Why Meles should step down sooner than later
By Abebe Gelaw
June 15, 2005

The post-election political upheaval in Ethiopia has reached a critical melting point. Once again Meles loyalist troops opened fire on unarmed civilians in the capital killing over 36 people and injuring over a hundred others. To add insult to injury, thousands of peaceful Ethiopians have been rounded up and detained in torture camps across the country. The atrocity committed against innocent civilians, whose only crime was to protest against injustice, was one of the brutally barbaric acts of a regime in despair. The true natures of Meles the evil, wrongly dubbed by some shallow Westerners as ‘progressive’, have now laid bare in full view of the international community.

Meles Zenawi fought his way to the helm of political power through bloodshed. Undoubtedly, he will continue to use brute force to quench his thirst for power and blood. However, one thing remains true, the gathering revolutionary tsunami is poised to sweep away his despotic rule.
Sooner or later, Meles, along with his inner circle , will be flushed down the gutter of history as the God Father of a mafia group that has plundered, abused, humiliated, divided and took hostage a proud nation with rich historical and cultural heritages. Being a power thirsty criminal, he suffers from delusion of grandiose; he feels he is unique, born to lead and control the destiny of a nation. He is a dangerous criminal who even turned against almost all the founders of the TPLF. No matter how hard he tries, all his evil endeavours will be consigned down to the gutters.

In collusion with the EPLF, he led a ragtag band of rebels to ‘victory’ against his predecessor Mengistu Haile Mariam, whose inadequacies and weaknesses created in parts of the country hotbeds to the emergence of our worst enemies. Meles and Mengistu share a lot of common traits but the former appears to win the contest of the ugly with his borderline personality and hate for a united and strong Ethiopia. Like Ivan the Terrible, the Russian absolute monarch, Meles is a king of great contradictions. He is a great con artist playing a game of the hyena in sheep’s clothing. Shamelessly, he presents himself as an advocate of democracy and equality. Nonetheless, it is an open secrete that he has now made Ethiopians more unequal than ever in their own country. Only himself and his handpicked inner circles, that indulge in the business empires of the TPLF, did enjoy the fruit of their crimes while the rest of the nation have been reduced to impoverished hostages. A typical Orwellian copycat, he ‘liberated’ us from the Derg and declared: “All Ethiopians are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
When Meles became leader of the TPLF and chairman of the Marxist Leninist League Tigray in 1979 under the tutelage and mentorship of his distant cousin Isayas Afeworki, he made it no secret that he hated to see a united Ethiopia that he used to call a “ colonial power.” His declared objective was to secede Eritrea and divide the country into inimical mini-states. In 1993 Eritreans were granted a clear choice in a ‘referendum’, unseen before in the history of any nation: “freedom or slavery?”

The rest of Ethiopia was granted ethnic federalism as a panacea for every socio-political quandary. Meles authored a unique constitution, the first in the world to endorse the right of the ethnic states to secession. Even if he is not even willing to respect basic human rights, he generously handed us Article 39: “The right to self-determination, including secession of every Nation, Nationality and People shall come into effect, when a demand for secession has been approved by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Legislative Council of the Nation, Nationality or People concerned.”

For the last fourteen years, Meles and his henchmen have managed to cling to power by playing a game of divide-and-rule. After the so-called democratic election, Ethiopia is now on the verge another round of turmoil. On the one hand, the people have reunited against their common enemies and voted against members of the ruling party in rural as well as urban areas. On the other hand, Meles and his stooges appear resolute to use brute force to stay in power.

The Meles regime should go without causing more damage and harm against the nation, which has already been ravaged by cycles of war, poverty, pestilence, injustice and famine of a biblical proportion. Ethiopia has been messed up enough by its ruthless leaders. The contributions of Meles and his puppets in complicating, compounding and multiplying Ethiopia’s critical problems have been all the more evident. It remains a regrettable fact that a bunch of rebels, who shed a great deal of blood in the name of freedom, emerged from the bush with all kind of lethal weapons, tanks, machine guns, bombs and AK 47s only to terrorize and enslave their fellow citizens.
Fourteen years have passed since we were told liberated and yet our liberators are perpetrating terrorism shooting indiscriminately, killing, maiming and jailing innocent civilians. The great irony is that Meles has put thousands of red terror perpetrators on trial for committing human rights violations in the aftermath of the 1974 revolution. The mafia group he is leading needs to be renamed to ‘Terrorism Perpetrators Liberation Front’ (TPLF). As the people of Tigray have never been liberated but rather fallen under absolute totalitarianism of the TPLF, it is a huge blunder to link TPLF with the ‘liberation’ of Tigray.

Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians have perished during the fighting between the elites of Mengistu against the TPLF/EPLF leadership. Nearly one hundred thousand people paid their lives when Meles fell out with Isayas. What have we gained in the end? Nothing but another cycle of oppression, injustice, tyranny, division, starvation, abject poverty….what have you.

It was the American civil liberty movement leader, Martin Luther King Jr., who said: “It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment.” In the same token, it would be fatal for the Meles & Co. to ignore the urgency of the moment in Ethiopia, i.e. unity, equality, justice, freedom, democracy and bread for the hungry, to say the least. All these critical questions cannot be answered either through bullets or fake ballot papers.
Not only has the narcissist Meles taken a nation his hostage, but also acted irresponsibly on so many occasions and wasted great opportunities to repent and lead the nation to a better future. He should be well advised to learn from his gravest blunders that have already established his place in the gutters of history. Underestimating the power of the people remains one of his gravest and unforgettable transgressions. Meles & Co should learn a lesson from their predecessors.

So far we have proved sufficiently that TPLF’s chosen road is leading us to destruction and suffering. The TPLF’s terrorist machination should end sooner than later. It is high time the TPLF handed over the government to the Ethiopian people and let the people decide their fate and destiny. The message of the Ethiopian people has been much clearer than ever: “Enough is enough!” The count down for a popular revolution has already started! Replicating the deeds of Graziani with Agaazi will never stop the tide a revolutionary tide. It appears wiser to flee than wait for a harsher popular verdict.

I totally agree.

This is great.