After nearly two decades in Ethiopia's leadership, Meles Zenawi has proven himself a master of democratic manipulation. He has been using the democratic process to advance undemocratic goals. To mention some of them, he divided the country by ethnicity; arbitrary arrest, killing, torture, imprisonment and harassment of opposition leaders, members and supporters; benefit one ethnicity over other Ethiopian people, incompetent to resolve countries critical problems such as poverty and HIV/AIDS.
Zenawis government was undemocratically elected in 2000; the results were heavily criticized by international observers and denounced by the opposition as fraudulent. The EPRDF also unlawfully elected in the 2005 election returning Zenawi to power. Both the opposition and observers from the European Union and elsewhere stated that the vote did not meet international standards for fair and free elections. Ethiopian police have massacred more than193 protesters.
Since the EPRDF/TPLF came to power in 1991, Ethiopia has conducted at least three “national and regional elections”. In all of these, the ruling party “won” by landslide mainly because it was running by itself and against itself. Because of the many obstacles that are in place, all these elections proved to be extremely restrictive and highly uncontested.
Zenawi, 54 years old, had been giving mixed signals for months that he might retire from office. However, because his party's members 'love him so much' and because they see him as 'irreplaceable', they have 'urged' him to stay in power longer. He is also determined to win 2010 and beyond by any means.
Ethiopian Government is likely to use the same poor tactic in 2010 election. They started their harmful activity by rearresting the prominent leader of the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party, Birtukan Mideksa for the reason that she publicly challenged the conditions and terms of their release from prison. These moves by Ethiopian government was considered by many and Ethiopian political opposition parties as a way forward to block fair and free election and democratic process in the country.
Ethiopian Government wants to use the same old approach again and again. We want the world understand that Ethiopia government cannot rule us by portraying that Ethiopia is enjoying democracy while we do not have any. They can not falsely portraying their image as democrats.
no more game. The truth is clear now even for westerns.
ReplyDeleteAs explained in this article it clearly indicates how the country ruled by dictators, by falsely portraying their image as democrats .As far as they control the guns, they can rule us. But they cannot rule us by portraying that Ethiopia is enjoying democracy while we do not have any.
ReplyDeleteIn this upcoming election, it appears none of the major U.S. observer groups will be coming. The Carter Center has declined an invitation. The others, the Washington based International Foundation for Electoral Systems, National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, were not invited.
Our system is a multi-party system. Clearly a multi-party system, because we believe Ethiopia is multinational, multi-ethnic, multilingual and multi religious, so one party cannot represent all these differences, so multi party system is mandatory in Ethiopia. But it doesn’t look that the government is following this fact.