Change we should believe in - the Ethiopian version

Here is a Prime Minister with a grenade in one hand and a constitution in the other, both serving the same end and both made in the USA. His blue sofa is now replaced with an imperial one [click]. His one goal is to impress the Obama Administration. In 2009 [just before election 2010] Meles cleverly grew membership in his party to 5 million by requiring university graduates to register if they wanted jobs; every one of them took the option! [No one believes his figures were ever true and most are from rural areas any way and could hardly be verified.] He called the program “changing of the old guard” and did not include himself or his wife. He is again stealing the show. This time it is the retiring of 500 senior army officers supposedly bringing balance to a composition that had greatly favored Mr. Meles’s minority ethnic group for which he was constantly criticized. One thing Mr. Meles is not telling the world is who these senior officers are, when they retired, if every one of them is still alive, the names of those in key positions [especially, the second in command], if the new crop qualify for the post or are simply a token [like Foreign Minister Hailemariam], and why retirees from his region are given preferential treatment in the economic sector, etc. This latest act is Mr. Meles’s version of making political space to those on the outside! Or to paraphrase Obama, A change we should believe in! Ethiopians have a saying for this: change of stoves makes not tastier stew!  

Is the opposition moving in circles? 

L-R: Birtukan, Dr. Birhanu, Seye, Yenesew

BIRTUKAN: Holding back tears. “If only the world knew the horrors I went through in my solitary confinement.” And an adoring crowd demanding a pain-free change.

Dr. BIRHANU: Gaining weight and not wanting to lose momentum OR losing [Eritrean] weight and losing direction.

Tegadelti SEYE: Guiding a second liberation movement from his armchair. Appearing to be self-less and never missing a chance for self-advancement. Speaking the right words but not words that mattered. Claiming credit for peaceful struggle that did not cost him or discomfit his comrades.

YENESEW: an unlikely candidate for a rallying point and a postmortem patriot; a disoriented crowd grabbing at any thing to remain afloat.

The WAY FORWARD: continue pressuring Obama and Cameron governments; don’t vote for US Democratic Party; tone down the negative and stop serving up bile; provide empirical evidence for human rights abuses, for high economic growth that only advantaged the few, for environmental degradation, corruption, money-laundering and misuse of aid. Avoid consorting with Eritrean groups. Bring the evidence to donor publics, to public intellectuals, and to policy shapers. Make sure spokespersons are culturally and intellectually up to the task. Fight nepotism and group-think. Most of all, don't avoid or stifle voices that do not necessarily agree with your own! And this is our version of the Year in Review!

Release Ms. Reeyot, Eskinder Nega and all prisoners of conscience!