Perspective - CURRENT EFFORTS AT CHANGING EPRDF'S IMAGE...

CURRENT EFFORTS AT CHANGING EPRDF'S IMAGE...
THE CART IS FOUND BEFORE THE HORSE

29 April, 2009 | Genet Mersha

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government has been working for some time now
with a London-based firm to strengthen its information management and
dissemination techniques. Its objective is to improve its image and the regime’s
acceptability both at home and abroad. Ato Bereket Simon has been following this
with singular focus and regular benchmarking of progress with well-sequenced
markers. Hence, that has been the main reason for his frequent visits to London
for a while now.

One of the outcomes of this project to date is to minimize the haphazard ways of
appearing on the media for habitual denials of anything the regime is being accused
of rather than engaging in sober efforts to explain, disseminate information and to
be introspective about its own actions. Therefore, in the new style, Ato Bereket
plans to sit for a regular ‘town hall’ encounter of sorts to briefing the local media
and the international press, the first of which took place some ten days ago. The
promise is that this would continue regularly, that ample time would be given to
questions and answers.

We had seen that this is followed

by another question and

answer

session with the prime minister,

the first of which we saw about

a week

ago. Ato Bereket has

promised that this would also be

regularized.

DRIFTING INTO CONSPIRACY & CONTROVERSY

In early March, Ato Meles Zenawi and Ato Bereket Simon decided to kill two birds
with one stone. They wanted to use one of Ato Bereket’s mid-March London
visits to prepare a counterforce of “a select group of Ethiopians” to minimize the
anticipated negative impact of the planned demonstration for April 2nd by
Ethiopians residing in Europe. It would be recalled that Ethiopians were organized
to protest Ato Meles Zenawi’s presence in London on the margins of the G-20
meeting. To give effect to that idea, the embassy in London selected and invited
about 200 Ethiopians allegedly for briefing session by Ato Bereket on the ‘current
situation in Ethiopia.’

Those who heard that there was such a briefing came without invitation, assuming
that they would be allowed in, and exercise their right to listen and ask questions
of interest to them on matters concerning their country. The fact of the matter is
that the EPRDF officials wanted to limit the number of invitees in the first place to
avoid unnecessary grilling with embarrassing and difficult questions.Therefore,
they gave instruction that those without invitation should be denied entry to the
embassy. They did not anticipate or did not care that such a discriminatory action
would infuriate members of the diaspora. The unwanted happened. Scuffles
occurred that eventually necessitated intervention by the Metropolitan Police.

On face value, there is no doubt that selection of one individual over the other for
briefing, as if it were privileged information, was way over the line, at its worst,
discriminatory. What was understandably disturbing for many was the underlying
message. It meant that, although they carried Ethiopian passport and are bona fide
Ethiopians, there exists a shadowy class of privileged Ethiopians with full rights
and others whom Ethiopian embassies could refuse service at will.

In the eyes of those individuals, this amounted to questioning their identity and
loyalty to their country. It touched raw nerve in many citizens. Some gave it ethnic
overtone. The protestors took pictures and circulated it on the internet; they
identified some individuals who were pushing them away from the embassy as
“woyanes.” Several readers found the embassy’s action revolting, as could be
gleaned from the huge volume of comments on the webpages on the matter. Many
took it as a re-affirmation of the divide and rule politics the regime has been
exercising all along.

REFLECTING ON THE INCIDENT

One may argue that the embassy has the right to invite anyone it likes, and exclude
anyone it does not. However, such an argument misses the point that the occasion
that evening was not a diplomatic function or a reception for foreign dignitaries to
introduce Ethiopia and to facilitate the embassy’s work, which involves not only
protocol but also costs. For that matter, in the extreme even the supremacist Ku
Klux Klan or the Augusta Golf National Club in Augusta, Georgia, has an exclusive
club and events, etc. By law, they cannot be compelled to open the door of their
societies to non-members. Nevertheless, the difference between an embassy and a
golfers’ club is that the embassy is a point of non-negotiable and uninterrupted
contact with their country for all Ethiopian citizens abroad. Otherwise, what
could the utility of an embassy be when it could offer to citizens abroad selectively?

Mature reflection tells me

that that incident should

not have been allowed to

happen in the first place.

It has insinuated that the

embassy was in the

business of

organizing a

coterie of citizens who

have their eyes on pieces

of real state (the

offer of

free land they are/were

promised) or facilitation

of business interests, and

thus are prepared to

become tools of the

regime within Ethiopian

communities

abroad.

Indeed, some claim that this is the usual approach by the Ethiopian government.
Allegedly, it is adopted as a systematic approach to overcome its isolation and
disapproval by co-opting selected members of he diaspora.

The question arises, however, how the embassy knew who would ask the
embarrassing questions. The answer lies in the 52-page confidential manual sent to
embassies in 2006, which entrusted them to file information regularly with the
foreign ministry on the activities of Ethiopians abroad. Therefore, they are required
to collect information on every Ethiopian, irrespective of whether the individual has
taken foreign citizenship.

In a separate transmittal note, Ambassador Wubshet Demissie, Director-General at
the Diaspora Directorate in the Ethiopian foreign ministry, the person who signed
off that manual, encourages embassy staff to establish close relations with the
community within a given timeline and identify who is who and gauge attitudes
towards the regime. The purpose of the manual is to create/collect incriminating
information from Ethiopia to discredit the individuals responsible for anti-EPRDF
behaviour.

THE REGIME’S BEHAVIOUR

Let us look back and evaluate that incident that March evening in London. The
regime earned adverse publicity, a situation it could have avoided by being
transparent and by according equal treatment to all Ethiopians. Instead, it chose to
resort to conspiratorial behaviour. Many citizens sadly note that Ato Bereket’s
training and forays into London, for which the country is paying with tax payers
monies, is designed to collect and organize a band of citizens to help the regime
pretend it has supporters abroad, while in realty it is continuing to drown in its
overwhelming unpopularity. Recall “EPRDF SUPPORTERS” window on Aiga
Forum. Aiga’s extremism and the futility of Ato Bereket’s training are considered
by the regime a way to improve its image, though without removing, the causes
for its rejection by substantial number of citizens the first place!

Without changing the behaviour of the regime, propaganda alone cannot deliver
anything. For instance, not many were the individuals that were turned away from
the embassy. However, those few that gathered there got their interpretation of
events, supported by pictures, and circulated them on the webpages. This rejection
of those that were considered likely to ask the tough questions aroused anger
amongst large number of citizens against the regime’s discriminatory behaviour.
Consequently, it encouraged more Ethiopians than anticipated to gather from
different parts of Europe to the London demonstration of April 2nd.

The demonstration received coverage around the world in the international press
and TV networks. It became a huge propaganda coup for those striving to expose
the government’s bad record on human rights and the reach of corruption in its
higher echelons. No doubt, adorned with Ethiopian flags and carrying telling
messages on boards, the demonstrators made sure on one hand their message got
across, and on the other, they proved that Ato Bereket’s training was ill-equipped
to counter their disapproval.

Not a singLe person who could be characterized as remotely maverick from
amongst ‘EPRDF SUPPORTERS” was in the vicinity of the April 2 demonstration,
at least, to wink and smile to Ato Meles, let alone stand with a placard and the
national colour to express support for his regime.

On his way to the G-20 meeting

hall at

ExCel building in east London, Ato

Meles saw the fury of those citizens

when he drove by the demonstrators.

His composure and his face even inside

the

car were unable to disguise the

depth of his rage at the protestors.

There is a claim

that he cancelled a

scheduled press conference because of

that.

This brings me back to the subject of the new information management and
dissemination technique, about which the government has been consulting media
specialists in London. Theoretically, it is aimed at focussing government efforts at
improving the regime’s acceptability both at home and abroad. In reality, however,
it represents a change of format, but not of content. The regime is under bizarre
illusion that its rejection especially by urban dwellers and the educated citizenry
mostly is the outcome of its failure to communicate effectively and appropriately
its vision and its achievements. It appears that they have not realized the fact there
is a difference between propaganda and information.

THE TINY MINORITY IS CREATING TROUBLE

For instance, on his return home, Ato Bereket dismissed the April 2nd London
demonstration as a band of fifteen or twenty-five troublemakers. In truth, their
number was perhaps about thirty to fifty times higher than that, as can be seen on
videos and pictures of the event! Moreover, what makes them troublemaker if
their protest was about exposing the regime’s flagrant violations of the
fundamental human rights of the Ethiopian people? Is Ato Bereket ever aware that
those who came to protest his boss’s presence at the G-20 summit were larger in
number than the 200 he had summoned to the embassy for briefing? Above all,
should a government under attack by its own citizens contend with the size of the
crowd, or the quality of their ideas and the issues they are protesting about?

Two days after the London embassy incident, the respected author and journalist
Walter Bagehot devoted his column on the 21st March issue of The Economist to
the subject of “THE TINY MINORITY” that often gets rapping when
governments find their backs against the wall. It is regrettable that when he was in
London, Ato Bereket did not have the time to read that most edifying comment,
although Bagehot was dissecting the actions of the British government on a
separate matter. Regardless of whom it was talking about, in what sounds a
chastisement to all the Berekets of this world, he wrote, “Insisting that worrisome
minorities are ‘tiny’ is in part a form of wishful thinking, as if saying something
often enough could make it true, and rhetorical tininess could shrink reality. This
sort of euphemism is sometimes a kind of self-delusion as well as a deception. But
it is perilous all the same. All those minorities add up to a society in denial.”

Since the 2005 election, all evidences have been pointing to the fact that the regime
has become the author of its troubles and hence of its own battered image. Its
information system is only devoted to doing propaganda—to exaggerate its
achievements, bedevil its opponents, undermine opposition parties and
mischaracterize the diaspora as if they were not Ethiopians.

There is no doubt that Ato Bereket’s London training could have been put to good
use, if only the regime attaches importance to honesty. One starting point along
that direction is it should stop forcing upon citizens the sombre shadows of the
bloody 2005 election, thirteen months before May 2010. The latest science and
technology Ato Meles and Ato Bereket have been shopping around to change
hearts and minds, cannot be substitutes for what is terribly lacking in principles in
government and the time-honoured values in governance of honesty and
transparency.