Zenawi's Lessons of the 2005 Election and His Action Plan for 2010

Meles Zenawi's Lessons of the 2005 Elecion and
His Action Plan for 2010

11 March, 2010 | By Fekade Shewakena
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The stabbing of an opposition parliamentary

candidate and the brutal beating of another

in Tigrai by Meles Zenawi’s thugs last

week,

only days after the latter made a

code loaded speech at the TPLF

anniversary in Mekele, where he referred to

his opponents as the mud, the riffraff, and

the enemy, fall perfectly in line with the

tactic and strategy set out for “winning” the

May 2010 election. All indications,

including the rush by government officials

to explain how the victim died before even

any preliminary police investigation, show that Meles Zenawi’s finger
prints are all over the killing. Some ferenjis may be willfully fooled.
We Ethiopians know the drill and we get it. That it happened in Tigrai,
the ethnic homeland of Meles Zenawi, seems to have made the brutality
more sensational but similar instances occur widely and in large
numbers in other parts of the country. What this case may have loudly
demonstrated is perhaps the fact that no ethnic elite in power can
oppress other ethnic groups and leaves the people of its own ethnic
homeland in freedom. I hope our brothers and sisters from Tigrai are
getting the message loud and clear, that they are only one disagreement
away from the TPLF from being stabbed to death - just one attempt
away at making choices and decisions for and by themselves.

As he repeatedly keeps reminding us, Meles Zenawi has taken lessons
from the debacles of the May 2005 national election and will not repeat
the same mistake. He even boasted that his organization (TPLF) hasn’t
made the same mistake more than once. The lessons he learnt and
action plans derived from the lessons of the 2005 election are simple
and least sophisticated. This time there is no taking a “calculated risk”
as in 2005 by a slight opening of any door for democracy. The only
game left in town now is how to hold something that can be referred to
as an election and satisfy the donors, who insist that they need some
kind of election to show for their tax payers that they are spending their
money on and with an “elected” government. Meles doesn’t want this
election if it is meant to be a democratic exercise. The Ethiopian people
also do not want this kind of election and if asked will prefer to spend
the millions of dollars spent on this sham exercise on buying food. Only
these lords of our poverty want this election. And it has to be said
clearly that it is these donors who insist on a useless exercise and get
our people killed, dehumanized and turn their already miserable lives into
hell.

Meles knows that he has the monopoly of violence in the country. He
also knows the violence he so far perpetrated against the Ethiopian
people did not make any dent on his relationship with his Western
donors in whose honor we seem to be holding these disastrous periodic
elections. Meles has stayed in power long enough to understand that his
donors are full of hypocrisy, that none of them pursued their bluff to
ask him to account for the crimes he committed in 2005. Deep down in
his heart I think he despises them. He at least has seen them how they
got all over poor Mugabe for killing a small fraction of the number of
people he killed. Meles knows that as long as he gives them the illusion
of a stable country, they don’t give a hoot for democracy or the rule of
law. Armed with this knowledge, Meles has made a plan. It is a simple
plan – move the election violence from the post election to the pre
election period and spread it over time.

Any serious observers of Ethiopia can identify some six broad forms
through which Meles Zenawi’s pre election violence is packaged and
delivered to the Ethiopian people. Note that these tactics are applied
separately or in any combination as the condition presents itself. Here
are some of them:

The use of direct and blunt force: This involves direct
application of force including killings and beating. This tactic is
employed by spreading the violence over time and space so that
the drip, drip, in blood does not make it look like a massacre.
You can kill 100 people in a day at one location and not look
good. If you do that over a period of 100 days in different
places, you don’t look like you have even killed a fly. The
reports of Human rights organizations on Ethiopia are replete
with this kind of political crimes including torture and other
degrading treatments. There are hundreds of people thrown in
jail and forgotten. Torturing critics and suspects and forcing
false confessions are rampant. We see them daily. Only our
donors have closed their eyes
Intimidation and harassment: Anybody suspected of
supporting the opposition is harassed as anti people, anti
development (as if anybody needs more poverty), pro terrorist,
pro OLF, Pro Ginbot 7 etc. As I am writing this, I listened to a
UDJ election candidate in Arba Gugu telling the voice of America
that he was told by local officials that he cannot be an opposition
candidate while drawing a salary from his government job and
that some official vowed to cut his tongue and feed it to him if
he doesn’t stop his candidacy. They have so far succeeded in
intimidating independent journalists to self sensor or flee the
country. Meles makes self fulfilling prophecies such as accusing
the opposition of collaboration with terrorists, Shabia etc. This is
an important method in TPLF’s tool box. It has been used in
2005 and had proven to work. Anyone remember the accusation
of the CUD that it is like the Rwandan Interhamwe in 2005?
When they took the CUD leaders to the kangaroo court, it was
only time that they accuse them of genocide. Such methods are
now being used both to intimidate and punish opponents. This
time the opposition is accused of harboring ambitions of making
this election like the elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe. You
know, those bastards who demanded a coalition government and
ruined the meaning of democracy!
Use the abject poverty in the country as a political tool to
recruit supporters and coerce people into falling in line:
Zenawi’s party has recruited millions of members by making
membership a choice without alternative. If you want to rot in
poverty and stay unemployed upon graduation you can refuse to
fill out the membership forms. Discrimination in employment,
promotion on the job based on membership to the party is being
practiced in broad daylight. It has been declared that higher
education is the exclusive preserve of EPRDF members. Many
young people are agonizing over this predicament. Food aid,
including food donated by our Western donors is openly used to
coerce or lure hungry people into supporting Zenawi’s party.
Using the law and the courts to make it difficult for political
opponents to operate and make free expressions of ideas
difficult: This package includes the issuance of the draconian
Anti Terrorism Law where even a kid who throws stones during
a demonstration can be charged with, and sent to prison for 20
years. The Civil Society Law that virtually closed down all civic
groups in the country, including those that do advocacy for
women, children and the disabled. Meles understands that civil
society is the pillar of democracy and he has to cut the pillars
before embarking on an election. Zenawi has even written a
proclamation regulating how international election observers
should behave and work during the election. Ethiopians are
eagerly waiting to see which groups would agree to monitor the
election under this law. The recent accusation of many ethnic
Amharas including an 80 year old man of staging a cup de tat
and changing the charge into terrorism in the middle of the
process is part of this package. In some situations the police and
the courts are ordered to make the flimsiest of reasons to send
opponents to prison. The most famous case under this tactic is
the case of Birtukan Mideksa, the chairwoman of UDJ that
Meles condemned to serve life for reasons that is boggling even
the minds of some of his supporters. But Meles and his inner
clique know what they are doing. They don’t want to deal with
this courageous and intelligent young woman during and after
the election that she was ready to challenge. Meles knows she is
a love of the people. More importantly, she has that potent
weapon of straddling two of the largest ethnic groups in
Ethiopia. She has a mixed Oromo-Amhara ethnic heritage. This
young articulate lady and expert in the law was very difficult to
box in a political debate. Zenawi’s preferred to box her in the
small room in Kaliti. He knows that the case against her cannot
stand a minute in a country that has rudimentary practices of the
rule of law. He faked an outrage out of nowhere and sent her to
prison. Had he been serious about the violation the terms of the
pardon, that he falsely accused her of, he would have thrown all
of the released prisoners who said the same thing at one time or
another including Hailu Shaul who told a BBC journalist during an
interview that he signed the pardon letter under duress. Zenawi’s
donors know very well why Bitrukan Mideksa, the icon of
democracy and peaceful struggle in Ethiopia, is languishing in jail
for over a year now. Meles knows that they cannot risk their
relationship with him over the case of “one person”, as one
anonymous Western diplomat in Addis Ababa is reported to have
said recently. Birtukan remains a martyr for her people. The
world is getting to know here more with each passing day. She
has just begun rocking the consciousness of freedom loving
people around the world. We, her brothers and sisters, will make
sure that her name and cause is spreading across the globe like a
wild fire. She will soon become an albatross on Meles’s neck
and definitely the necks of the donors who, in the face of this
gross injustice, are looking the other way. She is a victim of an
election that is being carried out only to satisfy their need.
Keeping uninformed public by blocking information and
news from the people. A perfect example is the jamming of the
Voice of America and Drutche Welle Amharic services, all
dissident radio stations from abroad including blocking Ethiopian
democracy websites. When caught they don’t hesitate to make
bold and shameless lies. Officials like Bereket Simon and
Shimeles Kemal (it is amazing that his name rhymes with the
word shameless) are unleashed to issue blunt denials (aynen
ginbar yargew). These guys have amazing capacity to deny even
if you catch them with their hands in the cookie jar. Consider
this lie for example. “This is absolutely a sham,” Shimeles told
CPJ, when asked about the Ethiopian government jamming radio
stations. He added, “The Ethiopian government does not support
the policy of restricting foreign broadcasting services in the
country. Such practices are prohibited in our constitution”.
Shameless Kemal also told CPJ that the allegations were part of a
“smear campaign” by “opposition web sites in the Diaspora”.
That he said all of these with a straight face is staggering. But
isn’t it interesting that Meles spends millions of dollars on
jamming radio programs broadcast by the US government while
at the same time stretching his hand and receiving food aid and
other assistances? Blatant lying has always been used by Meles
and his cronies. Since we always cut them a lot of slack for
lying, they normally think we have accepted it. We are dealing
with a group of people who claim they have brought equality
between Ethiopia’s ethnic groups when everybody in Ethiopia
sees that 95% of the key commanding officers of the armed
forces of the country are staffed by officers from Zenawi’s
ethnic party, with the Oromo, the largest ethnic group in the
country contributing Zero. Zenawi is the quintinsential Orwellian
and his donors who insist on holding this sham election are
willful participants against a crime being committed on 85 million
people.
Control the Election infrastructure fully: This is the last line
of defense. Meles has put the fox in charge of the henhouse.
Under this group of tactics comes the staffing of all election
personnel from the national election board down to the polling
station by members of Meles Zenawi’s party and cadres. They
have shamelessly declared that they are neutral while the
opposition says they have proof that they are not.

The Endgame:

Meles Zenawi’s end game is making sure that the Ethiopian people are
a broken and subdued people, incapable of putting up any resistance
during and after the election and that the opposition is as broken and as
weakened as possible. The goal is to make Election Day and the days
that follow as tranquil as possible so that the congratulations from Barak
Obama, the leaders of member nations of the European Union will be
paraded in fanfare. If the post election time goes by without declaring
emergency, killing and rounding up people and herding them in
concentration camps, it will be lauded as a great improvement over the
previous election by the donors. In the best traditions of Africa’s
dictators, Meles Zenawi will be assured of staying at the helm of power
for a quarter of a century and, who knows, even beyond.

But then again this assumes that the Ethiopian people may stay broken
and suppressed and do not want their rights and dignity back. But what
if they say “give me liberty or give me death” as many indicators seem
to suggest? What if more and more Ethiopians begin sharing the views
of an Ethiopian in Kenya who recently told a journalist, Lauren Gelfand,
of World Politics Review “the West thinks stability in Ethiopia is more
important than democracy, destabilizing is the only way to change”. Let’
s hope the enablers of the misery of the Ethiopian people wake up
before this view gets off the ground. Ethiopians are waiting with a
thinning out patience. Careful eyes can already see that they are sitting
on the fence.

Fekadeshewakena@yahoo.com

Ethio Quest News
Together We Can Make It!

Ethio Quest News:
For latest Ethiopian News, views, Reviews
and More

Election - 2010
Democratic Path
The Africans
Human Rights
Environment
Education
Spotlight
Blah Blah
Qoutables
Links

You need Java to see this applet.

A Career In Dissent

" Mideksa became the exception
to the rule in September, When she was elected to
head Ethiopia's newest political party..." More