Some of the leaders of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (Kinijit) have gathered 300 people and formally created a new party named Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) today in Addis Ababa. See details at Kinijit North America’s web site here.
Let’s go straight to the crux of the matter: UDJ by its actions and positions had demonstrated itself to be a political party without a popular base. It is a fake party without popular constituency — like Beyene Petros’s UEDF, Lidetu Ayalew’s EUDP, and the many other useless political groupings whose only benefit is to make Woyanne look legitimate or democrat.
UDJ, in particular, is a great disappointment, because it had a potential to position itself as a genuine opposition party by doing things such as:
1) Keeping its former name Kinijit.
2) Not accepting the legitimacy of the Woyanne-dominated Election Board.
3) Ignoring Woyanne’s ban on public meetings.
4) Speaking out against Woyanne atrocities through out Ethiopia, particularly the wholesale massacres of Ethiopians in Ogaden.
5) Demanding the resignation of Meles Zenawi and all Woyanne top leaders…
They may risk arrest and other dangers by doing the things mentioned above. But if they present themselves as leaders, what else do they expect? If they are afraid of arrest, they should stay home. How many times other leaders of ‘peaceful struggle’ were jailed, beaten up, and killed? How many times Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mandela, San Suu Kyi, and others were arrested, beaten up, and assassinated because they refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the tyrannical system that brutalized and enslaved their people. San Suu Kyi of Burma gets arrested almost every other week. On the other hand, take a look at what the UDJ leaders are doing:
1) When Woyanne told them that they cannot use Kinijit as their name, they said, ‘yes, master’ and changed their name, submitting themselves to the illegitimate regime.
2) After they changed their name, Woyanne still refused to give them legal status. But they continued to beg the dictatorship through Western diplomats.
3) When Woyanne security agents banned their meeting, they run to U.S. and U.K. ambassadors for help. Woyanne said yes to its puppet masters, U.S. and U.K. diplomats, and allowed UDJ to meet, but only inside their office. Without any hint of resistance, they accepted Woyanne’s condition and held their meeting in their office today.
4) In the past 10 months, when millions of our people faced death from starvation as result of Woyanne’s mismanagement of the country’s resources, when tens of thousands of fellow Ethiopians were slaughtered in Ogaden, when a neighboring country, Somalia, was pillaged by Woyanne occupation forces in the name of Ethiopia, when high commodity prices caused so much suffering, when large tracts of land were given away to Sudan in a secret deal, not a word of concern was expressed by the UDJ leaders. The only criticism we hear coming out of the mouths of UDJ leaders these days is directed at freedom fighters who raised arms to defend themselves and their people from the Woyanne brutal dictatorship.
It is because of all these reasons and more that Ethiopian Review believes UDJ is another fake party by any measurement.
Let’s call a spade ‘spade’. UDJ is Fake.
NOTE TO KINIJIT NORTH AMERICA: Not a penny of the money collected in the name of Kinijit from Ethiopians in the Diaspora should be given to UDJ, because UDJ is not Kinijit and doesn’t stand for the principles that Kinijit upheld. It would be a betrayal of public trust on the part of Kinijit North America to give any of the money under its controls to UDJ.