Second, such land-grabs are not due to government ignorance or policy blunders committed to promote investment and development. For the government in power, Ethiopia is an auction item – worth selling to the highest bidder. Reason? Simply because the government has no attachment to Ethiopia.
When Meles recently raised the eye-brows of the innocent by saying that the people had given him a five-year contract to rule Ethiopia, he was inadvertently telling the truth that his presence in Ethiopia is ‘mechanical.’ He has no attachment to the country we reveringly call ‘motherland.’ For him and his ilk, Ethiopia was and is an enemy land conquered first to liberate Eritrea and second to hold it hostage as long as it takes. Tigrians in TPLF were used as foot-soldiers of the anti-Ethiopia group, and those ‘Tigrians’ still in power without having any real power are no different from Meles Zenawi’s hirelings from other ethnic groups.
In a recent interview conducted in Tigrinya with an Eritrean journalist from opposition Radio Assena, Meles drowned himself into the depths of Eritrean thoughts, and said:
“I insist to talk to the Eritrean leaders before the border is demarcated on the ground because areas that I know very well as Eritrean territories since time antiquity have been given to Ethiopia. How can we let this happen?”
Moments later, Meles came back to his senses that he is an “Ethiopian” prime minister, and tried to blur the gaffe by saying, “Likewise, Ethiopian lands have also been given to Eritrea.”
Actually, the latter statement was uttered to remind listeners that he also cares for Ethiopia. But it is a public secret that it was Meles Zenawi who provided the boundary commission with a map that shows Badme in Eritrea.
For that matter, the “Ethiopian” delegation to The Hague was headed by Yemane Jamaica, an Eritrean who was Seyoum Mesfin’s boss behind the scene at the Foreign Ministry. Therefore, the game over border demarcation was between two Eritrean groups.
Unless we acknowledge that Ethiopia is under a mercenary rule, we will remain vulnerable to the machinations of Meles, and unity among opposition groups may remain elusive because they mistake him for a Tigrian from Adua, and hence an Ethiopian dictator, which is profoundly wrong.
When we are aware of and there is a national consensus that the country is under a mercenary rule, rescuing the nation becomes a matter of priority to every Ethiopian. No matter what, unity takes precedence over everything else. When we wrongly perceive the mercenary as a dictator, national unity takes a back seat to political partisanship and bickerings among the opposition. I think our failure to distinguish between the two poltical concepts – mercenary vs dictator – is our Achilles’ heel.
In the event of regime change, a dictator may flee or be captured. A mercenary makes sure Ethiopia doesn’t exist.
