The infringement of the democratic process in Ethiopia started on the day of the last election. The aftermath of the landmark parliamentary election has laid bare the deeply entrenched patterns of political repression, human rights abuses and impunity that characterize the day-to-day reality of governance in much of the country. Prime Minster Meles Zenawi’s one-party-controlled regime is an absolute dictatorship which is not restricted by its own constitution and laws. It continues its dominance through the threats of punishment and violence against the Ethiopian people.
The value of democracy as we heard it from its champions in the West is being degraded before our own eyes in Ethiopia. When a dictator is considered a democrat, democracy is condemned to be used as a tool to perpetuate dictatorship and the misery of the Ethiopian people. The US and its allies have chosen to abandon the Ethiopian people and dance with the false tune of the Meles administration. Even the Word Bank budget support to repressive and unstable regimes is outright counterproductive, unethical, and provides an avenue for continued repression, who even after the dictator is gone the poor Ethiopian end up repaying the principal and interest to the bank. A genuine democratic alliance holding the aspirations of all Ethiopians is a hope for the Ethiopian people to bring democracy, justice, peace and stability in the country by holding together all Ethiopians around the country and abroad.
There is only one way to ensure that the solution for the current problem in Ethiopia would be fair to the Ethiopian people – that is, to ensure that representatives charged with the decision-making process are derived from each democratically elected leaders by the Ethiopian people, not by hand picked leaders of the ruling party. Through the advancement of its tyrannical rule, the Meles regime has not only created conflicts over political identity but also over the distribution of resources.
Conflicts created by the regime on the basis of political issues have claimed many innocent lives in addition to being associated with brutal suppression, disappearances, detentions, persecutions, and so on. It has also played a role in the promotion of poverty and related problems in the country. Consistent with its antidemocratic agenda, the regime has labeled the highly respected elected leaders of 77 million Ethiopians as criminals and charged them of treason and genocide at the instance of a handful of violent bloodsuckers and tyrants.
To implement its evil policy of “divide and rule” and facilitate ethnic cleansing, the Meles regime has divided the country into regions and subregions following ethnic lines. Within each region, power is held by the ruling party representatives, with the aim of ensuring their survival and hegemony by dividing the people along ethnic lines and weakening their potential challenges to the brutal. As has been reported by many reputable organizations, this deliberately created artificial situation, has, inevitably, resulted in ethnic conflicts and mass killings among brotherly and sisterly Ethiopians, who have been living together in harmony for centuries.
The ruling party by controlling the country’s resources and establishing monopoly of major companies such as banks, insurances, agro-businesses, transportation, telecommunication, and so on, has created conflicts over distribution of resources in Ethiopia. This practice is contrary to its own constitution. On individual basis, while the system unfairly favors members of the ruling party, those who are opposed or suspected to be opposing the regime are considered as second class citizens. They are punished by being forced to loss their jobs, imposing on them extra tax burdens, depriving them of essential items such as fertilizers, plots of farm lands and so on. Even worse, while individual beneficiaries of the system, being witnesses stealing the people’s money and transferring it to foreign accounts, many honest Ethiopian who support the opposition are thrown into jail with the excuse of involvement in corruption.
Defining democracy as the existence of an effective opposition without ethnic or religious references, our country has been deprived of this kind of working relationship for the last fourteen years. The ruling party’s apartheid and colony-style administration is a system deliberately structured to divide and weaken the Ethiopian people to control and rule them indefinitely without a strong opposition. It is long overdue, this has to stop short. The birth of a genuine Ethiopian democratic alliance will facilitate a transformation process in Ethiopia to build the country by creating a forgiving plat form about the past. As such, it will facilitate reconciliation between the different groups and engage them in nation-building as a team.
Once again, it is worth emphasizing that once a dictator, always a dictator and nothing good is expected from the present regime. It is clear that Meles’s aim is to destroy the little hope of democracy the Ethiopian people experienced during May 2005 election. The Ethiopian people have spoken “Yes” for democracy and “No” for tyranny. We salute our leaders who are determined to stay in prison for democracy and our country. Their imprisonment is not the end of the liberation struggle or of resistance against tyranny; in fact, we consider it as the beginning of a new and decisive phase in the struggle.
Ethiopian American Civic Advocacy calls upon all democratic movements in our country to work together to dismantle the tyrannical regime of Meles Zenawi. We call upon our oppressed people in Ethiopia and all over the world to prepare for hard times and for untold sacrifices in the fight for freedom of their aspirations. We have all learned from our past experiences the ruling party policy of “divide and rule” dis-empowers us. We see it every passing day that the cruel regime is killing our beloved ones for selfish reasons with the support foreign powers, and in the meantime, it is further challenging the integrity of our beloved country. This has never happened in such a concerted manner to any other peace-loving people in our world. It is now up to us to defend ourselves. We urge all Ethiopians to come together to support genuine democratic alliances inclusive of all opposition parties that stand for the rights of all Ethiopians irrespective of ethnicity or religion in order to re-build our country and transform it to a peaceful, prosperous and stable nation. Learning from the past and keeping in mind the prevailing aspirations of the Ethiopian people, the new alliances, of necessity, should be different from the alliance formed between TPLF and others about fifteen years ago, which has proved to be destructive to our people and country.
