The TPLF is engaged in the same game in slightly different form. It is real aim is to rule indefinitely. I have observed from within the socalled EPRDF how the TPLF readily shed its leftist pretensions. It is conceivable and even reasonable if yesterday’s communists becaome today social democrats. Among the Abyssinian intellectuals yesterdy’s extreme leftists are mostly todayextreme right wingers. Ido not want to go into the unsavoury details about how they do it. Of course this behavior is not limited them. Oromo opportunists, for example, are to some extent, also very good at it. They are right wingers of lower order. They put their inner thermostat lower so that generally they lack energy to do anything effectively.They are generally good at serving others patiently and are easily satisfied with what comes. Most of them are incapable of saying no.The new administrative divisions across ethnic lines, which Amhara representatives decry as the end of Ethiopia, is meant ultimately to to perpetuate Abyssinian domination only in different forms and thereby forstall the disintegration of the empire. In this sense Tigray chauvenists are certainly more sophisticated , and, in certain sense, more dangrous than their Amhara colleagues. What makes them more dangherous is, in my opinion, their impulsive trigger-happy nature. Today TPLF has become a real death-trap. A death-trap also for the Tigrians who oppose it. It tried to underpin its rule by making very superficial concessions, as the right to use one’s own language , for example, and recruting a huge lumpen army of paid collaborators also from the oppressed nations. The game of playing one ethnic group angainst the other to divide the opposition is one of its favourite techniques.
If the TPLF falls apart all of a sudden there is the real possibility of these lumpen armies facing one another and causing hitherto unheard of carnage. Have the intrernational circles who support the Abyssinian rulling elites considered this possibility at all?
We see today many of yestedays’ cutthroats becomming ironically champions of democracy. It is absolutely nauseating to see that the bulk of the bureaucracy in the present regime is made up of the same people who implemented the most brutal policies of the former regimes. They could say calmly that they had only carried out orders from above. They are doing the same under the present regime. Most of the socalled opposition elements in the socalled parliament of the regime now are collaborators with, or apologetics for the former regimes. Again, they are not all necessarily from Abyssinian elites. Take , for example the so-called Oromo National Congress and Oromo Federalist Democratic Movment.They also go around foreign embassies to prove that there is some degree of democracy in Ethiopia. Directly and indirectly they serve only themselves and the regime to which they are allegededly opposed. What a game!.
Yesterday’s cutthroats and yesterday’s leftists are united today to defend Ethiopia. I, like many individuals from oppressed nations, have worked for some time with parts of Abyssinian leftist elites before and after 1991 because I thought they had to some extent the same vision and ideals as myself. I learned the hardest way that the overwhelming majority of them are utterly incapable of changing politically. It is a problem of comprehensive conditioning over generations. Their basic attitudes and instincts remained feudal no matter how they pretended to be otherwise, especially their authoritarianism. Today they have perceptibly relapsed to old myths, to justify the history of a unique Ethiopia.. All in all they do understimate the political consciousness of ordinary people .
The point is, however, those of us who respect the choice of the peoples of the empire have no reason to be afraid of what the future holds for us. Let us concentrate on here and now. I think it is part of nature’s blessing that no one can monopolize future. The immediate aim of those of us who want genuine changes must be to overthrow the present regime and dissolve its purely ethnic brutal army. TPLF’s biggest achievement: It has built the most aggressive and brutal army in Africa. We must come to a fullstop here. Then there should be free general election that will result in a transitional government. The task of such a government will be, among other things, to abolish the bureaucratic structures of the empire-state of Ethiopia based on exclusive Abyssyinian supremacy and to implement urgently a new economic policy that serves the interests of the majority of the people . A popular refrendum must be held at some point to determine the future of Ethiopia on the basis of the wishes of its peoples. International observers mut be allowed in in all these elections to ensure fair electoral process. But the Abyssinian political cliques are determined to forstall by all means such a possibitiy, even if it does not preclude giving chance to a genuinely federated new entity. . TheTPLF is claiming cynically even now as as I write these words that it’s aim is to transform Ethiopia to a multi –national democracy, with the British parliament as its modell! The Ethiopian ambassador in London was given not long ago ample time by the BBC to explain this and to parade the great achievements of his government, a never ending charade.
The Eritrean opposition groups loyal to the Ethiopian regime , many of whom were former enemies of TPLF, are joining the chorus and promising to do the same in Eritrea. Behind all this drama there is only a petty dream of a more camouflaged Abyssinian Tigray domination of both countries, in which case Eritrean idependence becomes a mere formality. Of course this is too much of a good thing already. See the recent interview of Melles Zennawi by Awate Com. This website has by the way long transformed itself into one of the many propaganda out-lets for the regime in Addis Ababa. The Awate com. and the Eritrean democrats of today whom it represents lack integrity, not intelligence. Even though they perfectly well know that Ethiopian dominated Eritrea and Somalia will never be peacefull places , the race for a short-cut to power made them champion TPLF agenda ignoring the vital interests of the peoples of the region..
The anomalities and incongruities of the political elites of this region are too many to consider here at once. They do confuse many honest foreigners who want to help. Part of the political elite from the Eritrean highland, for example, who had fought fiercely for Eritrean independence are now firmly defending the unity of the rest of the Ethiopian empire-state, come what may. In the seventies when I spent some years in the Middle East working for the Ethiopian National Libersation Front, I was dismayed and saddened deeply when I realized that many of the representatives of the the Eritrean liberation fronts did actually try to hinder us from satisfactorily explaining the reality of the oppressed peoples in Ethiopia to the progressive national liberation movements in the Arab countries. They behaved almost as if we were their rivals. They readily avoided raising the question of the oppressed peoples of the Ethiopian empire. Only the group led by Mr. Osman Saleh Sabbe was reasonable and helpful. I know personally that Osman Saleh Sabbe, Waldab Walda Mariam and some of their colleagues did care about the oppressed peoples of Ethioipia and had a positive vision for the entire region. They could not of course do much about it. They had enough problems on their hands. The negative attitude on the part of some Eritrean highlanders would not surprise me at all. Their history , which is to a great degree part of Abyssinian history, is not burried as yet but only artificially and systematically suppressed so that it does not interfere with their ambition to rule over an independent Eritrea. What surprised me most at the time was to see the same attitudes among some elites from the Eritrean lowlands, who had nothing in common with the hegemony of historical Abyssinia. They were its victims in fact. Their narrowed opportunistic horizon has brought them where they are today. We know well how TPLF participated in the liquidation of ELF. Why do they refuse to learn the lesson? Is it for great tactical reasons that we ordinary mortals cannot grasp?
The question of Tigray nation on both sides of the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea ( which was the main reason why the EPLF helped organize the TPLF in the first place ) remains Pandora’s box about which both cannot speak openly for fear of revealing self- contradiction , absurdity and self betrayal. And the Amhara ( Ethiopian ) political groups are also deadly silent about it for their own reasons. Raising it might of course imply repudiating conlonial arrangments. This is among singular cases of how peoples can be mesmerized by the lies of their own guiding elites . The real story of present conflict between Eritrea and Ethioipia is only partially told.
The Somali groups allied now to the regime in Ethiopia lack not only integrity but also intelligence altogether. These are mostly men and women who behave like vultures intent only on satisfaying their immediate needs, even if that means selling their country. The sufferings they caused to the Somali people speak for themselves. .. So much so good for the new generation of democrats – servile intellectuals and bloody warlords , in this wonderful sunny part of the world.