What political change has he brought about and for whom? An
impressively
efficient transition to
tyranny, despotism, rigged elections and violent oppression, involving,
for example the recent massacre
of forty peaceful demonstrators who were “exercising their right to
free
assembly” (as laid down in the
UN Declaration of Human Rights and the US Bill of Rights/Constitution)
to express their disapproval of Government’s blatant rigging of the
recent election^2,3. Which decisive steps has he taken towards
increasing food production and reducing (particularly rural) poverty?

He
has forced poor farmers to buy
fertilizer they are unable to afford from government/party –owned
companies, with the result that they
become bankrupt and are forced to abandon their farms. Since this
obviously does not increase the
productivity of the dispossessed farmers, to the extent there has been
an increase in productivity, it must
be in the productivity of those who have foreclosed on the farms and
taken them over. This may of course
be a piece of misleading propaganda of the type presented by the Carter
Center a while ago when they
told the world that Ethiopia was producing an agricultural surplus
which
was being sold to neighboring
countries. The recent urgent appeals by the UN for food aid to Ethiopia
are clear indications that the
situation of Ethiopian agriculture is anything but satisfactory and
promising, as are the reports from the
World Bank stating that there was a 12% reduction in the Ethiopian
agricultural production in 2003.

In the light of the fact that all this is a matter of public record, it
seems bizarre when advisor to
governments world wide and UN special advisor on Millennium Goals, the
renowned Prof. Jeffrey
Sachs states in an interview with Addis Tribune⁴ that Ethiopia
is
a “well” governed country,
unless, of course, the good professor holds, in common with too many
others, that limited democracy
and a show government is good enough for Ethiopia. Does this mean that
even he has fallen victim to
the tactics of deception employed so often and so skillfully by Meles’
tyrannical government.

We applaud and support Yara’s commitment to and support of the Green
Revolution in Africa, a most
commendable initiative on the part of the UN, and particularly their
efforts to motivate and encourage in
a fair and equitable manner the promotion of sustainable development by
providing the Yara Prize.

At the same time we must point out that your first award of this prize
at this crucial point in Ethiopian
history when an oppressed population are showing their determination to
throw off the yoke of illegal
tyranny by legal means and through due democratic process, is at
variance with your expressed ideals,
and certainly does nothing to dispel the impression or gainsay the
understandable opinion that Yara &
Co, along with a number of other aid and developments, and human rights
organizations, seem to be
making an industry of others’ misery, and to be more interested in
being
perceived and renowned as
heroic helpers than in doing anything useful in the area of actually
rendering help and alleviating said
misery. Yara’s media spokesman, Mr Arne Cartridge, repeatedly denies
that Yara’s activities are in
any way motivated by commercial objectives, and claims that Yara has no
significant economic interests
in Ethiopia, notwithstanding the fact that Yara Foundation’s avowed
raison d’être is “… to combine a
commitment to sustainable development and the fight against poverty,
with commercial objectives” –
as stated by Yara’s president and CEO, Dr. Thorleif Enger in Yara’s
press release of the 3rd of May,
2005, entitled “Yara – first company to take up Annan’s Africa
challenge”⁵. This does not mean that
we have any objection to commercial objectives. On the contrary, we
applaud and support respectable
commercial enterprise and trading activities conducted transparently
and
equitably to the benefit of all
parties. This does, of course, require a certain openness and honesty,
not only towards one’s trading
partners, but also to the world at large. It is not least in the
interests of the furtherance of productive
commerce and economic development that we ask and beg Yara Foundation
to
retract this blatant
and hopefully not calculated insult to the Ethiopian people at large.

As has been pointed out by many scholars and researchers, with whom we
concur, the success of the
African Green Revolution is contingent upon the wholehearted commitment
to train and involve local
experts in a democratic and justly governed society, and not just on
sending experts who “monitor”
developments from the windows of luxury hotels.

We therefore appeal to and urge all those involved, and the Norwegian
Government, the UN, the EU
and the US to put more pressure on Ethiopia’s tyrannical government to
abide by generally accepted
democratic principles, and to deplore Yara’s award, since this award
will create a dangerous precedent
which will have the effect of encouraging and nurturing tyranny and
despotism by legitimizing them, and
of inhibiting and hampering the green revolution in Africa called by
Kofi Annan.

Finally, we appeal to Prof. Sachs in his capacity as one of the one
hundred presently most influential
personalities in the world, to re-examine the matter of Ethiopia and to
give it serious reappraisal. We
also urge him to decline to make the presentation.