EPRP web sites have reported today that the discredited former chairman of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (Kinijit), Ato Hailu Shawel, held a meeting with Addis Ababa’s youth and women. It is reported that some 200 people attended the meeting on Sunday, June 15.
Where are the youth? Where are the women?
As the photo below shows, there were only one person under 60 years old and only three women in the meeting. [Photo is provided by mahder.com, an EPRP web site.]
More revealing as to how much of a joke Ato Hailu made out of himself is that while Woyanne police was dispersing UDJ meeting a short distance away on the same weekend, no body bothered to even notice that he was holding a public meeting. It is too obvious now that even the paranoid Woyanne is not taking Hailu Shawel seriously any more.
Meanwhile, some of those who are partly responsible for Ato Hailu’s downfall, including Ato Moges Brook of Los Angeles, have now turned their back on him. They find him useless, too, after he aligned himself with the EPRP reactionaries. The web site that was hijacked by Ato Moges, Kinijit.org, has stopped reporting any thing about him for several weeks. Currently, Hailu Shawel relies on trashy web sites that are run by retired communists (EPRP) to get his message out. Even among those repeat losers, many are abandoning him after observing that he has no more use to them.
The rise and sudden fall of Hailu Shawel must be carefully studied by all Ethiopian political leaders, so that they do not repeat the same mistake. It is a self-caused down-fall by a person whom we all once held in high esteem.