Ethiopia’s Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi has introduced tough measures to stabilize soaring prices, including a crackdown on what he called “economic criminals,” but he says the African nation’s economy is essentially sound. From Addis Ababa, VOA’s Peter Heinlein reports opposition leaders ridiculed the claim of economic health in a country facing drought and a massive financial scandal.
Meles Tuesday declared war on what he referred to as greedy business people, blaming them for sharp price increases that boosted Ethiopia’s inflation rate to 20 percent. In a speech to parliament, he lashed out at what he called “fraudsters” who recently caused a five to 10-fold increase in the price of salt in a single day.
Meles announced establishment of a task force to prosecute businesses engaging in what he called “persistent illegal exploitative activities.”
“Such greedy and illegal business persons will only respond when each has been identified and punished,” he said. “As a result, the government has decided to completely change its approach toward those committing economic crimes. A task force comprising members of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the federal police and the National Security and Intelligence service has been set up to permanently monitor illicit activities and take prompt legal measures as necessary.”
Meles urged all citizens to cooperate by providing information about those engaging in price gouging.
Meles also announced two other inflation fighting measures; an immediate end to sales taxes on food grains, and sharp restrictions on the growth of the money supply.
At the same time, he described Ethiopia’s economy as “healthy.” He predicted the country’s economic growth rate would top 10 percent for the fifth year in a row.
Opposition leaders questioned the claim of economic health. Lawmaker Temesgen Zewdie pointed to recent reports that nine million Ethiopians are facing drought-induced famine. He called Meles’s response “unacceptable.”
Lidetu Ayelew of the Ethiopian Democratic Party called the report of 10 percent economic growth misleading because the growth does not touch millions of impoverished people.
“There are people who are being left behind. So there’s a problem with distribution, of reaching everyone,” Lidetu said. “Therefore, the economy is not fully healthy. So someone with high blood pressure cannot be seen as fully healthy. He can fall… So if this problem is not resolved, we cannot say the economy is healthy.”
Meles shrugged off the criticisms. In his rebuttal likened Ethiopia’s economic condition to a common cold. But he acknowledged several setbacks, including a recent discovery that a significant portion of the country’s gold reserves was fake, and the arrest of several people allegedly involved in a black market money-changing scheme.
(Shabait.com) Asmara – Six defecting soldiers who arrived in Eritrea recently disclosed that members of the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) regime’s army are abandoning the regime in opposition of its massive round-up of members of the army and its racist policy. They stated that the dire situation in Ethiopia is escalating from bad to worse.
The defecting soldiers further indicated that at a time when the HIV/AIDS epidemic is gaining momentum in the country, especially in the towns of Mekele and Addis Ababa, many officials of the regime have already deposited 15 to 20 million dollars each in different foreign banks. Moreover, the soldiers noted that members of army have been banned from listening to the Eritrean radio Dimtsi Hafash, in particular, and other international media outlets, in general. They went on to say that the army is complaining as to why the regime is not complying with the EEBC ruling that awarded Badme to be sovereign Eritrean territory.
The Ethiopian soldiers who arrived here are Abdu Abamecha Abawaji, Abiot Tsega Buru, Abulu Angaso Hundesa, Gendela Kolalo Keshila, Adnew Takele Gobona, and Kasahun Tora Koira.
They also disclosed that a number of soldiers are in detention in Mekele, Shire-Endasilassie and the Hurso centers, and that the number of deaths is increasing.
The defecting soldiers also pointed out that there exists tension and distrust among members of the army as a result of the regime’s racist policy.
Throughout the 1990s, the international donor community supported Ethiopia as a country that embarked on a democratic path almost after 2 decades of socialist military rule. The country’s achievement, so it was said, was both economic and political. Economically the ‘new government’ has taken some steps towards liberal and market oriented system. Politically, Zenawi fooled the world with his rhetoric and thus naively labelled progressive leader.
International community invested in the regime’s constitution-making process that led to its adoption in 1995. The constitution theoretically set up a number of democratic rights for its citizens. Defiant of the absence of separation of power between the legislative, the executive and the judiciary, and omission of the duration of the term of office for the Prime Minster, the constitution has taken a reverse track. Ethiopia today is governed under a system of one-man rule engineered by Meles Zenawi, who has now been in power for the last 17 years by suppressing all forms of democratic voice.
The problem is getting worse by the legacy of international donors’ condone because the regime violates its constitution, bans free press, crackdown on peaceful demonstrations, and rigs national election. By pouring in a huge sum to pay for state spending on military apparatus and infrastructure, these donors has helped the regime to consolidate its power and suppresses the opposition. Moreover, the subsidies from donors allow the regime to direct more of its own revenue into expanding its huge patronage schemes, making Zenawi depend increasingly for his political survival on continued financial and diplomatic support from his foreign donors although his regime has continued dishonouring its promises.
Yet there is a ray of hope in this seemingly hopeless situation. The regime’s corruption, violence and vast patronage ate away economic resources. This undermined its ability to function properly in the long term because it destroyed the economic foundations of the regime’s political survival. To date the regime has been saved from this grim prospect by foreign aid donors. If the international donors pulled the plug, the regime could no longer be shielded from the consequence of its own mischief, and would have to bend to democratic pressure.
The regime has established all-round strategy to personalize its power at the expense of the Ethiopian people. The adoption of structural adjustment—liberalization, deregulation, devaluation, and privatization in the 1990s blatantly served the interest of the regime not of the people. It has created surrogate institutions that appeared to represent private sector, but in reality remained subservient to the regime. As Zenawi’s antidemocratic sentiment gathered momentum, the business class has mostly become a bystander and left the struggle for democracy aside. Such oblivious nature of private sector only leads to personalization of power. As a result, the regime has become the largest owner of industries and businesses as well as its biggest employer. Investment is consolidated in the hands of the regime so much so that the best way to get into business and be part of the looting is to deal with the regime itself. Virtually, the praised programs — liberalization, privatization, devaluation and devolution are all remained on paper without practice. The reality is that public access to basic social services is significantly diminishing; unemployment is rising, inequality is being widened thus making the poor poorer, and the regime richer.
The educated middle class, instead of opposing the regime like other middle class citizens in other parts of the world, has chosen to flee the country, leaving Zenawi largely unopposed as he consolidated his personal rule. Other professionals who remained in the country are integrated into his patronage network. Some others are employed in NGOs, which is highly censored by the regime too.
Why has this been happening? The answer lies in the regime’s use of force and intimidation on the one hand and its manipulation of patronage on the other. Zenawi has always sought to use the army to build his personal political base. He employs violence sparingly and selectively – as a tacit instrument when the political process fails to yield before his requirements or the opposition appears to need whipping into submission. For instance, the regime waged hefty war with Eriteria from 1998 – 2000, which was responsible for about 70,000 lives and wastage of billions of dollars. The same massacres were extended into Oromia, Gambella, Sidama, and sovereign state–Somalia. Furthermore, Zenawi’s success in consolidating his power and stifling democracy emanates from his knack for integrating large chunks of the ‘political’ class into his vast patronage empire. Patronage, typically in the form of government contracts, tenders, and jobs, to bribe business communities, low skilled personnel and bilateral corporations at the expense of the nation.
In an effort to direct the attention of international donors, Zenawi’s government promised to hold a free and fair election with multiparty political competition in 2005. Nonetheless, many international election observers have proved that the opening of multiparty contest was just the icing on the cake. The government had long been engaged in practices both official and unofficial that rendered constitutional guarantees impotent. The election was rigged and manoeuvred by the incumbent party and its cronies, which revealed the true nature of the regime. The point of change was to strengthen the Prime Minister while enfeebling the institutions that might act as a check upon him. The government manoeuvred the election result by such fraudulent means as bribery, blackmail, naked intimidation, and use of excessive forces. With the skids thus greased, the re-election of constituencies filed for supposed irregularity glided through easily, opening the door for the ruling party to hammer aggressively the democratic voices. Election, in Ethiopia – as in most of Africa – are invariably marred by the executive, and the fact that no definite term is fixed in the constitution for the prime Minster’s term of office, the future of democracy looks bleak.
After his attempt to mislead the world community by holding the so-called free and fair election, the regime launched another weapon to divert the world leaders – ‘robust economic growth as proof that poverty is declining in the country because of good governance’. However, the statistics by which indicators of such economic growth derived were far from being credible. In addition to ignoring social and environmental degradation from the equation, the statistics failed to address the long-term problems.
To improve his chance for success, Zenawi also exploited local councils to build its oppressive organizational infrastructure, cajoled leaders from opposition parties to join its own gambling polity. The decentralization of the budget to a district level to a certain degree gave the local officials an economic reason to work for Zenawi although, armed coercion made them fearful of what would happen if they broke with Zenawi’s agenda of power usurpation.
In conclusion, the worst obstacle to democratic development in Ethiopia has been the personalization of state power. The military and economic aids from abroad were used to selectively suppress dissents. The money sluices through a massive patronage machine that Zenawi uses to recruit support, reward loyalty, and buy off actual and potential opponents. In his effort to personalize the state further, Zenawi has skilfully undermined formal institutions of governance, preferring as he does to use highly arbitrary and informal methods of recruiting and rewarding officials. Above all, the absence of clear separation between the branches of government allowed the emergence of a very strong and an out of control executive resulting in such tyrant one-man regime. The way out could be building institutions that democracy requires, reworking the constitution, and then encouraging mass-political participation and unfettered electoral competition. This demands however, backing and stand staunchly with determined political oppositions as they struggle to empower the people, who should be the sovereign authority in Ethiopia, not the elite that came to power by force and is staying on it against their will by force. When elections are held in an institutional wasteland like Ethiopia, say in 2010 political competition typically coalesces around and entrenches the ethnic and sectarian divisions created by Zenawi as usual. The implication is that, not only is the one- man rule legitimized, but also subsequent efforts to democratize the country will be more difficult and more violent than ever.
The recent arrest of money exchangers in Ethiopia and the seizure of their money by Woyanne thugs is a day-light robbery of innocent store owners who are trying to make a living.
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APA (Addis Ababa) – The Woyanne regime on Saturday launched an operation to shut down all black market money changers, accusing them of being illegal traders. The Ethiopian Woyanne federal police said that they have arrested a number of “illegal” money changers in Addis Ababa along with hundreds of thousands dollars and euros in their possession.
The crack down on these “illegal” black marketeers is being taken after the country faces inflation, which is said to be over 20%.
This is the first time that the government has started to take measures against these money changers, despite them operating quite openly in the past 16 years.
Over 400 licensed changer shops are estimated to operate in Addis Ababa legally during the past several years.
These people were operating quite in the open without any government interference during the past 16 years.
These people, like in many other countries, are giving a higher exchange rate than the official banking system, which compels many people to use their services.
Some of these money changers told APA that they were not given any notice to stop their businesses, if the government claims them to be “illegal”.
This week, for instance, one US Dollar was changing at 9 birr 70 cents at the bank while it was 10 Birr and 45 cents in the black market.
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Over $6 mln seized in black market raid
(Capital) — Police in Ethiopia have seized a staggering two million dollars in hard currency with an illegal money changer and 13 million birr in cash with another trader in an unexpected police raid, where several alleged illegal traders were arrested.
The individual with 13 million birr in cash was caught on Thursday March 13, around American Gibi in a place called Beteseb Supermarket. The hard currency was also taken as evidence. Some said that the amount seized during the raid could be over six million dollars including the amount apprehended in Ethiopian birr.
Furthermore, Addis Ababa Police has taken into custody over 35 illegal traders in connection with foreign currency exchanges that police claims has contributed to the current destabilization of prices in the country.
One dollar was changed for 10.60 birr in the past two days before the police cracked down on the black market network on Thursday, March 13, 2008.
Souvenir shops around Filwoha, behind the Ethiopian Postal Service headquarters, in front of Gandhi Memorial Hospital, behind Ethiopia Hotel, around American Gibi, and behind Hilton Hotel were raided by the police.
“The illegal money changers have been in the business for several years without facing much hassle from police,” said observers surprised by the sudden raid.
National Bank on its part had alerted on Friday, March 14 that the public should be aware of counterfeit birr that are being disbursed through the black market.
According to Ethiopian law, foreign currency is only exchangeable at authorized banks, hotels and other outlets and proper receipts should be obtained for transactions. Exchange receipts are required to convert unused Ethiopian currency back to the original foreign currency.
Non compliance with the law results in penalties levied for exchanging money on the black market, ranging from fines to imprisonment.
(The Economic Times) – NEW DELHI: India’s growing fashion design industry is now seen as a role model by countries like Ethiopia, which is nowhere on the global fashion radar and hence keen to emulate its growth and success.
A group of four designers from the Horn of Africa country, is currently in India as part of a collaborative effort by the Indian Embassy in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian government.
Known for its cotton that is said to be the best in the world, the African country does not have a fashion industry per se and designers who hail from the country are few and far between.
“It is only recently that we have started making a noise in our country about fashion,” Hiruth Gougsa, who runs ‘Mela,’ a store in Addis Ababa, which specialises in jewellery, bags, home furnishings and other accessories told media.
Gougsa is one of the four women chosen to attend a workshop conducted by the Pearl Academy of Fashion late last year, aimed at imparting basic know how on fashion, focussing on the intricacies of design, craft, forecasting trends, couture and techniques among others in the industry.
The workshop included a 15 day study tour where participants will visit India and gain first hand exposure of its fashion.
“The Indian ambassador in Ethopia offered us an opportunity to share India’s design experience with them and we accepted. We are currently in the process of designing a course curriculum in Ehiopia to be used in their fashion institutes and schools,” says A K G Nair, who heads Pearl Academy of Fashion.
Disclaimer: It is true people from Tigray are not all beneficiaries of the loot or participants of the crimes perpetrated by Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF). Sadly, it is also true all current power-wielders in Ethiopia are Tigrayans. The writer wishes to emphasize this distinction. Let it be known to all that I am talking about the Tigrayan elites in power in this article-not the people of Tigray.
It is not by happenstance that deep odium has been bubbling inside the hearts of people in different parts of Ethiopia against the Tigrayan condottieri for over a decade now. From Gurage to Amahra, from Oromo to Berta, from Afar to Sidama, from Ogaden to Anuak, from Addis Ababa to Arba-Minch people are praying for the day they will, at last, hymn good riddance to these ‘rude’ masters. Why? Because they are bad rulers!
I will provide the proof for that assertion and offer explanations as to why they are hopeless in their ‘superior’ position.
In the 2005 elections, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), overwhelmingly won the votes of the urban areas, the intelligentsia, Amhara, Gurage, and significant parts of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s (SNPP) region. The Oromo National Congress took Oromia by landslide; while most of SNNP region was swept by its southern ally in the United Ethiopia Democratic Forces (UEDF). That is before the eventual turn around of events and crowning of fake winners. The defeat proved the depth and intensity of the popular displeasure with the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) — the overcoat of the TPLF — by the people of these regions.
In the remaining regions — euphemistically known as ‘the developing regions’ — satellite parties of the EPRDF were declared winners with no big furore, as people resigned to their fate, having seen what has transpired in the decisive regions.
The shaky make-up of the pseudo-federal entities in Ethiopia is one more proof of the ‘misadventures’ of the TPLF who designed a system of governance for which its social background and party ideology is ill-prepared to accommodate. Blighted by pernicious habit of lying and looting, they hoped they will manage to confuse and cheat the people of Ethiopia.
The Amharic adage, “you don’t trust a man till you put him beneath the soil” is taken to the heart by the founding fathers of the TPLF. It might have been wise to adhere to it in those days of ‘rebel-life’ in the deserts of Tigray. But certainly that mentally clashes with the requisite principles of delegation of responsibility and trusting subordinates, central to modern management philosophies. Far worse, it is an anti-thesis of decentralisation and the principle of subsidiarity that is mandatory for a true federalism to flourish.
That obsession with control and mistrust of ‘others’ explains why most of the puppet leaders in the ‘federal’ states are social rejects who have not gone far in education and who therefore depend on the TPLF for survival.
The biggest joke in faking leaders for other nationalities is witnessed in the resource-abundant Oromia where a stranger to the locals is ‘anointed’ as their president. Many Oromos categorically rebuff the claim that Abadula Gamada, the president of Oromia, hails from their ethnic community. They similarly dismiss the Illubabur-born Taye Takle-haymanot, a.k.a. Kuma Demeksa, the Defence Minster, as being not one of their own. In Somali region, the current president is married to a Tigrayan woman — something believed to have been instrumental to his rise to power. In Afar region, Ismail Ali Serro, the president, is more of a Tigre than an Afari.
Not that I wish to argue that the nationality of the person matters much, but it is appropriate to lay bare the false claims of the TPLF clique to the readers: the nauseating orations on democracy, good governance, and ethnic federalism.
Some people are mystified why the TPLF rulers couldn’t pick better pawns with a bit of acceptable credentials. Surely, it is not a matter of scarcity of ‘intellectuals for sale’. What these people fail to understand is the quintessential Tigrayan’s psyche of suspicion and what I wish to call the ‘minority-insecurity syndrome’.
I know for them it will be a painful read, but let me push their agony a little longer by elaborating on the two traits. Firstly, the suspicion trait.
Meles has designated regions as private ‘fiefdoms’ to his kins because he doesn’t trust anyone outside the ‘tribe’. A trait invariably shared by most Tigrayan elites. That partially explains why the most trivial decisions cannot be passed by ‘local’ officials without consultations with TPLF ‘advisors’.
The TPLF leadership planted ‘advisors’ — powerful ‘advisors’ — in all regions, except Tigray, where there is no apparent need for one. Officially, these advisors ‘provide technical assistance’ to the regional government bureaus. This is laughable, as most are ex-fighters with none or little capabilities to perform such duties.
A notable example is one Ato Towolde, the advisor-cum-king in Somali regional State. With nothing more than a mere Diploma in social science to boast of, like the majority of TPLF ‘scholars’, he is an alumni of the civil service college established by EPRDF. The man often refers to his fighting-days’ experiences and arbitrary gut-feelings to rule the region. Like his predecessor, Gabrewahid, who has obligated to himself the task of selecting people’s representatives during elections, Towolde chooses the cabinet and party officials, and runs the day-to-day activities of the Somali region.
Indeed, the irritating aspect of this not-so-disguised ‘direct’ rule is how noticeable it is. The TPLF elites don’t even bother to mask that they are running the show all over Ethiopia. Whether it is in Somali region, or Afar or Gambella, it is Abay Tsehaye, or Meresa, or Gebra-Ab, all Tigrayans, who are sent to fix it, when things need to be fixed. It is either ignorance or arrogance, or both, that can only blind Towlede to the embarrassment he is causing to himself, or inflicting on his ‘servile subjects’ when he hands out a series of instructions to the regional ‘president’ in cabinet meetings. Or when he narrates with glee how he brought this or that ‘parvaneu’ politician from obscurity to ‘high office’ over dinner tables.
No wonder, therefore, that the recently concluded Somali People’s Democratic Party (SPDP) farcical conference promoted his ‘toddlers’ to the highest positions. Much more can be said about the man and his likes elsewhere, but that is not the theme of the article, and this should suffice to illustrate the nature of the tribe-based style of governance of the TPLF.
In addition to espionage and control, TPLF henchmen’s stretching of tribal tentacles to ‘all Shangiri-La spots’ also has much to do with corruption and debauchery.
A fact the rhetorician Meles himself admitted when he was warming up to oust ex-comrades from the TPLF after they disagreed on the conduct of the war with Eritrea. Back then, the master of all deception, Meles twisted political terminologies and branded the out-witted hitherto ‘strongmen of the party’ — including the flamboyant Seye Abraha — ‘Bonapartists’’.
It is time to ask what the basis of this suspicious behaviour is. TPLF knows that it is a minority group that has fought its way to power and is ruling Ethiopia by sheer force and intimidation. It, therefore, thinks everyone out there is plotting to oust it. That fear from the ‘threat’ posed by the ‘giant beast’ subdued so far, makes the TPLF leadership hyper-vigilant. All the resultant wrongs and crimes it has committed against other nationalities, and the fear that the ‘victims’ will retaliate if they were to be given a chance, reinforces the severity of their paranoia.
With morbid thinking and virtual degeneration to misanthropy, they have become enemies of reason, rational people, and mutual interest. They conceive violent antipathy to whomever and whatever they perceive as a challenge or a deterrent to their ‘tribal’ aspirations of self-enrichment and conquest.
A perfect example of their ‘madness’ can be discerned from their actions in the war against the Ogaden people where the primitive principle of vicarious liability is practiced by the TPLF at the dawn of the 21st century. It is common to see a father imprisoned or killed for the ‘misdeeds’ of the son who joined the ‘rebels’.
Impelled by paranoia and self-doubt, and an irrational fright evoked by ‘minority’ complexity, Tigrayan ‘urban’ troglodytes, consider even the most ‘loyal lackeys’ a potential menace.
Thus, they have sleepless nights watching their back. And they do that with a lethal blend of braggadocio, savagery and thuggery.
In consequence, life is becoming unbearable for millions of Ethiopians, and for the unfortunate people of Somalia who are caught by the rummaging army of the Tigrayan Yakuza.
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The writer can be reached at [email protected]
