By Kirubel Tadesse
In the name of sovereignty and resisting pressure Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government is not even pledging to better ensure political participation and protection of human rights over the next five years and donors should react strongly. I am not sure how many of the people we saw rallying on the nation’s main streets after the EPRDF’s overwhelming victory announcement actually know what Human Rights Watch is? If they do as the banner they carried said, the organization must really be popular here and very credible; to the extent that it makes hundreds of thousands “offended” when it errs. But who are we kidding? Except for very few people who are actively engaged in politics, the rest of the nation knows little and cares even less about what the Human Rights Watch has to say.
The rallies, including the one at Addis Ababa Meskel Square, led by Meles himself, had the same tone. They said they wanted to tell the world- primarily the Western countries that collectively make up the donors’ group whose assistance has come in handy to aid our growing economy and, more importantly, our dire food shortage and increasing budget deficit.‘Learn to live with the new reality’ was what the crowd said to the West; the reality being that suddenly the deep political division that existed in Ethiopia for decades is nowhere to be found and the EPRDF is popular even beyond its own expectation.The usually wishy-washy United States this time came with strong statement stating that the government took clear steps to ensure a victory. To rebuff this remark by the U.S. and the Human Rights Watch report which called the whole process one big rip-off, the EPRDF wanted to stage the rallies. The remarks however were comforting for the opposition camp elites who are now disfranchised from any of the government hierarchies. Read the rest of this entry »
