by Ambassador Imru Zeleke
January, 2013
A foreign
expert wrote that what occurs in Ethiopian history is always the
unexpected. Although the symptoms of coming disasters were quite
manifest long before the happenings; I am not sure if our perception to
foresee future events is obfuscated by lack of imagination; or is it
because of the Ethiopian, including mine, propensity to leave matters to
Divine intervention? Who would have thought that the Imperial reign
would crumble? Who would have thought that the Revolution and military
pseudo-communist regime would disappear in debacle leaving a murderous
trail and disaster? Would have thought that a corrupt and ruthless
tribal gang of usurpers would be ruling the country? Here we are now,
after four decades painful and humiliating existence, reduced to abject
poverty divested of any rights, estranged in our own country, still
asking ourselves what to do. All our neighbors are in revolt and
fighting for their freedom and for justice: Sudan, Yemen, Egypt,
Tunisia, Libya, Syria and so forth. Where are we? What are we doing?
Like in Samuel Beckett play: Waiting for God?
In the last days we
have witnessed an extraordinary spectacle of ordered, organized and
enforced mass hysteria ever seen in our poor land. In the reverse sense
it is comparable to the extraordinary edict of the Derg prohibiting any
wake keeping, crying and holding funeral for the people it murdered and
buried in mass graves. Thus, under the pseudo-Marxist regime to cry for
your dead was an anti-revolutionary act, while under the
pseudo-democratic TPLF regime mass demonstration of sorrow, crying and
self flagellation is an obligatory liberal/capitalist conduct.