26 May 2021
By Samuel Estefanous
Let me begin this by solemnly declaring that for the first time I am going to vote. Though I have been eligible to vote in all the past five consecutive National Elections, I have consciously declined to register to have my voter card and denied myself the cardinal privilege to elect my representative as an Ethiopian.
Just like most run of the mill quiet Ethiopians I have lost sleep over the question-to vote or not to vote. Guess what? The scale was tipped in favor of drawing the card by the blatantly outrageous conditions the EU had put in place to send election observes and the careless condescending conclusion the United States has made relative to the none existence of viable conducive conditions to hold an election.
Personally my choices might go counter to that of the supporters and fans of Jawar Mohamed and Eskndir Nega but I have reason to believe these days every next Oromifa speaker I encounter feels cheated by the incumbent and looks up to Oromo Federalist Congress; every next established native of Addis Ababa talks like Prosperity Party is a change in name and style and that otherwise it is EPRDF alright in deed. EZEMA has publicly announced that it is denied ground in Oromia.
If one tries to do the math, it is a foregone conclusion that Oromia is certainly going to be an exclusive Prosperity domain, with prominent leaders of Balderas behind bars; the party is least likely to win votes however much it is sponsored and promoted by the expat community. Same true in Sidama, Afar, Somalia, Gambella and Benishangul Gumuz and to a considerable degree in the SNNPRS. If a semblance of credible contest between matching stalwarts is going to be witnessed, it will only be in the Amhara National Regional State-courtesy of Amhara National Movement.
Under these gloomily overarching foul plays in all directions, one would naturally want to know-what is the point of casting a vote in vain when the outcome is thus a foregone conclusion?
Hitherto, that is the reason most of us had refused to play a designated role in a mockery of justice scripted by EPRDF. Election season in Ethiopia had been one drawn out stretch of time the general public had to endure putting up with the ultimate insult to its intelligence and honor.
But both the United States and the European Union never saw any fundamental breach of the basics of fair and democratic election these past twenty five years; not even when EPRDF’s contempt and hatred for the bulk of the Ethiopian public reached the evitable zenith in the 2015 election. By the year 2015 EPRDF had securely, practically and systematically disenfranchised all Ethiopians except its army of ruthless cadres and won all the 547 seats of the House of People’s Representatives.
But this unfortunate mockery was blessed by none other than the then leader of the ‘free world’ President Barrack Obama. That is one among many reasons why I believe the United States had a lot of raw nerve to dare criticize the incumbent. When EPRDF unwittingly dug its own grave very deep by exclusively ‘occupying’ the HoPR, the EU dignitaries laughed to their hearts content but kinda accepted the outcome perhaps reasoning-‘it would be stupid to expect anything better from a starving Nation’. But now when NEBE takes the initiative and invites the EU to send a mission to observe the election they mail in a counter offer to negotiate on the preconditions.
It is this double faced intervention in the domestic affairs of a Sovereign Nation, this unmitigated double standard and unscrupulous bullying that made me draw my voter registration card on the 11th hour. I know we won’t be able to vote out EPRDF however I will most certainly cast my protest vote against the rude Western hegemony.
Forget the State Department’s crooning about democracy and human right, forget the smooth preaching of the National Endowment for Democracy, forget strings of resolutions adopted by Congress, at the end of the day, the undeniable matter of the fact is the United States ruthlessly props up dictators across Africa, the middle east, South East Asia, the Caribbean, Central America and Southern America. To mention but high profile cases, it had Patrice Lumumba alienated and murdered and to install Mobutu Sese Seko, it had pushed Chile’s Salvador Allende to the brink and eventually to his tragic death to install the murderous Augusto Pinochet, it had nourished and sustained Suharto and had Sukarno succumb to cancer, it had starved Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador, it had conquered, occupied and subjugated Panama and Grenada. The United States had brutally conquered, occupied and incorporated a chunk of Mexican territory in to its own domain including but not limited to States like Texas, New Mexico, California and Florida.
It had committed heinous and barbaric crimes over the people of Japan and Vietnam. It is the one country that had used chemical warfare and deadly lethal biological agent over human beings in modern times and in recent living memory. Folks keep talking about Nazi concentration camps but contemporaneously the United States had summarily interned and kept Americans of Japanese origin in concentration camps. It is the one country that had systematically wiped out a whole tribe of the First Nations from the North American continent and still keeps the remnants in Reserves like game animals or something.
It had carpet bombed the Sudan, Libya, Serbia and scores of Middle Eastern countries with total impunity. For no particular reason, it has subjected and condemned the entire Venezuelan people to utter destitution and had claimed suzerainty over the proud Nation by appointing a certain boneless Quisling called Juan Guaido as its President.
The United States of America is a first rate certified bully of the otherwise free world. It is the only country in the whole wide world that adopts resolution after resolution instructing its State Department, the Agency for International Development etc to take such actions as to insure the prevalence of this interest and that, the emasculation of this or that tendency by the government of this or that country. For instance reading through Senate Resolution 97, one would reasonably assume Ethiopia is the 51st State of the Union that is called United States or one of its overseas territories.
In our long history, we have never ever adopted a resolution neither through our Parliament nor our successive governments to punish the United States for crimes against humanity, not even for the lynching it had condoned, for the Church burning it had sponsored, for the bestial monster called KKK it had kept alive, for trading in human beings as talking commodities, above all for being a Disgrace to the Human Race…how dare the United States chide us thus?
If only they knew the Ethiopian psyche…they wouldn’t have written the first ‘whereas’ in the unfortunate bill sponsored by Senator James Risch.