A wake-up call

The mass-mourning of Ethiopians over the death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi looks like the country is a twin sister of North Korea. If mass mourning is an indication of anything, it shows the absence of freedom and the reign of fear in the country.

Just looking back only at the last two decades, we Ethiopians have faced several ups and downs. I have an independent perspective in terms of talking about our country. To start with the negative side, we have seen gross violations of human rights, including extrajudicial detentions and killings of innocent citizens. The major ones, I can say, were the loss of our ports and the death of thousands.

To mention the positive side, we have seen slight economic growth, infrastructures developments, specially roads and buildings, increased privatizations, small scale businesses growth, some improvements on the agriculture sector, international relations with different countries like China, whether it has positive or negative impact, and different promising construction projects, like Abay dam (highly mentioned one anyways) and the sugar factories. Why am I mentioning all these? Here is my point. Zenawi did some worst and some good things. No doubt about that. Meles Zenawi is now over.

There is no Meles any more, no more his decisions, but we still have his works and memories, and all what he did either good or bad. Of course his party is still there; that means his ideology still exists. That is another topic; let’s focus on Meles Zenawi for now. I am not from those groups who say Meles did nothing, because he did much good stuff, which are feasible, and that we already saw. Did he bring positive changes? Absolutely, yes. Did he make the country to and grow? Of course yes. How far? I will leave the GDP measurement to Economists. Did he represent the country well? Yes, African countries leaders and some international communities are the witness. Was he a dictator? Certainly, yes.

We already saw that thousands were killed by his regime, and by the soldiers under his control. We still have journalists in prison. On top of that, even after 20 years, he couldn’t even make ready a better second person next to him, who can now easily succeed him in a better way. He was just holding the sole power and that is why he looked outshine for most people. Was he racist? Yes. We all know at least one person favored by his regime, either because of their ethnicity or they are supporter. Probably he doesn’t know all these details, but don’t forget he was on power; he was responsible to straight up the system.

I am not a supporter of Mr. Zenawi, or his party. But I personally like him because he was intellectual and mindful, whether he used it for good or bad. I really hate him because he was a dictator and for the lack of freedom we are having. Especially it proved to me now when we are having mass mourning for his death. We can’t blame him for the forced mourning because he had already passed away, but it is the dictatorship system he created. You can also see that I am not protester either. I am not from any opposition parties. But I just appreciate the good things and blame the evil ones. You don’t have to be supporter or protester to evaluate and judge one system, specially the system you lived in.

Let me come to my main point. We Ethiopians need to be changed to work together for the better future of the country. We need to move forward towards how to bring changes and how to escape from our poverty. Meles’s death is a good opportunity to evaluate ourselves. We really need to appreciate for all his effort what he did, and we should criticize all his mistakes as well, so that the next leader will not do the same mistakes. That is how we fix our system. If we only talk about Meles Zenawi’s good stuffs by hiding his mistakes, like what most people do now, the next leader will be the same.

When I say the next leader I am not talking about Hailemariam Zenawi, I am talking about the real next leader. I don’t believe we will see much change because of Hailemariam Desalegn, any ways, for different reasons. By the way he is from the 3% population group of the country. I was laughing when people are relating him with king Minelik, because of Minelik’s mother was from Welayta. It is another story let’s come back to Zenawi now. If we always talk about the mistakes and Zenawi’s dictatorship, without praising the good ones, how can that next leader do those, which we have not appreciated? You all know that this is probably the time when a big number of Ethiopians are giving opinions and comments, specially using Social Medias, like Face Book, due to the Prime Minister’s death. The interesting part is most of the time we are fighting each other just because we have different observations about Meles Zenawi or because we have different political thinking’s.

Meles Zenawi is dead but we are still there, fighting on what he did or not. One of my non-Habesha friends, he is on Face book too, asked me “What is going on”? It is because he was confused by Ethiopian’s Face book comments around from both sides on Meles’s death. He was laughing on us and it was really hard for me to tell him all the details of our humiliation, because I didn’t want to. Do you see how it is shameful when it is seen from outside? We need to be changed. It is okay to have different views, and that is the sign of modernization, but the bottom line should be working to our country with our differences, it is one country. Let’s look Americans, for instance, whether they are republicans or democrats, with different views, at the end of the day they all are one. When they come to their country they are the same. They all work for the country, they think for their country. I am not comparing our system with theirs. We have a huge difference, but we can just learn a bit.

Whether we like it or not, the history of Meles Zenawi will be with us forever, with either good or bad. Are we going to talk about Meles forever? No we shouldn’t. But what we need is to bury all his mistakes together with his body and appreciate and praise all his great works. Let’s tell to Hailemariam, or his party, the truth. If they want to leave a better legacy than Meles, at the very least, they must free all political prisoners, allow more freedom of the press, and open up the political space for opposition parties to operate freely and vie for political power peacefully.

They can do which Meles couldn’t do. “Better late than never”. They should not be like a cast without their star actor. By doing this we can bring a better leader, fix our system, create awareness, fight the poverty, and finally develop our country. Instead of bowing to Meles’s body, as we have seen, let’s move forward to a change. Let’s build our awareness. Once we create this attitude in our mind whoever lead the country that doesn’t matter, because we know that people with awareness, if united, can always bring change. As Obama said, “let’s move forward, not back”.

It is time for the change. Meles Zenawi’s death is a wakeup call for all of us. Regardless of our political views, let’s be united and let’s work together towards to the bright future of our country. Instead of fighting each other, let’s fight against our poverty.
Instead of fighting on Zenawi, let’s be “Zemenawi”.

Let’s wake up!