Unless forced out, the ruling TPLF of Ethiopia is here to stay
By Magn Nyang
March 3, 2007 — The last 15 years have fluctuated between hope and despair for some of us minority Ethiopians. At first, we thought that we had finally been rescued from grip of our oppressors. The so called rescuer said to us “you are now free and as a result you can now decide for yourselves”. In the light of this supposed new found freedom, we gratefully thanked and promised that we won’t disappoint our supposed rescuer. However, before long, our so called rescuer started to micro-manage our daily affairs. We voiced our concerns and we were given limited authority to run our daily affairs. Then again, our self appointed rescuer snatched our right to decide for ourselves and when we asked to have our right back, our supposed rescuer responded by killing us. In Gambella town alone, more than 420 Anyuak men were massacred in a broad day-light on December 13, 2003 in front of their wives and children.
In my case, the December 13, 2003 killing of the Anyuaks forced me to look deeply into Meles’ regime psyche and my findings indicated that Meles and his cronies had all along planned to have absolute power in Ethiopia. They had planned to use impulsivity and aggression (killing the innocents) to stay in power indefinitely. I found out that the only reason we failed to noticed Meles’ regime plan early on was because we were busy celebrating our supposed new freedom.
A true leader would engage in socialized power, meaning right from the beginning his or her focus is not on his or her own self or interests, but on the governed. A true leader focuses on the needs, interests, and aspirations of the governed and works hard to tackle the deficiencies that impede the fulfillment of these needs; and the realization of these interests and aspirations. A true leader exercises self- control and acts in way that is altruistic for the service of others. He or she practices chastity and takes personal risks and makes personal sacrifices for the benefit of the governed and by doing so, the governed then, with complete autonomy may choose to follow the leader because they are convinced that the path they follow will eventually lead them to the realization of their deepest hope and aspirations.
Meles lacks all the above. The governed, unsatisfied with his performance, voted him out of the office in May 2005. However, instead of making personal sacrifice by leaving the office for the benefit of the governed (Ethiopians), he responded by killing more than 200 innocent demonstrators in Addis Ababa and by imprisoning leaders of the opposition party. These inappropriate behaviors by the leadership of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPDRF), led me to ask my next question: – why in the first place did TPLF fought to overthrow the Derg regime?
According to TPLF leadership, the fight against Derg regime was to liberate their Tigrian people and other Ethiopians from oppression. They insisted that it was a question of ethnicity. I found their reasoning to be nothing, but a pretext. First of all, for any ethnicity question, there must be oppressor and oppressed. First, a given ethnic group oppresses or dominates the other ethnic group and then, the oppressed ethnic group raises a question and fight back. In Tigre case, no one has ever dominated or oppressed them. All the rulers from the past were either from them or from their immediate cousins, the Amharas.
The Amharas did not take any piece of land from Tigre or moved to Tigray and oppressed Tigrian. Throughout history, the Amharas and the Tigrian have always acted as equal partners in power sharing. The bombing by the Derg regime in 1980s on Hawzen’s market place, was carried out only to flush out insurgents. Then again, the Derg regime had a policy of eliminating anyone that tried to oppose it, be it an Amhara, an Anyuak, an Oromo, or a Tigre. Killing based on ethnicity, was never Derg’s practice. Thus, the market bombing should not be mistaken for oppression or domination of the Tigre people by Derg’s Amhara elites. Like all killings of intimidation by Derg in other regions, the market bombing was also meant to intimidate Tigrian from supporting the opposition against the regime. It was never meant to kill Tigre people as an ethnic group. Hence, TPLF’s leadership claim that their fight against Derg regime was to liberate their Tigre people is baseless. As for their other claim that they fought to liberate other oppressed Ethiopians, this is also a false claim. Why would they fight to liberate and then turn around and oppress the same people they claimed to have liberated?
The truth is that TPLF did not go to war with Derg to liberate anybody. The TPLF did not even go to war to liberate their people from oppression as they claimed. Their people did not experience any oppression from the Amhara rulers. The only reason Tigrian formed TPLF was because they had power question, rather then having ethnicity question. Tigrian people felt that their turn of power has arrived and therefore, they formed TPLF to fight the Amhara’s rule and reclaim the power that they had lost for more than a century. The goal of the TPLF was never about liberation, it was about power. They (TPLF) were never motivated by a passionate and sincere care and concern, as well as a deep and abiding respect for others, they were motivated by power. This explained why the TPLF leadership is acting the way it does today. Their goal was all along to seize power and exploit Ethiopia’s wealth for as long as they can.
My advice to fellow Ethiopians is that Meles and his cronies are here to stay. It is rather naïve to think that they will give-up their power through election. They do not possess a democratic mindset yet. Their leadership role is autocratic, motivated by needs for power, self-achievement, and competition with their cousins, the Amharas. And no one knows exactly for how long the rest of us Ethiopians are going to be victimized by two cousins fighting over power. One has to self-transform (move away from traditional way of life) to acquire the values of altruism or to behave in a way that is beneficial to others without the expectation of an external reward. Right now, the TPLF leadership is not self-transformed and is not sophisticated enough to act altruistically. Their political view is still based on ethnicity, not on willingness to make personal sacrifices for the benefit of the governed. Nepotism is still the core value of this leadership. Therefore, to believe that these guys are going to leave sometime soon willingly is rather unwise.
* The author is a doctorate student and he is a son of Gambella and can be reached by writing to [email protected]