An Advice and a Request to Prime Minister Tony Blair to Cage His Attack Dog:

Woyane Ethnic Supremacist Policy, Ethnic Cleansing, and Election Politics

by Bekele Molla

April 6, 2005

Congratulations to Mr. Blair for choking up a narrow but bloody victory in the UK parliamentary elections. Unlike Mr. Blair though, his buddy in Ethiopia will not be so lucky. If as expected by millions of Ethiopians, a civil disobedience breaks out on the eve of "parliamentary elections" on May 15, 2005, or thereafter, and following Mr. Zenawi's declared refusal (ala Mugabe) to give up power. Mr. Blair's hands will be stained with Ethiopian blood due to his close association with Mr. Meles Zenawi. The US government has issued a public warning to its citizens regarding such an eventuality. 

Prime Minister Tony Blair has for the last fourteen years stood shoulder to shoulder with and swore by Mr. Zenawi (co-commissioner for Africa, ally in Iraqi war). It seems that there has been and still is a web of links between the two comrades. Melese Zenawi and his former Vice Premier Kassu Ilalla, spent time on learning political skills out of a London flat for a few years before the duo departed to the gorilla war front in the 1980s and eventually ascended to Emperor Haile Selassie's "throne" in Addis Abeba in 1991.

To wit, in a run up to the May 15th, 2005 elections in Ethiopia, Reuters reports (5/6/05) that Mr. Zenawi has declared "their [opposition] policies are geared toward creating hatred and rifts between ethnic groups similar to the policies of the Interahamwe when Hutu militia massacred Tutsis in Rwanda." He threatened the public to beware of the danger posed by the opposition. Mr. Blair, It was not the opposition that picked up the banner of ethnic liberation 30 years ago and began a war of ethnocentric terror, first in Tigray, and since 1991, in the rest of Ethiopia. The declaration by Mr. Zenawi reminds one of an Ethiopian pun x<tn Qmo (stole my thunder).

The Tigrean People's Liberation Front /Marxist Leninist League of Tigray's (TPLF/MLLT), liberationist policy bears resemblance to that of the British UN Eritrean Mandate of the 1950s (patterned after the fascist Italy's attempts to establish a civilizing and de-slaving colonial mission to Ethiopia in 1938). Nevertheless, the campaign of an architect of ethnic homicidal and genocidal acts of vengeance against the "Showan Dynasty" oppressors (war, starvation, disease and oppression) in the pursuit of "ethnic counter-supremacy" has come to naught. The chicken have come home to roust - the TPLF is now surrounded by Eritrean, Afar, Oromo, Somali, Sidama, Amhara, Tigre etc. liberation fronts.  Now that his regime has failed miserably because of Ethiopian tenacious patriotism and centuries-old ethnic pride, cohesion and tolerance, Zenawi wants to turn the table and accuse the opposition of fermenting fragmentation. In fact, history records that the "Showan Dynasty" that he so despises and the opposition supports, built a stable and heterogeneously diverse nation state that withstood European colonialism and served as a beacon of hope for other Africans. Ethiopian is a peaceful nation and her people want nothing more than peace, stability and prosperity.

At no time in Ethiopian history did her people engage in fratricidal war that took the lives of 300,000 citizens in a span of three years, before Zenawi appeared on the political landscape. Traditionally, for thousands of years, Ethiopian Emperors, Kings, Princes, Dukes and feudal lords fought among themselves, or negotiated peace but never turned her people against each other (incited fratricidal and genocidal war of attrition) or attempted to tear the nation apart. Once a political rival was vanquished, peace and stability, and at times inter-marriage followed. Emperors Tewodros II, Tekle Giorgis II, Yohannes IV, Menelik II, (Empress Zewditu) and Haile Selassie I sought to build or rule Ethiopia as a unified nation beginning in the 1850s. Ethiopian dynasties (including the Axumite) are traced back to King Solomon and Queen of Sheba.

Nothing seems to be working in favor of the TPLF/MLLT these days. Saber rattling against his beloved Eritrea's Isayas Afeworki has not produced a global panicked reaction. Neo-fascist transparent assistance and Italian ingratiation-return of Axum Obelisk in the middle of a bitter and divisive election campaign - may not save the prodigal son from perhaps imminent political "defeat." Billions of subsidies in pounds, Euros and dollars are going down to a bottomless pit and the regime insignia has become a pauper's bag.  The Saudi Arabian Billionaire patron Mohammed Al-Alamudi's waving of Woyane banner has backfired. HIV/AIDS, malaria, hunger, starvation and poverty are rampant. Intimidation, dismissal, torture, incarceration and extra-judicial killings of opposition leaders and supporters have not lead to the derailment of electioneering. There is unrest among the rank and file of the Woyane military machine.

No wonder, Zenawi's split personality scene played out on EPRDF TV, has produced a drama for entertainment, but it is not funny. His bragging about the return of "the magnificent Axumite Obelisk" after denouncing and deprecating Ethiopian history and glory for decades is amusing if not comical. Who would forget Zenawi's description of the Ethiopian tri-color as a piece of clothe, and his utterances that the "Axumites of the north have nothing in common with Wolayitas of the south! None-the-less, post-liberation, "the Napoleon of Axum" was ordained by disciples of Karl Marx and Albanian Hoxha to rule over the peasants and proletariat of the "uncivilized" center and south. To Bonapartists, southerners look like "cheap labor"; Don't they?

Ethnic liberationist theory on one hand and ethos of democratic governance on the other, do diverge from the outset. While the first is based on the psychological needs of inflated and bruised egos, the latter is manifested by a willingness to improvise and improve a communal and national system of collective sustainable existence. Ethnic liberationism in general is destructive while democratization is constructive. Frivolous notions of equality and diversity of "nations and nationalities" and "respect of the equality of nations and nationalities in any country" through establishment of ethnic based states or attempts to make a nation out of a conflagration of autonomous peoples who have nothing in common, is tantamount to taking the wrong step towards a slippery slope. Today, Melese Zenawi finds himself on the abyss of a suicidal cliff. He tried to create supremacist Tigrean ethnic and other states "built on a language-ethnic regional enclave by respecting their diversities." He has got things backwards and now feigns bewilderment as to why the Ethiopian people are angry at him. Even Tigrean liberators, his former comrade-in-arms, once they seized state machinery in Addis Abeba and got drunk with power, became dispensable. Poor Isayas was left to fetch a bare bone.

The real question Ethiopians wanted answered is why Mr. Blair and the likes of him (purportedly liberal democrats) are, in this age and historical era, jumping on Zenawi's political wagon by contrasting and confusing ethnic divisiveness in Africa against traditional homogeneity by banking on false claims – "saving the nation from disintegration" – by breaking it apart into warring ethnic enclaves. If such a theory did not work in Northern Ireland and Hong Kong, how could it work in East Africa? In a futile attempt to muddle Ethiopian (Axumite) history Mr. Zenawi claims that both Ethiopia and "Eritrea" were liberated from European colonialism but Eritrea was immediately re-colonized by Ethiopian imperialism in the 1950s.  In fact it was the British who tried to hold on to their former East African colonies in order to complete their civilizing UN mandate. The proliferation of Ethnic liberation fronts may have been triggered in part by British disappointments!

Propaganda aside, to date, implementation of Tigrian-Tigrign ethnic supremacist authoritarian administration at every level of the Ethiopian national and "federal" governments has not worked. What has transpired is the wholesale plundering, by a gang of thugs, of the nation's wealth, destruction of the educational system, modern agriculture and industrial infrastructure that was built during Emperor Haile Selassie's government. The first elections were held in 1957 and not 1997. "Eritrean" independence (self-determination – up to and including secession) has not brought peace and stability but war, starvation, disease and abject poverty for millions.

Fundamentally, Melese Zenawi's/TPLF chance of winning a free, fair and transparent election is extremely low (in partnership with EPRDF or not). He simply does not have the constituency that he craves. But no matter what, with or without international observers, he will "win at the polls." Remember, he won in 1995 and 2000 and received certification from former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. Carter, minus his NGO, is back in Addis. Melese will win once again because he is above the rule of law, and is issuing overnight election edicts, rulings and amendments to laws; heads a partisan election board; disenfranchised university students; has kicked out credible election observers; is arresting, kidnapping and killing opposition candidates; is discrediting civic societies; is harassing human rights advocates; has sharpened all the tools necessary for a fraudulent voting system; is using national institutions and resources for ethnic party victory; and has the military on stand-by to move in if necessary, Read recent  human rights reports by Human Rights Watch and US Department of State.

Mr. Zenawi has shown his hand. He is going to play the bloody card. Just look at his pointed threatening fingers and his glaring eyes and you could see the killer instinct. A pre-planned bloodshed is imminent. He has made it clear that his ethnic clan will spare no lives if confronted. This is not war-mongering or an empty threat. Comparison of opponents to "Rewanda interahamwe" is enough to send chills through innocent opposition candidate's backbones, most of whom are civil servants or businessmen who do not have a single bodyguard let alone lead an insurrection against a tyrant armed to his ears by China and Russia. By projecting evil intent to the opposition, a clever tactic to deflect attention from his own acts of terror, Mr. Zenawi hopes to remain in power for another five years to complete his mission.

Faced with these stark scenarios, I would like to plead on behalf of the Ethiopian people, with Mr. Blair and other world leaders to persuade Mr. zenawi to peacefully give up the seat of government that he seized by force 14 years ago. Enough is enough. No excuses and veiled threats by a tyrannical ethnocentric clique to silence the oppressed majority. The Ethiopian people want to establish their own democratically elected government and not be subjugated by an occupation mercenary army designed to maintain a minority ethnic supremacist regime. Democracy, peace, tolerance for diversity, economic development, and regional stability is much preferable to war and hate.

Ethiopia Stretches Her Hands Unto God.

God Bless Ethiopia.

Democracy for Ethiopia

BACK TO FETTAN HOME PAGE