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The destruction of Kinijit is now complete, and this shameful act of the "tourists' and the destruction of Kinijit has been a great shock. That Kinijit's sweet talkers can do this to us is something we have never ever imagined. Indeed, the Rt. Hon. Anna Gomes of the EU Parliament and those pushing for the enactment of HR.
our failed Elite and the Destruction of Kinijit
The modern Ethiopian elite has had a long and disastrous history of failures:
•Ø The immature student movement of the 1960s and 1970s was successfully
used by enemies of Ethiopia to weaken and prepare it for dismemberment.
•Ø EPRP and MEISON were off-shoots of that destructive student movement that introduced a
totally alien, irrational and inhuman ideology, ending up fighting each other to death in a bitter and savage power struggle to rule the innocent Ethiopian majority while always swearing day and night to be defending the interest of that same majority which they killed like flies, and finally succeeded in bringing still more lasting social and economic disaster, and the eventual dismemberment of a Motherland whose unity and territorial integrity had been cemented with the blood and bones of patriotic generations right up to the fourth quarter of the 20th. century.
A nation that had a proud heritage under Emperors Tewodros, Yohannes, Menilik and Haile Selassie was condemned to shame and dismemberment by the very elite nurtured and educated through the toil and sweat of that poor majority to protect that proud heritage and further enrich it under a modern and democratic system that is for the good of all Ethiopia's children. These mechanical, slogan-infested and ignorant modern elite have attempted to justify their continued insanity with a worthless Stalinist fiction on secession which has never ever been put to practice even by its own author.
•Ø Derg, a product of the EPRP-MEISON joint failed project, also went into the same routine of customary failure when it first massacred the topmost leaders of Haile Selassie's Government by totally going against rule of law, and then continued to use those same guns against its own political and military leaders, little realizing that the guns aimed at the leaders of the deposed regime in 1974 were bound to be eventually aimed at the murderers themselves.
Thus it was that dozens of generals were finally butchered in the late 1980s, and Derg itself formally opened the door for its own shameful downfall with the help of agents of TPLF/EPLF, lost the support of the very broad masses in whose name it had initially built its beastly regime, finally ended up with an incompetent, corrupt and irresponsible military leadership that was an easy prey to subversion and overthrow by diabolical ethnic elements from the North with the strong support of CIA and other hostile foreign elements.
Today, most of the top murderers and leadership of Derg are languishing in jail, and so is the entire country under a mercenary regime which does not even accept Ethiopiawinet as a proud heritage, thereby totally betraying the huge sacrifices of such great leaders as Emperor Tewodros, Ras Alula Aba Nega, Emperor Yohanness IV, Fitawrari Gebeyehu, the Lion of Adwa, Empror Menilik II and Empress Taitu Bitul, to name only a few. Ye-esat lij amed !
•Ø In 2001, TPLF itself got its own turn of the cycle of shameful failures when a faction
forcefully removed another within the same ruling clique simply because Meles could not accept that he was an agent and a mercenary dedicated to the destruction of Ethiopia; the other faction had, apparently, come back to its senses, and had set out to reclaim its former identity as the custodian of a proud Ethiopian heritage; the two TPLF factions could not, therefore, resolve their differences through discussion and compromise; naked force was the decisive answer, and that has kept Meles and his faction in power ever since.
•Ø The last significant and most disastrous failure of the elite was in 2005 when Kinijit
messed up a golden opportunity that was created by such committed Ethiopians as Hailu Shawel, Admasu Gebeyehu and Mesfin Wolde Mariam by strongly and wisely capitalizing on the cumulative effects of the brutality and anti-Ethiopian acts of a mercenary ruling clique. Without those three, and, most importantly, without the continued support of Hailu Shawel, who was the President of the largest political party in the coalition, Kinijit would not have existed, and I know this for a fact, and not through second had sources. This may not be palatable to blind partisans and self-serving elements in the Diaspora.
At the beginning of 2005, Kinijt was led by an elite that appeared to start out well with a promise to stand for a free, united and democratic Ethiopia, and succeeded in mobilizing support from all ethnic, religious and age groups in both rural and urban Ethiopia. However, behind the sweet speeches of some lay love for naked power at any cost, and they had just come into politics, presumably as opportunists, determined to grab power at any cost to Ethiopia. I also suspect that there may have been some agents of TPLF who were planted there, albeit their sweet words, to destroy Kinijt.
How else could one explain a two-month senseless tour by the former top Kinijit leadership of educated and experienced men and women to Europe and America when they did not have a party to represent in the first place ? How else would one explain the prolonged wining and dining by members of the Diaspora other than as part of a TPLF-designed mission to keep those former Kinijit leaders busy when a bleeding Ethiopia was longing to see them back to get Kinijit registered ?
Some of these political opportunists look more like today's corrupt traders whose principal aim is to make huge profits fast using whatever means; they have no patience, no national commitment and no respect for the public's hopes and aspirations. Hence, all the promise and huge sacrifice made during a period of more than a decade was again irresponsibly squandered away by a feuding, possibly mercenary, and self-seeking elite, strongly assisted by a naïve Diaspora, thereby abandoning the party and all its vital support at home merely to undertake a senseless tour to Europe and America.
Suppose you have rented a house from the Public Housing Authority, and you have just been notified, with a legal notification, that you must renew your contract or risk being thrown out within a couple of weeks. How many of you will leave your house and go abroad for a chit-chat for eight consecutive weeks ? Barring the insane and the dim wits, the answer is " none!". Why, then, did the "tourists" abandon Kinijit to leave on extended tours when they were told by the National Election Board that Kinijit did not have any legal standing ? The answer is clear: Kinijit was not as important as a house to every one of the "tourists" who must have had other motives which are best known only to them.
How can a flimsy internal party problem or a split in the Diaspora support groups or even any financial needs be justifications for abandoning Kinijit and the entire Ethiopian people for two critical months ? Can't this selfish crowd ever learn from the failures of EPRP and MEISON and from that of Derg ? Don't the Ethiopian people ever matter even in the 21st. century ?
Today, Kinijit has been handed over to EPRDF recruits and its election symbol to Lidetu, the very person that blocked Kinijit's registration and officially pulled out of Kinijit in October 2005. It is almost certain that EPRDF's National Election Board was instructed (i) to deny recognition to Kinijit in October 2005 by accepting Lidetu's letter of withdrawal from Kinijit in October 2005 as an excuse, (ii) to make the destruction of Kinijit complete by first recognizing Ayele Chamisso as the leader of Kinijit in 2007, and (iii) to hand over the election symbol of Kinijit to Lidetu, the very person that opted out of Kinijit publicly and effectively barred the registration of Kinijit in October 2005.
By the time Kinijit's former leaders were out of prison, all Kinijit "tourists" also knew what had happened to Dr. Merera's Oromo National Congress (ONC), had been officially given to a Corporal and other EPRDF recruits whereas ONC's legitimate leaders were left floating though they still had continued public support. Recently, after toing-and-froing in hopeless EPRDF courts, Dr. Merera was forced to register his group as Oromo Peoples Congress, thereby giving up ONC to the Corporal since no court of law would dispense justice. This was well-known to Kinjit's " Tourists" who cooked flimsy excuses to tour Europe and America, abandoning the political struggle and all supporters of Kinijt and the true supporters of Kinijit in the Diaspora. Kinijt has been betrayed once again !
We should all learn from this and plan better for the future since sheer sweet talk has not been helpful; Ethiopia needs leaders of strong national commitment, integrity, patience, selflessness, love of country and people and a commitment to party byelaws and democratic practices at all times and in all places. The "tourists" decried violations of "internal democracy" by the President only when their illegal drive for naked power was thwarted. Dr. Berhanu's Book, "Yenetsanet goh siked" ( pp. 368-369) says as much. No excuse was good enough to justify the senseless trip of the "tourists" , abandoning the struggle and the dead and wounded in Ethiopia to be EPRDF's instruments in destroying Kinijit.
This note may anger the likes of the single-track-minded Editor of Ethiopian Review who has been a pitiful accomplice, or even a possible agent of EPRDF; he loves to blindly condemn Ato Hailu Shawel, but this is the nature of small men who are jealous of giants like Hailu Shawel who has remained at the center of the political struggle in Ethiopia since the days of AAPO in the 1990s in spite of tremendous risk to his life and to that of his loved ones. Furthermore, Kinijit's very existence and strength, mostly due to the extensive penetration of AEUP into rural Ethiopia, and the fact that that faction-ridden Kinijit has held together up to September 2005, is largely due to his leadership skills. Many of our elite have no capacity for giving due credit, and Elias Kifle is one of them, and his problem may be " anchi minalebish hulet abat alesh / andu bimotibish bandu timiyallesh", but we need Ato Hailu in Ethiopia; indeed, he is irreplaceable !
We are angry with all those that wined and dined the "tourists" and further assisted EPRDF in completely messing up Kinijit and its millions of supporters at home. Believe me, your Diaspora Dollars are not really essential to win the political struggle at home ! Our starving brethren are ready to do that, and they have done that effectively in large parts of the country from 2003 to 2005 ! However, your international lobby is much more important! Berhanu and Debebe are still campaigning for support in the Diaspora because they have practically none at home. Ato Hailu, on the other hand, does not have to do that. All he needs is to provide effective democratic leadership; he has shown he knows how to do that and what to do by building AEUP to be the most powerful opposition party in only 15 months, with a membership of over 1,200,000 all over Ethiopia. Our academics and coffee-shop elite do not know this, and, even if they do, they do not have the honesty and integrity to acknowledge it and build on it to move us all forward.
The immature student movement of the 1960s gave birth to EPRP and MEISON who were both effectively used by separatists and anti-Ethiopians elements to weaken and dismember Ethiopia. Next came the step-brother and brain-child of the Left, the Derg, and it did such a messy job of governance that it finally handed us over to still more destructive and deceitful anti-Ethiopian elements who went as far as officially proclaiming Eritrea as a colony of Ethiopia, landlocked the rest of Ethiopia and started a senseless war in which some 70,000 youth were massacred on both sides of the Mereb River.
The Kestedemena leadership in Kinijit is, perhaps, the most inexperienced group which had the least amount of field exposure in Ethiopian politics, but it set out to create the current mess in Kinijit on account of Berhanu's lust for power just because of the abundance of rusty degrees lined up with him. Sadly, though, rusty degrees cannot make up for lack of vision, patriotism, love of country and an unwavering commitment to the hopes and aspirations of the Ethiopian people. Indeed, rusty degrees have never advanced the frontiers of knowledge and they have never advanced the hopes and aspirations of our oppressed people. Indeed, there is no one, in Kestedemena, who has any experience at all in organizing the opposition in rural Ethiopia, but there hundreds in UEDP and AEUP. What, then, is the rationale for the claim to leadership, other than rusty degrees and coffee-shop expertise ?
Shaleka Admasu Melaku, Ato Abayneh Berhanu, Ato Tesfaye Tariku, Shaleka Getachew Mengistie and several other efficient party organizers have not gone beyond high school, but they have achieved significantly much more by organizing the opposition all over Ethiopia than any of the elite in Kestedemena. None in Kestedemmena's leadership has organized even a village party cell. Nevertheless, Dr. Berhanu and Lidetu, as the most vocal leaders of Kinijit, had closed ranks in 2005 to deny such miracle performers their right to represent the people they had organized effectively.
That was how our naive elite thought and acted, and that was the line of thinking of the coffee-shop elite of EPRP and MEISON whose leaders also claimed to have a monopoly of knowledge on what was best for Ethiopia which they did not know at all. Hence, all these misguided, and even possibly mercenary elite, served as the principal instruments for the destruction of Kinijit either as TPLF agents or as unsuspecting but stupid accomplices in Meles's sinister designs.
Those of you in the Diaspora who dined and wined Bertukan, Berhanu, Muluneh and the others for almost two months and thereby served as effective EPRDF tools for the destruction of Kinijit should now be ashamed of your infamous accomplishments. Ethiopians at home have now bitterly learnt, once again, that they cannot trust sweet-tongued, slippery and deceptive self-serving elite, whether here at home or in the Diaspora. Indeed, this is what a supporter advised a group of leaders of one of the member parties of Kinijit some six years ago: "Do not trust the elite, especially those with degrees, since they are lazy, deceitful, slippery, conceited and power-hungry; they may also compromise your party for short-sighted gains and for unbelievably childish causes."
That is what happened when Bertukan and Berhanu set out for the USA using illegal decisions and flimsy excuses instead of attending to more urgent business like ensuring the official recognition of Kinijit and the consolidation of the opposition at home. No amount of support or wining and dining in the Diaspora can lead to victory against the present dictatorship ! The decisive job is at home where democracy will have to be built with still more sweat and blood. All that the Diaspora can do is to assist this process, or mess it up, as in the case of the "tourists".
Given the fact that Ato Hailu has taken so much life-threatening risk for over 12 years to advance the cause of democracy and not the power lust of individuals, his decision to suspend some of the former CUD Executive Committee was right. Ethiopia is much more important than a few self-centered coffee-shop experts. Like him, and in spite of door-to-door canvassing by EPRDF agents in poor neighborhoods, Ethiopians have also suspended their willful participation in the upcoming local elections in April 2008, and continue to look forward to a successful election in May 2010.
The destruction of Kinijit is now complete, and this shameful act of the "tourists' and the destruction of Kinijit has been a great shock. That Kinijit's sweet talkers can do this to us is something we have never ever imagined. Indeed, the Rt. Hon. Anna Gomes of the EU Parliament and those pushing for the enactment of HR. 2003, including Donald Payne, Chris Smith, the entire House of Representatives that passed the Bill and Prof. Alemayehu Gebremariam and many others, must now be disappointed. However, we still need to move on to get HR. 2003 enacted.
We have badly messed up once again, but we can still save the occasion. Unity of the Diaspora is a must if there is still a trace of Ethiopian pride and patriotism in your veins. We need to carefully reexamine all our failed practices, and put Ethiopia as our only priority in all our future acts of support; we can still build an invincible, united and democratic party to lead us to victory in 2010. We still have a strong political base at home and a strong, experienced and committed leadership to realize that cherished goal ! The self-serving propaganda about lack of "internal democracy" should not stop us from making strong preparations for 2010. As Berhanu himself put it in Yenetsant goh siked (see pp. 368-369), internal democracy has always been alive and well under Hailu Shawel as Kinijt President; it is only power-mongers and EPRDF agents that deny it !
Andinet Semere
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Indeed, Kinjit-97 may have been dead as Andnet has saw it, but the sprit behind that got it to that place is still alive; and that is the movement led by Eng. Hailu Shawel. Hailu is an extraordinary organizer and leader that had never been seen in Ethiopia so far. I am hoping he will stay in the struggle for few more years until someone like him replace his role.
I have noticed Andinet is avoiding to openly criticize Mesfin Woldemariam, and also kept silent on those who are giving their dear life to Ethiopia choosing a violent means of bringing down weyane. I will say more in the future.