WASHINGTON – Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, long known for quoting lines from the dreaded 1994 Rwanda Genocide, is feared his government may spark ethnic conflict to decimate the rising popularity of an eight-party coalition known as Medrek, a source said.
Earlier, the government was linked to political murders of opposition candidates. Recently, the ruling party reversed the situation, and has started to blame the opposition groups for what the ruling party says the killings of its members.
This is a baseless but dreadful accusation indicative of the ruling party’s intention to launch its brutal attacks on the rising popularity of the eight-party Medrek.
Aside from the political murders which are widely believed to have been carried out by Mr. Zenawi’s party, another attempt at inciting disorders was at Addis Ababa university.
now an island of student groups segregated along ethnic lines, the source said.
There are three major security agent groups: Tigray, Amhara and Oromo students who spy for the ruling party. They are masked government spies who live on campus like all other students. When they receive orders, they carry out their assignments to the word.
Tigrai: The battleground of Election 2010
The recent assignment to incite conflict among university students was to pit Tigrians against Oromos.
“It was intentional as the two who started the fight were disguised government spies,” one student said with conviction. “They pulled in other students from their respective ethnic groups, and spread the fight in which at least 24 students injured.”
Former prominent TPLF officials like Seeye Abraha and Gebru Asrat are now running for Medrek, which is a huge political breakthrough for the country and a blow to Zenawi’s ruling party, TPLF.
“If Meles loses Tigrai, he has lost Ethiopia,” argues one. “The key to regime change lies in Tigrai. He knows Tigrian opposition figures of Medrek have tremendous popularity in Tigrai over Zenawi’s side.
What makes this year unique is TPLF is not going to the polls alone. There is Arena/Medrek, whose over 90 percent members are young professionals between the ages of 24 and 35. While Arena/Medrek is indigenous, Zenawi’s TPLF is widely resented as a traitorous group directly linked to Eritrea.
Most observers fear Meles Zenawi would go to great lengths to keep himself in power, even if that means to launch deadly attacks on Tigrians, and tell the victim side they were killed by the other ethnic group.
Mob stabs Ethiopian cop to death
Addis Ababa (AFP) – Ethiopian opposition supporters stabbed a policeman to death, police reported on Sunday, days after two people were killed in a bomb attack two weeks ahead of the May 23 elections.
The police officer was stabbed repeatedly by members of the Forum for Democracy and Dialogue (Medrek) party in the southern Oromya region on Saturday, the police said.
“Supporters of Medrek stabbed to death policeman Hassan Regasa last night in the Oromya region,” according to a statement.
Officials from Medrek were not immediately available for comment.
On Thursday, in Adaba in the same southern region, attackers threw a bomb at a meeting of a party from the ruling coalition, killing two people.
Tensions have risen in recent weeks as the ruling EPRDF party and the opposition bloc accuse each other of attacking supporters.
Last week, EPRDF officials said one of their candidates was stabbed to death by Medrek supporters as he left a party meeting.
Oromya is Ethiopia’s largest province and has the largest number of constituencies.
Around 30 million people have registered to vote for Ethiopia’s fourth elections since the Communist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam was toppled in 1991.
