Today is the 50th day since Ethiopia’s khat junkie dictator Meles Zenawi disappeared, and 20th day since his wife, Azeb Mesfin, the mother of corruption, disappeared.

The hottest topic of conversation in Addis Ababa today is not the power struggle in the TPLF junta, but Tirunesh Dibaba’s 5,000 meters race in the London Olympics that is scheduled today.

By Fekade Shewakena

According to speculations and rumors Ato Meles Zenawi’s conditions range from he is resting to he is dead and anywhere in between. Thanks to the opacity of the officials in charge of the country, it is like they are telling us to take our pick. The inconclusive and contradictory official statements have only added fuel to the rumor mills. The kind of secrecy they practice makes you wonder whether these people ruling over us are really out of the woods of the feudal era yet. Strangely, these same officials have the audacity of accusing the rest of us of rumor mongering after setting us up to do just that. Had there been no African heads of states meeting on July 15, 2012 in Addis Ababa and that the Senegalese President, who happened to chair the meeting, did not do us a favor by announcing that Meles Zenawi’s absence at the meeting was due to health reasons, entire Ethiopia would have drowned in a wilder sea of rumors. The officials in charge don’t seem to see that, whether we like him or not, Ato Meles Zenawi is an employee of over 80 million Ethiopians who have every right to know where he is and what has befallen him when he fails to show up at work. For heaven’s sakes this is 21st century, not Menilik’s time!

Although I am one of Meles’s serial critics, who has criticized his actions on many occasions and, I might add, one of his earliest victims, I sincerely feel sorry for him at this time and wish him recovery. I don’t have ill wish for him as a person. In all sincerity, I don’t want him to die or even suffer in illness. If anything, I want him to live long enough to have private time to reflect on the bad and good he did to the country, particularly the harm and pain he inflicted on countless number of Ethiopians and see if he has anything to regret and feel sorry about. In my view, so much of the blood and tears shed because of the decisions he made was avoidable. Early on as the TPLF/EPRDF took power, I was their supporter and was happy that a person of Meles’s caliber was at the helm. I remember arguing in their favor and being ridiculed as naïve. I did not even blame them for the separation of Eritrea which I still believe is a collective failure of all of us as Ethiopians. I was proven naïve and wrong shortly after. I saw the savage beating and shooting and killing of peaceful demonstrating university students, some of them my own, on my own eyes on January 4, 1993. After watching the savagery, I went to my office and passed a sad and depressing day. Even then and there after, I never hated Meles as a person, I only despised him.

I am not sold on the he is dead speculation. But whatever the outcome of Meles’s health, we can presume at this stage that his tenure as the country’s supreme leader is ending. Even if he survives his illness, it is unlikely that he will go back to his position and lead the country and nurse his health at the same time.

Like all authoritarian leaders Meles has made a big shoe for himself that cannot be easily filled by those around him. This will make any smooth transition difficult. But difficult transition times often come with both challenges and opportunities to build a better future. The leaders and supporters of the TPLF/EPRDF may all want to bury their heads in the sand and deny it, but Ethiopia is on a perilous and unsustainable trajectory. The trajectory has sharply bended down particularly since the 2005 election. Ethiopia, a diverse country in all respects, has become a one party state. The Regime has gotten more control freak and all civil societies who wanted to work independently are decimated or controlled. The so called revolutionary democracy pursued by Meles and his party is turning out more of a social engineering scheme. The mass recruitment of people for party membership, often outside of the will of the individuals and with discriminatory privileges, speaks not to the strength of the party but to the kind of control-freakishness. Our people keep on suffering abject poverty in spite of a flood of record foreign aid that the country has ever seen in its history. Yes there is aggregate economic growth but the number of the destitute poor is also increasing. Ethiopia’s inflation, one of the highest in the world, is grinding down lives. Corruption is becoming an institution. The hopelessness is so much that our young people risk death to make unimaginably dangerous journeys fleeing the country in search of better opportunities. Many consider the gamble with their lives better than the hopeless future they see in their country. God knows how many are lost in capsized boats on the Red Sea and the Mediterranean and in locked containers of traffickers and those slaughtered by organ harvesters as they cross the wilderness. Our young sisters in the Middle East live and work in degrading slavery where their government never attends their conditions. There are no weeks that go by without hearing some tragic story of an Ethiopian maid in the Middle East. An Ethiopian airline crew once told me that on every flight he took from Jeddah to Addis Ababa, he has seen at least more than one mentally disturbed Ethiopian coming back home. And the part that boils my blood is that we bear all of this as if we don’t have a beautiful country that can feed more than itself.

The draconian laws promulgated to stifle civil society and all forms of dissent can look working for now but will eventually drag the country to further conflicts and poverty. Open eyes can see it. All observers of Ethiopia, including Ethiopia’s donors and organizations of international credibility have noticed this dangerous situation in Ethiopia. Only fools keep condemning Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and think they have responded to accusations of human rights abuse successfully and believe everything is ok. These are organizations who built unshakable credibility through hard and credible work in all countries around the world over time. Dictators have a unique ability to believe their delusions as the truth. I hope the people currently in charge of the country are not blinded by the groupthink they developed under Meles and open their eyes and see it. The zero sum game politics they have gotten used to playing is at a stage that cannot continue anymore. Ethiopia is a country that cannot be turned into China or North Korea. It is unique in many respects to fit into a model.

If the manner in which the current officials are handling the questions raised by the Moslem community and the closing of a newspaper of 30,000 copies (Fiteh) in a country of 80 million people are the tell tale of what is going to come, Ethiopia is going to have a serious problem on her hands. The government has made a culture of shredding its constitution and accusing others of not abiding by it. The current officials should realize that criminalizing all dissent and suppressing all questions coming from the people may take them only some short distance over a very limited time. The unwarranted label of extremism and terrorism put on people who have legitimate and clearly articulated questions, the use of force at places of worship and the incarceration of the Moslem community leaders is bound to be counterproductive. The crackdown can end up radicalizing this breathtakingly peaceful protest. It may even produce coattails throughout various sectors of the disaffected population. None of what the Moslem community is asking and doing over the last eight months does qualify as violence, extreme or any attempt to subvert the “constitutional order” as the government claims. Such accusations have now become an overused, one-size-fits-all, response to anyone peacefully dissenting for any reason – journalists, members and leaders of the opposition, etc. The Moslem community demanded to elect their own leaders in their own mosques and they protested government intervention in their affairs quoting the very constitution the government accuses them of defying. These demands do not require the use of force and a barrage of propaganda that accuses them of extremism and terrorism. We all remember what happened in Somalia over a short period of time. The Islamic Courts Union that we and the West referred to as extremist and helped chase out from power look like saints compared to the Al Shabbab that we ended up pulling off finally. Such accusations like these Ethiopian Muslims want to establish an Islamic State are off the charts and we all know that it is intended to alarm the unsuspecting none-Muslim population and instigate confrontation. All of us heard the leaders of the Moslem community say they would be crazy to demand such an outlandish demand in a country where more than half the population is non Moslem. The right and the courageous thing to do would have been to talk to the leaders and make them have their elections in their mosques. If they are really up to something more sinister as the government claims, then it would be easy for everyone including the general public to hold them accountable. Their question is a civil rights question. It has nothing to do with religious extremism. We have heard them. The non Moslem community is also getting it and supporting them. Any attempt to further narrow the political space in the country and continuing to shut these diverse questions by force and the language of force can sooner or later change the dynamics in the country for the worse.

The polarization in Ethiopia’s politics is at scary levels. We have become a country without statesmen. This is unlike our old tradition where shimagilles who make dispassionate judgments are heard and respected. I don’t know if we have statesmen that can straddle these differences and speak to all sides with moral authority these days. Part of the reason is our political culture and the main reason now is this so called revolutionary democracy whose central teaching states that if you are not with it you are its enemy.

The Sane thing to do now:

 The authorities currently in charge of the country should do an overdue thing that Meles himself should have done years ago. Begin a transparent dialogue with all political opponents in good faith on the future of the country on agreed modalities.

 The government should initiate a dialogue by starting out with releasing all political prisoners in the country – journalists, opposition politicians and community leaders etc. This should go along with decriminalizing dissent and revoking all this senseless classification of opposition groups as terrorists. There are no terrorists in Ethiopia. The only thing Ethiopians are terrorized by is poverty and their fear of government. Dissidence and demanding freedom is not terrorism.

 Opposition forces also must understand that they have a lot of housekeeping to do and need to work on cleaning their fragmented house and regroup and present clear and workable choices and ready themselves to solve the country’s impasses through peaceful dialogue.

 The Ethiopian Diaspora has a huge role but it should understand that its role is supportive and that what it can do from a distance does not replace what the people on the ground in Ethiopia can do. We need to support every bit of move towards democracy by anybody.

 We all should stop our traditional politics of trying to build a system over the grave of the existing. Ethiopia cannot afford violence but cannot avoid it if the regime cannot come to its senses.

I want to be wrong but I see our country teetering on the precipice. Every one of us, children of that country, irrespective of our political views, has huge responsibilities to help avoid disasters. By virtue of the power it holds, the ruling party has much of the responsibility. Any decision to continue on current trends is assuring a destructive future and the regime will carry all responsibility that comes with it.

Open Ethiopia up for democracy where all of us can be heard and hold a stake. And finally all of us Ethiopian living inside and outside Ethiopia will roll our sleeves, build the dams and bridges farm our lands on our own and pour whatever resources we have to drag our country out of poverty.

(The writer can be reached at [email protected])

It is now almost 2 months since Ethiopia’s khat-addicted dictator Meles Zenawi disappeared from public view. The country currently is being led by a secretive cabal of thugs from Adwa Awraja who are unable to decide who will replace Meles. Diplomats and other observers predict that even if Meles is alive, he will not be able to resume his job, The Gurdian reports.

By Daliah Solomon

Leaders and citizens start asking questions when the national sports team they support fails to win expected medals. If a national Olympic team repeatedly suffers unexpected defeat, patriotic citizens will begin to scrutinize the National Olympic Committee responsible for the development, care and management of their national team. Citizens of democratic nations with under-performing Olympic teams freely voice their opinions about the managers of their failing national team. They will further rely on an independent free press to air their questions and concerns and to investigate exactly who or what is causing their team’s poor performance. More importantly, the lucky citizens of such nations will have political leaders and parties concerned about protecting national dignity and committed to raising the profile of their country, particularly at the world’s largest global event — the Olympics. During the London Olympics 2012, nationalistic leaders will monitor the performance of their respective teams, ready to ask probing questions if results are poor. If they are, then everyone will demand answers from their National Olympic Committee that is responsible for the success or failure of a national team. Unfortunately, this is not the reality for Ethiopians who have no democracy, no human rights, no free press and who are ruled by a repressive regime with political leaders and leaders of the so called “Ethiopian National” Olympic Committee (ENOC) who care nothing at all for Ethiopian national pride.

For starters, Ethiopians do not have a national leader. Although presently declared by some to be a missing person, and presumed dead by others, the currently invisible Meles Zenawi has never claimed to be a national leader. He is/was in fact a tribal chief, mandated to lead by his exclusive ethnic Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF). It’s a small wonder that Ethiopian athletes have not yet been ethnically segregated to represent their respective ethnic Bantustans at the Olympics, in accordance with TPLF’s ethnic apartheid system of ruling Ethiopia.

A closer examination of the ENOC is leading to damning emerging evidence of yet another TPLF money-making scam involving the sale of Ethiopia and Ethiopians. It is becoming clearer by the day that TPLF, not content with selling the land, rivers, genetic wealth, babies and young girls, is busy leasing and selling Ethiopian athletes to foreigners via the commodity brokerage house wrongly called the “Ethiopian National Olympic Committee.”

Before examining the scam, it is necessary to examine the scammers. Firstly, the so called “National” Olympic Committee of Ethiopia is run by individuals who are not even remotely connected to sports in Ethiopia. Whilst it will come as no surprise to learn that the head of the ENOC is Tigrean, it is shocking to discover that the President of Ethiopia’s NOC, Berhane K. Mariam, is a party member of TPLF and General Manager of the notorious lie factory Walta Information Center. Though he claims to be President of a “National Basketball Federation,” it is not clear where this institution is located and what it does. Except for a few hastily organized events just prior to the Olympics, the so- called Ethiopian Basketball Federation is an invisible, inactive entity in Ethiopia.

Alongside the General Manager of Walta Propaganda Service is another Tigrean, Ms Dagmawit Girmay Berhane, with the fancy title of Secretary General of the ENOC. Like her colleague, Ms. Dagamwit, who is a full-time employee of an international NGO, presents a fictitious connection with a national sport that no one in Ethiopia plays — badminton. So, from the outset, when we talk of the Ethiopian National Olympic Committee we are talking about liars and cheats.

How is money being made at Ethiopian NOC?

What is being discussed here is not the money that Ethiopian athletes are allegedly being forced to pay as bribes to ENOC officials in order to be allowed to participate in international competitions. We get the first clue of the ENOC’s international crime involving large amounts of money courtesy of Bahrain, where the entire national Olympic team came out in support of the ongoing political protests and were promptly thrown into jail for their involvement in politics. Suddenly in the market for trained, tried and tested athletes, the Bahrainis were pleased to meet the TPLF’s ENOC who are always ready and willing to vet refer and transfer young Ethiopian athletes to the highest bidder- for a fee.

More than half the Bahrain national Olympic team is Ethiopian. The idea that these athletes were Ethiopian “refugees” or “migrant workers” not connected to the ENOC was quickly laid to rest due to a curious event that occurred much farther away, in Sweden.

The scam of TPLF’s NOC “leasing” Ethiopian athletes to foreign governments is best confirmed and encapsulated in this still unfolding scandalous Swedish saga of Ethiopian athlete Abeba Aregawi.

Ms. Aregawi did the unthinkable by daring to defy arrangements made by her clansmen at ENOC and decided to work for herself by switching citizenship without their approval and pre-arrangement, (i.e. commission). This rebellious act by Abeba Aregawi, and the vindictive threatening action of the ENOC which followed, was not reported to the Ethiopian public by their stifled press. The party-loyal “Reporter” newspaper covered up the scandal by presenting Abeba Aregawi’s attempted escape as a minor misunderstanding. In fact, Aregawi was severely pressured, blackmailed and frightened into returning from Sweden to Ethiopia by the thugs at ENOC.

The corrupt officials at ENOC were furious that Abeba Aregawi dared an attempt to make a deal directly with the Swedes without their involvement thereby endangering their commission and kickbacks! It is these recent events that prove unequivocally that EVERY Ethiopian athlete participating in international competitions on behalf of foreign nations does so with the full knowledge, management and “brokering” of the ENOC who is paid for each transfer and transaction involving Ethiopian athletes.

We are not only talking about Aregawi in Sweden and half of the Bahrain Olympic Team but many, many Ethiopian athletes who currently compete for foreign countries after being sold or leased by the TPLF-ENOC.

At the recent launch of a book written by the unjustly imprisoned young female journalist Reeyot Alemu, Prof. Mesfin WoldeMariam noted with dismay that 50 years after the establishment of the Ethiopian National Olympic Committee, and the committed leadership in sports administration by the likes of the late Yidnekachew Tessemma, a nation of 90 million people still could not garner anything more than the same few gold medals in the same few sports. In fact, Professor Mesfin was being optimistic to suggest that sports in Ethiopian is merely treading water. The truth is TPLF has given the slogan used by defecting athletes during Derg times, “Sport le Passport”, a whole new and much darker sinister meaning.

The TPLF ENOC’s management of and profit from the “defections” of Ethiopian athletes, their purposeful encouragement and promotion of young Ethiopians to compete for other nations is something that needs to cause great alarm for Ethiopians. What TPLF effectively and systematically doing is destroying the athletic future of Ethiopia by making sure Ethiopia does not have a generation of gold medal winning athletes to replace the current one that the ENOC is literally running into the ground! NO! The current TPLF Ethiopian National Olympic Committee has NOT slept on the job like the previous military regime as Prof. Mesfin wrongly suggests. On the contrary, the ENOC has worked hard to ensure Ethiopia does badly at as many international sports events as possible, including London Olympics 2012 in order to whittle away the national pride of Ethiopians. TPLF is working very hard indeed for a future that is free of any Ethiopian flag raising and flag waving caused by Ethiopian athletic victories during international events.

On August 6th 2012, Ethiopian athlete Abeba Aregawi announced she is leaving the losing Ethiopian team and will start competing for Sweden immediately after the London Olympics 2012, according to Swedish press. It appears a profitable deal has been struck. Whatever her decision and dirty deal that has now been done, Ethiopians owe Abeba Aregawi a debt of gratitude for her bravery in resisting and exposing the thuggery and corruption going on at the ENOC.

If there is any place, activity or institution in Ethiopia where Ethiopians can feel national pride, unity, and peace; whether it is in a sports arena, concert hall, in Mosques or in a Church or monastery; TPLF will be there to destroy it and make a tidy profit in the process.

Today is the 48th day since Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi has disappeared from the public view. His wife Azeb Mesfin has also disappeared for the past 18 days.

The silence of the international media and world leaders on Meles Zenawi’s disappearance continues. CNN and Aljazeera have yet to say a word, while BBC and a few others reported minimally. None of Meles Zenawi’s puppet-masters in the West have uttered a single word of concern about his condition and whereabouts.

Tigray region president Abay Wolde has quietly assumed the position of acting chairman of the ruling TPLF, Ethiopian Review sources in Addis Ababa reported today.

Meanwhile, the regime’s hard currency reserve has reached at a critically low level. Banks have reportedly stopped giving hard currency for most importers.