Note: This article was published four years ago with a little different title.
By Belayneh Abate
When the term psychopath is mentioned in relation to Ethiopians, people may think of Legesse Zenawi who used to boast that he would amputate the hands of his opponents or Jawar Mohammad who brags that he would chop off necks with machetes. However, psychopaths rarely manifest these kinds of psychotic or schizophrenic behaviors. According to Professor Robert Hare, psychopaths are often charming, witty, articulate, but deceitful, manipulative, glib, superficial and egocentric.
Perhaps, no one studied psychopaths more than Professor Hare of British Columbia. In his famous book, Without Conscience, Professor Hare has presented the cases of many beautiful women and handsome men whose lives have been destroyed by charming psychopaths who fell in love with them. One of these victims was Elyse* who fell in love with Jeffery*. Elyse saw Jeffery the first time when she was enjoying in a beach with her friends.
During this first sight, Jeffery showed Elyse huge- bright smile. Disarmed by his charming smile, she immediately surrendered and gave her phone number to him. They started to date, and Elyse found Jeffery funny and hilarious. During dating, he talked to her nonstop, bragging about his big ideas and plans. In addition to his big- bright smiles, she was sold to his big ideas and plans. They spend these types of “good times” for many days. Unfortunately, a policeman arrested Jeffery when they were sitting for lunch one day.
To make the long story of Elyse and Jeffery short, Jeffery was a man with NO conscience. He was a robber that steals everything. Even his clothes that he used to wear to impress Elyse were stolen clothes. Despite his arrest for his theft, Elyse kept visiting him in jail because she is a woman WITH conscience, and she did not want to leave him during those hard times.
When Jeffery was in jail, he used to write her how much he loves and cares about her three times per day. Days later, he came out of jail and he showed her his usual charming-big bright smile and they stayed together. Elyse tried to change his life, and she found him a job, but Jeffery was not a man of work. Jeffery was just a man of big ideas and plans. Despite his big ideas and plans, he was again incarcerated for theft, and the story rotated like that.
Like Elyse, plenty of Ethiopian elites fell in love with a deceitful, manipulative, glib, superficial, and egocentric man on the first sight when he said “Alive or Dead we are all Ethiopians” in 2018. Whenever his lovers meet with him, the manipulative man talks nonstop about plagiarized big ideas and plans. Deceived by these plagiarized big ideas and plans, many elites forgot what he and his colleague did to Ethiopia and Ethiopians for twenty-seven years.
Although he is the current leader of the party that massacred tens of thousands, tortured hundreds of thousands, displaced millions and made the country land-locked and fractured, the deceived Ethiopians called him the second “Mosses” of the old testament.
Unfortunately, the second Mosses of the old testament is not the kind of Mosses who could change the water to blood, the stick to snake or divide the red sea into two parts. He is just a man of stolen big ideas and plans, but not actions that were different from what he did for more than two decades. In fact, the government supported crimes were intensified and more than three million Amaras, Gamos, Gedios and Wolaytas were displaced and thousands massacred after the second Mosses took the highest power.
Because of these heinous crimes, some of his lovers tried to detach themselves from him soon. However, the westerners, who installed him in the Ethiopian palace, awarded him noble prize and this award provided him with the second chance to preach and seduce his lovers with “big ideas” in Oslo.
During his award ceremony, he talked about the glorious history of Ethiopian that he and his comrades denied and butchered for 27 years. He also preached about his usual big ideas and plans. After his preaching of the big ideas and plans in Oslo, many of his lovers who abandoned him re-started dating him like Elyse dated Jeffery despite his wrong doings. The Ethiopian elites re-started dating this man of big idea although thousands of Amaras and Gurages were massacred in the Eastern, Southern and Central Regions of Ethiopia.
Even after the man of big ideas was awarded the peace prize, the massacre of Amaras and burning of churches and mosques continues in the area his party controls. Similarly, tens of thousands of Amara university students were forcefully evicted, and about two dozen girls were kidnapped by gangs. The gags consider themselves as the liberators of the tribe of the man of the big idea and they are financed through bank robberies and direct deposits.
The man of big ideas later opened war on Amaras all over the country. Unfortunately, some elites are still blinded by their lover affairs more than Elsye was blinded by Jeffer’s lies. On the other hand, most of his elite lovers divorced him without filing a paperwork. However, some of the divorcees are still paralyzed from broken heart, guilt, regret, and confusion, which are the complications of loving a psychopath. The treatments for the complications of loving this type of psychopath are confession, repent and forgiveness from the psychopath’s victims and the people. Thank you.
*Without Conscience by Professor Hare: -The story is real, but Professor Hare used different names to protect the identity of his cases.
February 2nd, 2020
The writer can be reached at abatebelai@yahoo.com