Ethiopian government, there is a structural incentive to underplay the human rights situation and to believe what the Ethiopian government tells them,” says Ben Rawlence, an HRW researcher. “This becomes a particularly difficult and embarrassing contradiction when faced with a more than 90 percent election victory.”
“The US can launch an investigation and it may work if it’s done independently, but if it goes around accompanied by government officials it’s not going to find out anything,” says Hailu Araaya, a leader of the UDJ opposition party.
The Bank’s Ohashi says donor efforts to investigate the issue have not been designed to uncover such problems. “These mechanisms are essentially not able to catch the kinds of things Human Rights Watch alleged to be happening,” he said. “Unless you go and do some undercover investigation you’re not likely to find it.”
In December, the government detained seven farmers from northern Ethiopia who travelled to the capital Addis Ababa to testify about aid politicization to foreign donors and human rights groups.
Rawlence was expelled from the country, and a foreign journalist who later travelled to northern Ethiopia to meet the farmers was detained for two days and threatened with expulsion, according to HRW.
The government has criticized HRW for what it views as the organization’s flawed methodology in reporting about human rights violations in Ethiopia. “Basically it is the same old junk,” says Bereket. “It has nothing to do with human rights or any discrimination or intimidation whatsoever. It’s a report that intends to punish the image of Ethiopia and try if possible to derail the peaceful and democratic election process.”
Protests
But opposition supporters in the countryside say the denial of food aid has proven to be a potent political weapon in a famine-prone country. Yimer Ahmed, 45, an opposition candidate for the regional council in the central Amhara region, said his wife recently divorced him because his membership of an opposition party had kept their family from receiving US food aid.
“Because life is hard, people are saying that being a member of the opposition will invite hunger,” he says. “This aid is coming through the government and without this aid they will starve, so they don’t want to have any problems with the government.”
