More support needed from the public

By Wowoka Abebe

January 31, 2006

I read the article “Our tolerance for big time black screw-ups” by Wondem WoldeEmanuel recently posted on your esteemed website. I thank the author for his insightful piece. Along the same line, I would like to add a few of my thoughts, particularly referring to the post-election events in Ethiopia.

It is now incontrovertible that :

• if the May 2005 national election was free and fair, the opposition would have been the official majority winner;
• the TPLF/EPRDF has taken power by force and is running an illegitimate government;
• the government run by the TPLF/EPRDF is in the act of violating human rights by carrying out mass massacres, imprisonments, tortures, plunders, rapes, denial of civil liberties, intimidations, etcetera;
• the Ethiopian people all over the world are expressing overwhelmingly their opposition to the illegitimate government of TPLF/EPRDF and its barbaric and treasonous acts.

Because of the blatant disregard demonstrated by the Ethiopian government for human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law, and the consequent violation of previous agreements and commitments in this regard:

1. the TPLF/EPRDF leader, Meles Zenawi, is now officially recognized by many reputable international organizations and individuals as one of the world’s worst dictators;
2. the EU, the World Bank and the UK publicly announced to withhold direct budgetary support of nearly $400 million from the government;
3. the US has barred the sale of Humvee military vehicles to the government.

However, in spite of the above specifics, information is also available indicating that:

• unlike the announcement of the donors mentioned above, the US will not withhold aid to the Ethiopian government and will continue giving the allocated $600 million as a direct budgetary support;
• the US government considers Ethiopia under Meles as “… the only country in the Horn moving towards democracy and development.”;
• the UK government has more recently proposed a plan to channel the withheld $375 million direct budget support to Woreda administration, which is under direct control by the TPLF/EPRDF regime; analysts express that this plan is designed to continue supporting the regime and save it from collapse; the World Bank also supports the plan.
• the announcement of the British government to cut off direct budget support to the Meles regime has also been decided to be reversed with some kind of minor adjustments;
• US and UK diplomats and other politicians also play an active role in helping the illegitimate regime of Meles to stay in power by providing other forms of assistance including advices and strategic planning, lobbying, imposing influences on others stakeholders, covering up, diversion of issues etcetera.

What do the above realities suggest concerning the interests of the US and UK governments regarding Ethiopia? This writer tends to believe that, among other possibilities, these governments:

1. do not, as such, care about Ethiopia and Ethiopians;
2. do not, as such, care about the respect of human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law; they give lip service most of the time to appear nice and fair to take advantage of available opportunities;
3. must get benefits from their association with the Ethiopian government; they use Meles as a tool for their own advantages and, therefore, want him to stay in power;
4. are not limited to getting the service of Meles as an antiterrorist, knowing that they can have a better partner for fighting terrorism if the leadership role is assumed by the more popular, and peace-loving opposition; the TPLF/EPRDF led by Meles has proved to have the tendency to be more of a terrorist organization.

The US, being the only superpower in our world today, has a tremendous influence on other countries and world politics as a whole. The UK is also influential primarily because of its historical role and rich experiences in world affairs. Both countries, together, can thus have a significant impact on the decisions made by other countries concerning Ethiopia.

Wondem WoldeEmanuel in his article has clearly put down how powerful nations like the US and UK control and exploit poor African countries by proxy and other mechanisms. What is happening presently in Ethiopia is part of this long-lived scheme of the powerful nations implemented in a more subtle way.

How do we go about tackling our problem, which is now viewed largely as originating from the influence of the powerful West, which, so far, does not seem to listen to us? One aspect of consideration is putting additional efforts to look for a solution within the political system functioning in the West itself.

Many western governments particularly those of the US and UK are considered to be products of corporate influences. As a result, the implementation of both domestic and foreign policies is usually in favor of the interests of corporations. As an illustration for this, Ralph Nader describes corporate power in the US as follows: “Through their revolving-door officials, thousands of political action committees, donations from executives, day-to-day lobbying by trade associations, company lobbies, and corporate law firms, corporations dominate the actions of government.” “You can see it in Congress, the regulatory agencies, the Departments, the presidency…” More or less similar things can be said about most of the other industrial nations. This implies that the present political turmoil in Ethiopia can thus be the result of corporate influence emanating at least from the US and UK.

Many experts believed that, due to corporate influence over government, Americans in their own country also face growing problems in health care, education, labor, energy and the environment. For instance, because of the shipment of jobs overseas, corporations have caused the loss of jobs and the lowering of wages for millions of US workers. These problems, obviously, have affected the living conditions of millions of citizens. This reality has forced American workers and conscious citizens to raise their voices against corporations and the government. They are demanding the removal of corporate influence over their lives and to get back their democratic rights as citizens. Expectedly, similar demands are also made by ordinary citizens in other industrialized countries.

From the aforementioned, a common factor exists at least between the suffering people of Ethiopia and the American public- the influence of corporations. It is, therefore, advantageous for the Ethiopian people to bring their cases to the American public more aggressively and clearly. The people can get the sympathy and support of the America public more readily due to related experiences. In addition, the American public does not want its tax money to be used for supporting a well confirmed despotic regime. Presentation of the people’s case can be done through civic organizations, independent political organizations etcetera which are critical of corporate domination. There is the possibility that these organizations per se can be powerful enough to bring about government policy changes towards Ethiopia. It has been observed that during the last few months there have been some efforts in this direction on the part of the oppositions, but the current Ethiopian situation demands that more needs to be done. This effort in combination with other activities being carried out by the oppositions and their supporters has a better chance to lead to the desired outcome. Here, it cannot be overemphasized that the key factor for attracting even the attention of supporters is strength and this can be achieved by the oppositions through unity or working together in harmony. The majority of the Ethiopian people expect the leaderships of the oppositions to make this a strong reality sooner than later.