Statement by Boycott TPLF Task Force
Don’t hand over your hard-earned dollars, euros, any foreign currency to them! And save your own money in the process!
Meles Zenawi is either dead, or if he is not actually clinically dead, he is as good as dead in terms of his physical and mental condition and well-being. Here is a critical question: What can every Ethiopian, especially Ethiopians living across the world, do to make it as difficult as possible for Woyanne to continue to rule the country with an iron fist without missing a beat, now that Meles is out of the picture?
One of the greatest powers we all have is the power of our money. Especially at this time of uncertainty, foreign exchange is one of the most important resources TPLF will try to hold on to and continue to amass. They are desperate for forex in order to be able to buy the necessary military and police hardware to put down any uprisings or opposition attacks against them. Perhaps more importantly: Foreign exchange is also needed to keep the military elites happy and well-taken care of—now more urgent than ever for TPLF, because some senior military officials may start getting restive in light of the death (or as-good-as-death) of their patron-saint, Meles.
One of the major sources of foreign exchange for woyanne are revenues they extract from Ethiopian Airlines, predominantly from ticket purchases by Ethiopians residing abroad. Starve the beast by stopping to hand over your money to Woyanne through Ethiopian Airlines (EAL). Moreover, EAL prices are likely to increase, in part because of inefficiencies in management—now likely to get worse since they recently removed a respected chief executive and put one of their own, a true-blue Woyanne, at the helm of EAL. Therefore, in fact EAL is more often than not more expensive than other airlines. So by quitting EAL and taking other airlines instead, you are not only depriving TPLF of foreign exchange that they need now more desperately than ever; you are also being wiser in managing your own finances.
Here is just one of many examples (see on the right) where flying EAL is more expensive than flying other airlines (screenshots from Expedia.com). For a randomly picked roundtrip flight from Washington DC to Addis and back, Lufthansa is the cheapest flight with $1,194, while EAL costs $1,382.