ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — Some groups who claim to be opposition parties in Ethiopia and the ruling tribal junta, Woyanne, have agreed to new rules for June 2010 sham elections.
The new electoral laws reportedly outline campaigning, voting and party symbol guidelines and how to deal with intimidation and violence and call for the establishment of a panel to handle election disputes.
“The agreement was reached on consensus by all participants after two months of negotiations,” said Ayalew Chamiso, head of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy party (CUD).
Ayalew Chamiso is a Woyanne puppet who has been installed by Meles Zenawi as chairman of the now defunct CUD, popularly known as Kinijit, that won the 2005 elections.
“The agreement enables the elections to be carried out in a peaceful, fair and free manner,” added Ayalew.
The All Ethiopian Unity Party (AAUP) led by Hailu Shawel and the Ethiopia Democratic Party (EDP) led by Lidetu Ayalew also agreed to the rules, according to the state television.
On the other hand, the Forum for Democratic Dialogue in Ethiopia (Medrek), a coalition of 8 parties, which had said key elements on security and freedom of expression and movement were not included in the code, has not signed on.
Berhanu Nega, a former leader of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) and now a leader of the Ginbot 7 said Ethiopia is not a conducive country for democracy.
“All the issues that make a democratic election do not exist in Ethiopia at this time, starting from the independence of the election board, the independence of the military and the police, judiciary all are in the pocket of the ruling class. And in the absence of a fair and leveled playing ground there is no meaning in an election,” he said.
Nega said the 2010 election will most likely be similar to the 2008 local election when he said Meles Zenawi’s ruling party won 99.9 percent of the vote.
He said two of the opposition parties that reportedly agreed on the new rules for next year’s election were created by the government.
“You know there are three parties who participated in this. Two of them are the parties created by the ruling party. So these are not serious parties. This is just simply to show to the gullible international community that there is some election taking place. But nobody in Ethiopia is taking it seriously at all,” he said.
Nega said his party would not take part in what he described as a sham election in 2010 election.
“I think by now Africans are aware what actually is going on in the name of elections. Elections are supposed to be mechanisms through which popular will would be reflected. But in our continent in most countries, especially in Ethiopia, it has become an exercise in futility,” he said.
Nega was elected mayor of Addis Ababa in the 2005 election, but he and other opposition leaders were later jail after the government charged them with genocide and treason.
He said since 2005 Ethiopia has turned into a totalitarian state and that the only option for most Ethiopians is to remove the government.
“Even by African standards, this is a suffocating dictatorship that has completely the life out of Ethiopian politics and for most Ethiopians now the only way out of this political quagmire is to get rid of this government by one means or another,” he said.
Nega concord his comments would be interpreted as seeking the overthrow of the Meles Zenawi government.
“I am very, very clear and ardent than this. Unless otherwise people are free they cannot solve their basic economic problems…we have a very unpopular government, despotic government. Unless otherwise people start to take responsibility for their lives, I don’t think you’re going to make significant change in the economic wellbeing of the people,” Nega said.
He said the recent famine in Ethiopia is the result of the Meles Zenawi government being much more interested in staying in power rather than developing the country and saving the people.
As health ministers from around the world meet in the Ethiopian capital to tackle maternal mortality, women suffering birth-related injuries are given a new lease of life through a simple operation.
Hailemariam Workneh is trying to amuse his son outside the Hamlin Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa.
They have one toy – a small rubber crocodile which two-year-old Awel squeals and runs away from, before edging back towards it and squealing again.
Hailemariam says it’s not easy to keep his son distracted while his mother gets treated for fistula. But he is glad to be here. Finally.
It took him five years to save up the money to bring his wife here from their village in the north.
He is the only husband we see at the clinic.
Fifty per cent of women who have fistula are abandoned by their husbands because they leak urine or faeces, or both.
The staff at the Hamlin Hospital are full of admiration for Hailemariam for sticking by his wife.
They keep telling me how unusual it is.
When his wife Zeinat wakes from her surgery she says the same thing.
Needless shame
“I was too ashamed to leave the house because of the smell, I couldn’t see my friends,” she says. “It was so hard being alone. But my husband is a good man, he didn’t neglect me while I was leaking.”
Most women, she says, will “cry every day”, because they have no-one to help them.
Zeinat’s surgery is successful and afterwards, she cannot stop smiling.
“I am excited at participating in life again,” she says.
The last five years have involved needless pain and shame.
The causes are in part a lack of resources, in part gender inequality, according to the United Nation’s Population Fund.
Like 94% of women in Ethiopia, Zeinat had to give birth without the help of a properly trained health worker.
As is often the case for small-framed Ethiopian women, the baby was too big for her to deliver normally.
Midwife shortage
Prof Gordon Williams, medical director at the Hamlin Hospital, says women in rural areas are often stopped from eating much during their pregnancy, and are worked extra hard in the belief it will stop the baby from growing too big in the womb.
It does not. Instead, by the time she comes to give birth the woman will be weak and malnourished.
When she realises there is a complication with the birth it is usually too late.
The nearest health clinic can be more than 100km (62 miles) away – a distance women often walk, while in labour.
But even at the health clinic it is unlikely there will be the equipment to perform a caesarean section, which routinely saves the lives of mother and baby in the West.
It is unlikely there will even be a midwife.
It is said there are more Ethiopian midwives working in Chicago than Addis Ababa.
What is left after the brain drain is one midwife to every 20,000 women of childbearing age.
And they are not in the rural areas, where 85% of Ethiopians live.
Social stigma
So like Zeinat, the woman will have to give birth alone.
And like Zeinat she may lose the baby, and be left suffering with obstetric fistula – a tear between the vagina and the bladder or the rectum, making her continually incontinent.
In the five years since her first child died during labour, Zeinat conceived several times.
Having sex and giving birth again must have been excruciatingly painful.
Awel is the only one of her children to have survived birth.
But it is the social stigma that the women with fistula talk about.
Baysade Shoke is waiting to be operated on.
She has lived with fistula for 43 years.
“I have lived in darkness,” she says.
“I hardly considered myself a human being because of the smell.”
Prevention
She says she is hopeful that the surgery will bring her “out into the light”.
When it is over and she feels ready, the hospital will give her money to get back to her village and a new dress to go back in.
But Abarash Muskun preferred not to make that journey.
Her surgery was not successful and the stigma of living with the smell of leaking urine is too much so she has stayed on at the hospital, working as a nurse aide.
Abarash is one of the patients the Hamlin Hospital treats each year, but is unable to cure.
What she and the doctors would like to see is prevention; health professionals in well-equipped health centres throughout the country so women do not lose their babies, and do not develop fistula in the process.
In 1984 Brian Stewart of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported Ethiopia’s worst famine of the 20th century putting the blame squarely on the communist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam. Canadian taxpayers took his report at face value. On the contrary he praised the Tigrian People Liberation Front (TPLF) guerrillas of Meles Zenawi for distributing food aid to famine victims. Unfortunately, he never reported to us that TPLF was a Marxist-Leninist group identical to Enver Hoxha of Albania. Then one wonders about Brian’s motive of hiding the true faces of the TPLF. For those who are familiar with Ethiopian politics, then and now, two reasons remain outstanding. First is to discredit the military cum communist government of Ethiopia. Secondly is to help TPLF assume power in Addis Ababa.
In 1991, seven years after the famine, the communist military regime came to its demise. Another communist group called TPLF assumed state power. For Brian mission is accomplished. Soon he became the most favored journalist of Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of Ethiopia. His reports are often skewed to appeasing a dictatorial regime in Africa. The journalist’s regular mantras are that Ethiopia’s social, economic and political situation improved under Meles. Since his retirement in early 2009, many Ethiopians assumed that they are free from his claptrap cyber information about their country. Unfortunately, he comes out from his retirement cell in Toronto and feeds the Canadian public and the international community with news about Ethiopia’s rulers and on the famine looming over Ethiopia.
Instead of It is time to stop gibberish reports on famine, we would request Brian tell Canadians on the state of human rights, democracy, and governance in Ethiopia. If he can’t, we have the temerity to tell this reporter about the true nature of the Government of Ethiopia (GoE), and the underlying causes of famine in Ethiopia as follows.
Frequency of famine and its causes:
Under the TPLF rule of Meles, famine occurs every 3 years (in 1993, 1997, 2007, and 2009) against that of once every ten years during the military regime.
The causes of famine are both natural and man made. Ethiopia’s fully rain fed subsistence agriculture is dependent on the vagaries of nature for which even tyrants have no control. But with the right agriculture policy, this could be offset through the introduction of irrigation. If Ethiopia has gained economic and social transformation (as Brian prophecies), the GoE would have contained famine by transforming Ethiopia’s rain-fed agriculture to irrigated agriculture.
Disjointed priorities:
Monthly the GoE pays US$50,000 (US$ 600,000/year) to DLP Piper a US lobbying firm since the 2005 popular election that revealed the emptiness of the communist rule of TPLF. Over the past 5 years the regime has paid DLP US$3 million Dollars. At Birr 3500/Mt4, this money would buy 12,857 MTs of wheat from local markets.
In Ethiopia Agriculture is a crucial activity that contributes to more than 60% of exports, 46.3% of GDP, 80% of foreign exchange revenues, and a massive 80% of employment5. It is a sector dominated by the poor and who are extremely vulnerable to natural disasters and famine. Unfortunately the GoE’s priorities are different from people’s immediate needs. TPLF uses donor money to buy guns instead of making butter. Meles invaded Somalia to spend $1 million a day to sustain the invasion all in the name of terrorism.
International Aid:
The Honourable Hugh Segal reported to The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade that bags of Canadian wheat are stored in a warehouse in the city of Mekele, Tigray province to serve TPLF HQs when food aid is needed to starving children in the southern regions of the country. This journalist must remain honest to his profession and the organization he works with and tell us the truth about the GoE.
Population doubled yes it has doubled. Brian need to understand that international (including Canadian) aid to Ethiopia has also doubled. The G8 countries including Russia and China right off Ethiopia’s debt almost one hundred percent. This should have given GoE the momentum to contain famine and invest on food self sufficiency programs.
Governance, democracy and good government:
Lack of good governance and lack of democracy hinder development and food self sufficiency. In today’s Ethiopia a one party dictatorship has been the norm for nearly two decades. Three federal elections were held and won by the incumbent regime with 99.9% vote since 1991. In the 2005 election, the TPLF gunned down at close range 193 peaceful and innocent demonstrators, jailed leaders of the opposition and sent 70,000 to concentration camps to the south of the country. The seasoned journalist did not utter a word to the Canadian public when such gross human tragedy takes place at the door steps of the Canadian Embassy in Addis Ababa. Yet still, Canada spends millions of Tax payers’ money for human rights, governance, democratization and rule of law. Is it not that ‘Good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development7.’ In our view good governance is also one of the important factors of eliminating famine and hunger in Ethiopia and elsewhere for that matter.
The 4th federal election is scheduled for June 2010. Unlike the past, this election is won before people cast their votes. If Brain asks why, we have the audacity of telling him that public media is 100% controlled by TPLF. Private and independent media is paralyzed by draconian press law. Opposition leaders and supporters are harassed and imprisoned. For example Birtukan Midekas, a female opposition leader is imprisoned for life. Human rights are of abysmal failure. We advise Brian to refer to Amnesty International8 and State Department reports.
Let it be known that 4% of the 80 million people are ruling Ethiopia with a tyranny and impunity unparalleled in Ethiopia’s history. Ethiopians die of famine in thousands, but the most lethal one that kills the poor is bad government.
In developmental economic theory democracy, good governance, rule of law and respect of human rights are the fundamental pre-requisites of development, eradicating famine and poverty. These are also important ingredients of political, social and economic stability. Rightly so Pranab concludes that “if we take a suitably broad concept of development to incorporate general well-being of the population at large, including some basic civil and political freedoms, a democracy which ensures these freedoms is, almost by definition, more conducive to development on these counts than a non-democratic regime.”
Social Image:
True Ethiopians hate their nation’s image as perpetual victim of disasters. They are protective of their image and decency. There is high level cultural and traditional sensitivity to be called beggars. During the 1984 famine, mothers carrying their dieing toddlers waited for their cue to receive food ration with at most discipline. In many parts of the world such a situation would end in a stampede or riot. Ethiopians prefer to die of hunger than telling lies and get food rations. It is shocking to see those who are not hungry and wealthy enough to feed themselves continue feeding their audience with false information.
Since Brian and CBC are blinded by their self aggrandizement, Ethiopia appeared to them as a difficult problem for the world to fix. Fixing Meles and his Marxists tyrants is harder than fixing Ethiopia’s famine and underdevelopment. With the right leadership and governance in place, Ethiopia’s famine and poverty can be fixed without fanfare. For the moment the time to fix Ethiopia takes longer than necessary, because some media outlets like CBC are not telling their taxpayers the true causes of famine and underdevelopment in Ethiopia. So long as the truth and the only truth about the causes of famine are not told, Ethiopia’s problems continue to be hard to fix and Ethio-Canadians remain worried about Brian’s reports. In the midst of this worrisome reporting it is important for CBC to remember that of all the ills that kill the poor, none is as lethal as bad government.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), an Ethiopian rebel group that is operating in eastern Ethiopia, denied that a weapons cache displayed by the government Woyanne regime belonged to them and accused the authorities of trying to tarnish their image.
On Saturday, state television showed what it said was more than four tonnes of explosives and thousands of bullets discovered by security forces after an ONLF leader surrendered and showed them the location of the arms dump.
The report said he had defected after refusing to work alongside neighbouring Somalia’s hardline al Shabaab insurgents — but on Monday the Ethiopian rebel group said that was a lie.
“Ethiopia Woyanne constantly parades fictitious ONLF deserters in front of the cameras … to get some semblance of credibility for its wishful claim of victory,” the ONLF said in a statement.
The ONLF is fighting for independence for the ethnically Somali Ogaden region, but it denies any links to al Shabaab, which Washington accuses of being al Qaeda’s proxy in Somalia.
Both the ONLF and Ethiopia’s government the Woyanne regime accuse each other of committing atrocities in the remote Ogaden region, which is believed to sit on top of significant mineral and oil deposits.
The ONLF has often warned foreign companies against working in the area, and in April 2007 its fighters killed 74 people at an oil exploration field run by a subsidiary of Sinopec, China’s biggest refiner and petrochemicals producer.
But the ONLF rebels said the latest allegations by the authorities in Addis Ababa were just an attempt to tarnish their reputation by linking them to Islamist insurgents in Somalia who are notorious for suicide bombings and assassinations.
“If Ethiopia Woyanne thinks that the countries it is trying to get more aid from have no intelligence services that are capable of knowing who is with whom in the Horn of Africa, it is in for a mighty shock,” the ONLF said in its statement.
I visited Dembi Dollo, in Qelem Wallaga Zone of Oromia Region from September 18-28, 2009. During my visit, I tried to gather as much information as possible on the current political situation. I was unable to hold public meetings because the local administration was unwilling to cooperate. I therefore tried to meet as many individuals as I could. During the 10 days, I talked to over two dozen individuals, including cadres of the OPDO/EPRDF, business leaders, community elders, government workers (teachers and health workers), local qabale officials, vacationing university students, church leaders, private professionals, NGO employees and members and supporters of the OFDM.
This descriptive analysis summarizes and focuses on a few major issues. My general conclusion is that the OPDO/EPRDF totally controls and dominates the local political arena, and therefore, there could be no level playing field for the opposition in the Dembi Dollo area. Unless the situation changes dramatically in the next few months, I do not expect the 2010 election will be fair, free or democratic. The first step in correcting the current situation is by appointing well trained election officers to different levels of the election administration.
Strict Security Control and Surveillance
The OPDO/EPRDF which claims to have won the 2005 and 2008 elections seems determined not to allow any other political organization which could compete against it in the area. This goes as far as not welcoming individual visitors to the area. Visitors are secretly followed and placed under surveillance to determine where they have been, whom they have visited, and what they have said. The visitors would rarely be called for interrogation or approached by the security people. It is the local people who had contact with visitors that are summoned and grilled by security officials. In my case, my brother-in-law, with whom I stayed, made a copy of the letter I brought with me from the parliament and gave it to the security office. He also received telephone calls from the Dembi Dollo and Naqamte security offices. He was asked why I came, whether I came for preparation for the coming election or for any other purpose.
About two months ago Professor Haweitu Simeso of the USAID visited Dembi Dollo with colleagues from the Irish and Canadian embassies. The visiting group was followed from the time it arrived in Naqamte. After the group returned, several security officials interrogated leaders of the Dembi Dollo Bethel-Mekane Yesus Church who had spoken to Haweitu and his colleagues. One of the church leaders was even summoned to the zonal administrator’s office and asked detailed questions about the visitors from Addis. Three weeks before I went to Dembi Dollo, Dr. Belaynesh (member of the OFDM and an MP) was in Dembi Dollo. After she returned to Addis, all the people who went to her father’s house to greet her and others she greeted on the streets in the town were arrested, interrogated and held in custody for 24 to 48 hours. The houses of some of these individuals were also searched. A building contractor who arrived in Dembi Dollo on September 28 to inspect the construction of the new Bethel Church was also followed. He left the next day fearing that he will be summoned to the security office. OPDO/EPRDF in Dembi Dollo, besides using the police and security offices and personnel, also collects information on each household through other means. One of these methods involves the use of organizations or structures called “shane”, which in Oromo means “the five”. Five households are grouped together under a leader who has the job of collecting information on the five households every day and pass it on to a higher administrative organ called “Gare”. There are 30 to 40 households in a “Gare” group which has a chairperson, a secretary, a security chief and two other members. The security chief passes the information he collected to his chief in the higher administrative organs in the Qabale, who in turn informs the Woreda police and security office.
Each household is required to report on guests and visitors, the reasons for their visits, their length of stay, what they said and did and activities they engaged in. The “shane” leader knows if the members of the households have participated in “development work”, if they have contributed to the several fund raising programs, if they have attended Qabale meetings, whether they have registered for election, if they have voted and for whom they have voted. The OPDO/EPRDF runs mass associations (women, youth and micro-credit groups) and party cells (“fathers”, “mothers” and “youth”). The party cells in the schools, health institutions and religious institutions also serve the same purpose.
Organizational Structures
Understanding how the OPDO/EPRDF itself and its Woreda administration are organized is very important. There is the OPDO/EPRDF Qellem Wallagga Zonal office in Dembi Dollo. This office receives information and instruction from the regional office in Addis Ababa. It passes messages to the lower structures and oversees the propaganda and organizational activities of the party. This office has branches in every village, schools and health institutions. These branches are subdivided into basic cells. The branches of these cells are organized into supporter groups, candidate groups and full members groups.
Additionally, the party has organized the people into youth, women and micro-credit associations for tighter control and easy dissemination of its propaganda and to do party activities. Dembi Dollo town is a special Woreda Town Administration. The Administration is sub-divided into four large “Ganda” (villages). The town used to have seven Qabales but was restructured just before the Qabale election in 2008. Each Qabale has 15 in the Woreda Council. It is said that the OPDO/EPRDF presented the names of pre-selected council members to the Qabale Council and had them endorsed. There is also the Sayyo Rual Woreda (24 Qabales). The administration of Sayyo Woreda also has its seat in Dembi Dollo town. These are all appointees of the party and are believed to be “strongly committed” to it. The four “Ganda” (villages or some times called Kifle Ketema) have each their own councils. A council has 300 members. The members were “elected” in 2008. All the people I talked to confirmed to me that the party pre-selected the candidates. The Qabale has its own cabinet and these are also party members. A Qabale is further sub-divided into different zones. The zones are sub-divided into “Gare”. There are up to 17 “Gare” in each zone.
Misuse of Public Property, Finance and Civil Servants
The party’s propaganda and organization committees are located in the Zonal, Woreda and Qabale Administration building. The party does not pay rent for the rooms it uses. The committee members are party cadres but their monthly salaries and per diems are paid by the administration from public treasury. Their secretaries, cleaners and messengers also get their salary from public treasury. All civil servants are also members of the party. Monthly contribution of the members to the party are collected by the Woreda finance office at the time they pay the workers their monthly salaries. The party officials use government office materials, supplies and equipment, including official transport vehicles. The party uses town and qabale halls without paying rent. Meeting halls in health and educational institutions are also used without any payment and at will. This system is practiced from Zonal to “Gare” levels. But opposition to the OPDO/EPRDF are not allowed to rent rooms for offices from private owners or rent public halls in the town for meetings. Plasma televisions supposed to be used for school-net and Woreda-net are used for dissemination of party propaganda.
Dissemination of OPDO/EPRDF thoughts
All adults in the qabales and government employees are forced to participate in different seminars and workshops. The same is true of all school children who are in high schools and vocational training institutions. University students on vacation are also required to participate in such programs. Lessons in “Tarsimo” (Strategy) and “Bulchiinsa Gaarii” (Good Governance) are given to all residents (school children, college and university students, and private and government employees). Workshops on BPR have been held and each government employee is given Birr 25 for participation. The seminar for university students lasted five days. The per diem for this seminar was supposed to be Birr 35 per day for each participant for nine days. Every two weeks on Friday afternoon, all government employees participate in study circles of the party and cell meetings during work hours and in the public meeting rooms. No rent is paid for the use of the rooms. Fund raising programs are organized once in a while for support of the party. It is the administration’s finance officers who deduct the pledged amount from employees and transfer the money to the party.
Elections
During the 2005 election, I have witnessed that civil servants were deployed for two weeks for election campaign for the OPDO/EPRDF and that government vehicles (cars and motor cycles) were used for this purpose. OPDO/EPRDF members and cadres were busy disrupting public meetings I called in the field. One of my observers was bribed with Birr 200 and agreed to give the votes I received to my opponent (OPDO/EPRDF). In one qabale, I was prevented from holding an election campaign meeting 500 meters away from a market place. The qabale officials told me that my meeting will disturb “their market”. My posters were removed from several places and leaflets I distributed were collected and destroyed. I persistently appealed to the election officials to correct the OPDO/EPRDF illegal activities or cancel it from the election in accordance with the election law but no one heeded my appeals.
According to the people I talked to, the chief of an election office during the 2008 election was also a member of the OPDO/EPRDF. There is a rumor that the same person is being appointed to the office by the OPDO/EPRDF for the 2010 election. The OPDO/EPRDF appointed a supporter or a member to each polling station to stand by the voters and tell the voters in which box they should put voting signs or signatures.
Situation of the Opposition
The office of the OFDM has remained closed since 2005. Members and supporters were beaten up and imprisoned several times. They were intimidated or bribed. During the three weeks before my visit to Dembi Dollo, 60 people in Sayyo and 15 people in Dembi Dollo were arrested and kept in police custody for up to 48 hours. They had to pay one hundred Birr as bail before being released. They were reprimanded and warned for the 2010 election. They were told, “Be careful! Don’t support, or join or vote for the opposition as you did in 2005. We shall not give in like then. We defend ourselves even with guns.” OFDM is equated with OLF while the CUD or the “Qindomina” as it is called in Oromia, is equated with the “Nafxagna”. The campaign against the UDJ as a “Nafxagna” organization has already begun.
Media
No private or independent newspapers exist in Dembi Dollo. Alternative news sources to the Federal and Oromia public media are only VOA and Deutche Welle. The Oromia information office and the OPDO send their press media to the area by bus. These are picked up by a government employee and distributed to different institutions and offices. All workers are forced to buy these news papers.
Conclusion
It is plain to anyone who has been to Dembi Dollo and surrounding areas that there is no political level playing field. I can not imagine how the opposition can enter into an election process under such conditions. If the ruling party is serious about having a peaceful, fair and democratic election in 2010 it has much to do, including the release of all political prisoners and putting a stop to new illegal arrests, intimidation, detentions and bribing opposition member, immediate reopening of offices of the opposition, providing immediate equal access to the public media, allowing public meetings organized by the opposition to take place freely, amending the Election Law so that neutral election officials can be appointed and making it possible for international election observers free access to ensure fair elections, and putting into place control mechanisms so that its supporters and members respect the constitution and the election laws. It must also start repaying rent for offices and halls it has used for its party activities over the past several years as well as for use of government office materials and equipment, fuel, telephone and electricity, and return the money it took out of the public treasury and paid as salaries to its members.
(Dr. Negasso Gidada is former figure-head president of Ethiopia from 1995 to 2001.)
Details are still coming from Ethiopian Review sources in Addis Ababa regarding Teddy Afro’s concert last night. By some estimate, tens of thousands of Addis Ababa residents attended the show. The photo below tells it all.
The concert ended with no major incident, but some wondered if it was an entertainment event or a political rally. Others are heard asking how did Woyanne allow Teddy to organize such a big event right under its nose. Was there some kind of deal between Woyanne and Teddy Afro’s managers for Teddy to stay clear of any thing that may antagonize the vampires in power? We are digging into that.
Until then let’s just say that Teddy did not disappoint the audience with his magnificent performance. Sunday’s night event was the mother of all concerts for Addis Ababa. [read more in Amharic here]
