Africa Initiative: Revolutionary Democracy’s 1st election daughter By Wossen H. Gabriel

Africa Initiative: Revolutionary Democracy’s 1st election daughter

By Wossen H. Gabriel

March 30, 2005

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As usual, Meles Zenawi has come up with another surprise: His Revolutionary Democracy, the one which four years ago had a stillbirth with Bonapartism, has delivered another baby: an election daughter named Initiative Africa (IA). No one has asked IA, but it says it is “not for profit.” And its birth a few weeks before the election is a mere coincidence. Is this skill-honing performance of Mr. Meles a new phenomenon? Take the following instances, for example, and observe the pattern:

1. If the people are fixed on accusing Meles Zenawi of ceding the Red Sea Port of Assab to Eritrea, then cede more territories like Badme. Then the sleepy nation would live lamenting whether Badme would go or stay within Ethiopia (and the issue of the Afar homeland would be forgotten forever).

2. If TPLF officials accuse Meles Zenawi of “working for the enemy,” purge them, and then charge them with corruption. They would struggle to clear their names in court, while serving time in prison. The issue of challenging Meles is then dead.

3. If university students accuse Meles of murder of fellow university students, fire hundreds of them, and the issue becomes why students should not be allowed back to classes.

4. If the opposition parties keep accusing the Meles camp of election frauds, then throw about 15 opposition members into jail, and charge them with election frauds. Their prime occupation would be to get the release of those detained, and not how to take political action against the fraudulous government.

This is our sad reality. The reality of always being dislodged from the offensive position into the defensive and helpless situation. Even we don’t know if we have realized this pattern. If Dr. Negasso Gidada keeps on challenging the authority of the ruling regime, cripple him financially by stripping him of the limited resources he used to get from the public for his services as former head of state. The trend is the same. Dr. Negasso’s next struggle would shift from being political to survival of his family.

2.
To touch base with reality, it is pre-“election” season in Ethiopia, and the battle has already raged between the camps of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the opposition parties. But as usual, Meles has tipped off the balance in his favor, by shoving the opposition into the defensive position. Here are some instances.

Earlier, the opposition parties fielded a series of accusations a few of which are:

a) Staffed by loyal cadres of Meles, the Election Board should be restructured (if election is to be conducted in Ethiopia).

b) Numerous election frauds are reported. With one example being opposition leader Lidetu Ayalew’s accusation that about 17,000 shadowy names were found in one district in Addis Ababa alone.

c) Another opposition leader, Dr. Beyene Petros had lodged an accusation the ruling party had names of children as voters in southern Ethiopia.

Though serious, none of the accusations were followed up to be corrected. Instead, the ruling party took the initiative to shove the opposition into the defensive position, and the government media announced that it has arrested 15 individuals from the opposition who were found distributing voter cards to “children as young as three years of age.”

On the side of this drama where the opposition are reduced into the status of passive onlookers, Meles has already launched other financed groups such as the so-called Initiative Africa, which said it carried out a pre-election survey, and reported EPRDF was leading in almost all constituencies, including in Tigrai, where support for the ruling party stood at 96%, and support for the opposition parties was nil. In fact, at a time of a simmering unrest against Meles in Tigrai region, where an army of 3000 keeps the security in once-TPLF hub Tembien province alone, it would not take the mind of a genius to throw out the “survey” of Africa Initiative as Meles Zenawi’s sinister scheme to prolong his anti-Ethiopian presence on an Ethiopian soil for five more years, and beyond.

The last straw to break the back of the opposition, and trigger an alarm within the opposition for counter-actions should have been the naked evidence that showed us Ethiopia has no constitutional rule but the power of a constitution designed to serve one and only Meles Zenawi. This was evidenced last week when Meles Zenawi’s parliament spokesman Dawit Yohannes stripped former President Negasso Gidada of all his privileges with a single stroke. Even the rubber-stamp parliament had no say in the making of the decision; the news that Dr. Negasso has lost state benefits because of his political activities was relayed to the house on a “for your information.”

Today it should not have been a time to debate whether Meles heads for a landslide victory because his “not-for-profit” company, Africa Initiative, has said so. The time should have been that the ruling party that misruled the country for 14 years, and fought along with Eritrea against the fundamental interests of the country while making famine and AIDS the permanent images of the country, should have been kicked out of office through the collective might of 70 million Ethiopians.

The opposition have no choice but to consolidate their unity amongst themselves as they are facing a regime lawless to the point of amending and deleting articles of the constitution at its whims. This is a regime that has survived on threats, initimidations, arrests, and killings, and not on the kind of support his paid company, Africa Initiative, purports to be. The opposition must once again rely on the power of the people, and should be aware of the danger of wasting their time in the tug-of-war of “election” scandals manufactured by Mr. Meles.