Are we Pranked, Again?

All eyes have been on kality for the last couple of weeks. Hopes were high that the jailed leaders will be set free as reliable news sources reported that agreements had been signed. Most of us waited anxiously to hear the news of their walk out of prison. What we heard instead was the usual rhetoric from meles: “EPRDF doesn’t interfere with the judicial system.”
Looking back, before the breaking of this news, all we talked about was how we can stage a coordinated mass civil disobedience in every corner of the country. Every one was talking about working together. Press statements were being released and everyone seemed on fire especially by the outrageous conviction of political prisoners.
Then what happened? A couple of EPRDF sympathizer websites posted articles saying that mediation between EPRDF and opposition leaders in kality is underway. They also added that the mediation seems promising this time around. That’s when the momentum started to cool down and all attentions start to divert to kality. Since then, we haven’t heard much on the planned civil disobedience.
EPRDF mouthpieces in the diaspora have been unusually reporting on this mediation a lot. Was it a planed action to divert our attention? One can only guess. Regardless of their intention, its true that we have been taken aback from a heated discussion of how to organize our struggle to talking about kality. We don’t understand why we keep playing their games. Every time EPRDF does something to distract us, we play along with them. That’s really sad.
Its still not too late to learn from our mistakes and get back to work. Let what ever is happening in kality take its course. Our struggle is beyond the release of these prisoners of conscience. Its grander than that. We are fighting dictatorship that kept the whole country hostage. To help our fellow citizens be free, we need to work on plans that can dramatically shift the balance of power.
Let us say enough to being fooled by meles’ government. Let us say enough to diversions and distractions. Let us have plans and work to materialize those plans. Each and every one of us can make a difference. Let us intensify the diplomatic struggle in the diaspora by letter writings, demonstrations, and hope opposition leaders coordinate the struggle inside the country.
EPRDF wont leave any rock unturned to make the millennium a success. And it is for sure that they will try any thing at their capacity to divert and cool down our struggle. Let us not be fooled no more. Let us not help them trick us this time. This millennium, as it is a highly publicized event, is our huge opportunity and let us try to make the best out of it.
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The talk about war with Eritrea is another distraction technique by Meles and Co. This rhetoric has been going on since The Hague court decision. But nothing ever happened. Let us beware of their tricks and focus on our own plans.

Aluta Continua!!!

One of the most trusted bloggers, ethiozagol, has reported that an agreement has been signed between the meles government and kinjit leaders.

Hats off to the unjustly incarcerated leaders in kality!!! We can’t be thankful enough for the sacrifices they paid to lay down the principles of democracy and free society in our beloved country. They kept their promises and integrity regardless of countless intimidations and harassments in the last couple of years. These leaders showed us what it means to stand for principles.

The news of their release is definitely most welcomed. What ever is behind their release, no one can deny its positive effect in reviving the opposition movement-especially inside the country. We also have to understand that in a mediation process their has to be something for both negotiating parties. Most of the time the one with the power dictates the agreement. But due to the leaders unwavering stance, the agreement signed at last seems to be reasonable to both parties. We got to understand that we can’t have everything our ways. There has got to be give and take. And that is what we believe happened now.
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EPRDF is known for buying time whenever it comes under scrutiny. We hope that this agreement isn’t one of that old tricky game. No matter what, we in the diaspora should continue our fight in the deplomatic front against these dictators untill freedom and democracy prevail in the country. Their release is the beginning of the end, not the ultimate goal by itself. While enjoying the news of their release, lets continue the things we are doing to make the days of dictatorship shorter.
The struggle continues!!!!

light at the end of the tunnel

Since we started this blog a week or so ago, we have been trying to underscore the importance of standing in unity for the common cause. No matter how hard we tried, differences will continue to exist. We have to learn how to work together on the things we agree on instead of fighting over every minor difference we have.

Mr. Obang Mathew has been preaching unity and reconciliation since we have come to know him a little over a year ago. He has been doing that persistently while so many of us were busy throwing muds at each other. His recent article is a continuation of his consistent call for unity.

His call seems to be getting attention this time around. KIL’s recent call for mass civil disobedience is a case in point. In its press release, KIL states that it will work with other interested parties in planning and executing the planned action. That is the way to go KIL! Unless we stand together and act at the same time, EPRDF is not going to have a problem to come after each and every one of us. We would like to reiterate what we have said in our previous post: The more united we become, the stronger we will be. And that is what will win EPRDF.
Finally, we would like to leave you with the following quote from a Lutheran church pastor during the Nazi period:
“They came for the Jews but I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t a Jew. They came for the Gypsies but I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t a Gypsy.They came for the mentally retarded but I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t mentally retarded. Finally they came for me and no one said anything because no one was left to speak."
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On a side note, its funny to see how hard the EPRDF mouth pieces in the diaspora- Hager Fikir and Aiga Forum-are trying to make us believe that there is a big conspiracy in KIL. We know your tricks Aiga and Hager fikir. Your boss in Addis is a master in planting spies inside oppositions and we understand that you are trying to continue that trend. Poor fellas!!

ethiopian current affairs-view point

I am a big believer in “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Seeing it from that perspective, I understand why some opposition groups work with the government of Eritrea. Considering the nature of politics in general and the character of shabia in particular, I believe we need to be extra cautious not to be heavily dependent on them. Let us use Eritrea as a temporary base and establish our strong existence inside our own country. Otherwise, there is no guarantee our friendship with shabia will last forever. What happened between TPLF and shabia should be a lesson for all of us.
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I have been and still am optimistic about the creation of AFD. Even though it has been passive since its inception, it is still not too late for action. Some people don’t like AFD because there are some members in it with secession as their main agenda. I think alienating any group, no matter how much we disagree with them, is not the way to deal in politics in this day and age. Dialogue around the table is the best solution to work out differences. What I would like to see AFD do is include other members who are still out for minor differences. The more united we become, the more strong we will be. And that is what will win EPRDF. On that note, I would like to applaud AFD for the press release it released a couple of days ago.
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When I first heard the news about the handing over of Badme to Eritrea, I couldn’t believe it. Because, in my opinion, both governments wouldn’t want the border dispute to be resolved. As we all know, the border problem is the card both of them play whenever some external pressure started to mount on them regarding internal human rights issues. In case you have noticed, every time some kind of internal instability happens inside the country, they start some thing on the border to divert the attention of the international community. So who would be willing to give up that wild card? Neither of them would, trust me.
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Last but not least, it has been reported that a minibus full of children lost their lives to an accident occurred between debrezeit and dukem . also check this . What a sad story. Ethiopianbloggers would like to extend its condolences to family and friends who lost their beloved ones due to this tragic accident .

Miscellaneous stuff

This particular article doesn’t necessarily reflect ethiopianbloogers team viewpoint. It iss solely my personal point of view and I am responsible for it.
1...This Andrew Heavens fella doesn’t stop to amaze me. The topics he raises in his blog are mostly silly. He tries too hard to give the government of Meles the image of a good and stabilized government while he knows full well that the reality is otherwise. A couple of days ago he told us that his vendors are having hard time selling the magazine 'abiy guday'-the big issue. How on earth would Mr. Heavens think anyone would be excited by EPRDF's millennium propaganda? Any layman can see how hard the government is trying to use the millennium to repair its tarnished image. And Andrew and friends effort to help eprdf in its endeavor is just absurd. Just because they are living comfortably doesn’t mean that Ethiopians who are struggling so hard to make ends meet are also looking forward to the big fest. I got news for you, Mr. Heavens, don’t be surprised because people are not buying your magazine. you are in a country where citizens have to try so hard to put food on the table. If you really want to help the homeless, there are so many other ways..
....It doesn’t stop there. He seems too disappointed because a certain meeting wasn’t held in Addis because of a bomb blast that happened in Addis some time ago. It is not the people who lost their lives that sadenned mr heavens. No. Its the fact that we missed the opportunity to host some fancy meeting. Oh brother!
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2.what I heard on paltalk was shocking to me,to say the least. I thought EPPF had leaders better than those in paltalk. If they are the ones taking control of the EPPF, it is really depressing. I hope and pray that they are just supporters and EPPF have high caliber leaders who know their priority and their fight. Oh God, save us!.....
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3. Of all the press releases I read after the guilty verdict, I felt a little uneasy on the EOTC Holy
Synod’s. The release sounded more like a political party's press release than a religious one. I believe it could have been better if it focused on calling for peace and compromise. I am not saying condemning a wrongdoing is a bad idea. I am just saying it could have been done in a more reconciliatory tone. Plus I don't feel it is healthy to have a certain religious group getting too close to a government or a political party for that matter. The church-government relation ship during the feudal regime wasn’t a pleasant experience for other faith followers.
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4. If we can go beyond rhetoric, UEDF's press release is a good one. Everyone should mean what they say. Tegbar league's release focused more on warning foreign nationalities. I believe tegbar league would work with others before undertaking its plan. Because the problem we have in Ethiopia isn't easy for tegbar to single handedly change it. Lets work together..dir biyaber anbessa yasser.......

5.We also read this week that the number of KIL members is proposed to increase to 23. I have no problem with that. I even think the proposed organizational structure is excellent. What I take issue on is the inclusion of civil society leaders to the group. I don't think we all need to be a certain political party member to work together. Some of the proposed civil society leaders can work closely with KIL in the struggle with out them being part of it. Going through the list, I can’t help it but to notice that it doesn’t seem to include a Muslim Ethiopian. It is puzzling to me why we can't have a couple of Muslim brothers and sisters in KIL in a country where a good proportion of its population is Muslim. Just curious.
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getting back to action

When ever the EPRDF government does something outrageous like the guilty verdict on opposition leaders, civil rights activists, and journalists, they have two main assumption they base their actions on:
1.EPRDF knows that the opposition in the diaspora voices their opposition by candle light vigil, demonstrations, writing letters, and things of that sort. And these things go on for no more than a couple of weeks or months to the most. After that, it will cool down.
2.EPRDF also knows that the western governments always back who ever seems strong and in power, now matter how brutal it is.

The above assumptions seemed to work real well until now. But we got to be ahead of the game now. We need to stop playing their game. Our leaders in the diaspora, not only kinjit international but also other party and civil society leaders, should come together and come up with a well thought out plan that put EPRDF’s calculations null and void. The struggle plan should consider the political environment inside the country. It is important to campaign wherever we are, but it is not enough. The real struggle is inside the country. So we got to direct our focus on that. If the westerners don’t seem to support us now, don’t worry. As we start to show results and the power balance start to shift, they will come along.

The most important thing is to come up with a well thought out plan that could last a while and result something significant. We also should be realistic about the reality inside the country. A lot of things have changed since the election and it wont be easy to get people on board unless we convince them our plan is a plan that brings change.

Let us all work on that. Let us put emotions aside and get to work together.

standing together

Despite speculations that the EPRDF government would come to its senses and free opposition leaders, EPRDF once again proved to us that we should not expect any sense of sanity from this group of criminals.
No matter how hard to swallow, the ball is in our hands now. Whether we like it or not, we need to stand together now more than ever. Let us put our personal differences aside and commit ourselves to the fight against these dictators. We have already spent enough time arguing each other. We have spent enough time releasing press statements. We have spent enough time accusing each other.
Enough to all that now. Let us close that chapter of our struggle history and open a new one. A new one of compromise and unity. A new one that we not only release press statements but also show something tangible. Let us make sure that we leave our differences behind and move on.
The agreement signed by KIL members couldn’t have come at any better time. We all need to stand behind them. We have to refrain from anything that would impact this unity negatively. It doesn’t mean we can't criticize them but we need to make sure our comments are constructive.

PR went wrong-the case of Solomon tekalegn

I know, most of us have heard more than enough about Solomon tekalegn from EPRDF controlled medias and its subsidiaries. It is not my intention to bore you anymore. It is just I wanted to get a kick out of it. It is some times good to sit back and laugh when some one makes fool of himself. People have been changing their political views since time immemorial. Solomon’s is no exception. I don’t know why EPRDF tried to make it look like some kind of political victory. It is just embarrassing.
Since I had nothing to do in the past few weeks, I listened all the interviews he gave both here and back home. It is unbelievable how any one lowers him self to that level for just some financial benefits .its one thing to change political stands, but it is another thing to act more EPRDF than EPRDF itself. One thing that he made sure in all of his interviews was to emphasize his self-importance. I really thanked God I am not related to this guy in any shape or form. That’s how much I was embarrassed for him. It surprises me how any one can be so full of it. My God!
In one of his many interviews, he says 99% of Ethiopians in the Diaspora supported his return home. Really? I wonder which polling agency polled Diaspora Ethiopians on this “big issue.” Thank God they did anyway. If you live out of your country and didn’t hear about this poll, you must be one of those 1% vocal Diaspora.
On how busy people are in Addis, he said that he wasn’t able to meet his friends because every one is busy doing business. A friend of mine jokingly said, “what if they are trying to ignore him?” For those of us who haven’t had problems meeting friends during our visits back home, the question my friend asked sounds interesting.
On universities and colleges he said there was only one university in the country during the Derg. Some body help me here. I am no expert on the Derg era, but I think I have heard there was more than one.
On mobile phones he mentions that every one in Addis has cell phones now but no one had them when he left the country 11 years ago. Hello, how many people had cell phones 11 years ago even in America? Let alone one of the poorest nations in Africa. I got news for you, even now mobile phone usage in Ethiopia is one of the lowest as compared to most African countries. How about that?
On the report of him being beaten up in Addis, he told the interviewer that his face with a photo shopped body of some beaten up person is all over the internet. I think of my self as a frequent visitor of Ethiopian web sites and I saw the report about the incident. But I saw no picture of a beaten up him. As one radio personality put it, this guy is in real mental crises. I would take him to tebl or amanuel if I were one of his friends or family.
The most laughable of all was the one he told about what happened at Olympia. While he was stopped at a traffic light, people lined up to say hi to him to the extent that it seemed there was some kind of demonstration. Thank God! Those poor fans didn’t get shot by federals. The whole drama was just funny, if it wasn’t serious. We will see what will happen after the millennium is over.

Why EPRDF should go?

As an independent and interested observer of Ethiopian politics, I have come to conclude that we should get rid of the current government in order for us to start the democratization process in our country. I ruled out the option of working with them already. Lets be pragmatic. We know how EPRDF responds every time invitations extended to work together by opposition groups. EPRDF’s policy is all or none. While agreeing with the idea of leaving the door open to any steak holders including EPRDF), let me try to explain why I argue the current government should step down before anything else.
Many EPRDF appeasers and other well-intentioned citizens would like to have you believe that change isn’t radical but a process and therefore we should give the government time to build up on the democratization process. It’s a well-proven historical fact that democracy doesn’t happen over night. I have no problems with that. My problem with the above argument comes when anyone bases his or her argument on this historical fact and assumes what EPRDF needs is time. I beg to differ here. Why?
-You give a government or anyone for that matter a chance/time if one sees evidences of improvement overtime. But that isn’t what is happening under EPRDF Ethiopia. We don’t need to look any further than the policy changes that happened after the may 2005 election. Before the election and for a little while after that we have at least a free press no matter how hostile the working environment was. Where are the free presses and their publishers now? Either in jail with trumped up charges or in exile. What is the message one gets from this? Do any sane person still believe the government is improving its policies so we should give the time after seeing what happened to the free press?
-What happened to the parliamentary law was also a case in point to show the EPRDF government is going from better to worse. Changing the parliamentary laws over night so that the coming opposition couldn’t do practically anything other than making the government look good wouldn’t pass the litmus test of any improving government. What good is it to give time for a government like this?
-The government’s stand on the so-called electoral board isn’t promising either. Despite the many attempts by opposition parties to make it independent, the government remained adamant in keeping it as is. To make matters even worse, the electoral board is given unappealable authority to decide who can observe elections and who can’t. What it means is that if the board decides a certain organization cant observe an election, that decision is final. In the 2005 election at least one had an option of appealing to the bogus court if one feels the decision wasn’t fair. But that is a lost cause from now on. What is that we see here to make us believe that what the government needs is time.
-How about the broad casting law? The draft law wasn’t bad enough, we read on ethiopianreporter.com that a “new and revised law” is endorsed by the parliament. According to the reporter, the new so-called “revised law” is so much worth than the previous one. How is that for an improvement?
- It has also been reported that journalists that can report on elections are only those journalists who are invited by the government. It’s not enough to be a “licensed” journalist to report on elections. NO. NO. Not in EPRDF Ethiopia. To have that “privilege,” one has to be specifically invited by the government. Even that invitation doesn’t guarantee freedom of reporting. It comes with restrictions as not predicting election results or things like that. With time, EPRDF goes from requiring journalists to be registered and have licenses issued to them to hand picking the journalists that can report on elections and limiting the things they can report on. Who would call that an improvement?

And so on and so forth. Those mentioned above are just the tip of the iceberg. There are lots and lots of reasons to believe giving time to EPRDF does nothing but making things worse than ever, if it gets any worse.