Ethiopia: Meles Zenawi may have broken world record
By Abebe Gelaw
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi may have set a world record for writing the longest ‘letter’ to the editor ever published in a modern newspaper. The 14000-word long letter has already been reported to the Guinness World Records. But the feat needs to be certified by Guinness Book of World Records.

Preliminary research indicates though that no other newspaper in the world has ever published such a long letter to the editor. Most newspapers do not publish letters to the editor with more than 500 words. One of the biggest U.S dailies the Wall Street Journal boasts to have published one of the longest letters to the editor ever published in an American newspaper. The 1010-word letter, written by a Swiss businessman, was published on 12th April 1988.

The Prime Minister’s letter, which is an extraordinarily long derisory tantrum pouring insults and scorn on EU election observers, was published in three parts on the 27th August, 30th August and 31st August editions of the ruling party-controlled English daily, The Ethiopian Herald. The ‘letter’, which was meant to be a rebuttal to a 4000-word long EU election preliminary statement, consumed more than 9 full broadsheet pages of the 8-page newspaper. It was reported that regular columns had to be slashed to accommodate the seemingly endless letter. The second and the longest part, ‘Guilty until proven innocent’, contained 5719 words.

However, it appears that Meles made his best effort to trick the international community and the public at large by publishing his own election report disguised as letter to the editor. He surprised many observers by playing a role of a super-observer.

“It is mind-boggling why he invited foreign election observers in the first place. He declared shamelessly that the 15th May elections were free and fair by any international standards,” a netter said, in a message posted in an Ethiopian cyber forum.

The PM tried to rubbish almost all statements in the preliminary report of the EU Election Observation Mission. In the unprecedented tantrum by a ruler of a country, Meles disparaged and condemned the mission and claimed that it favoured opposition parties. Analysts believe than Meles has no longer got a chance to be treated as a darling for the West.

In the first part, discourteously titled ‘Easy to remove the garbage that has covered the lamps of truth’, Meles lamented at length that the report failed to ignore the irregularities and flaws in the election.

“I had expected that the statement would have very few if any nuggets of truth, and, if any, that these would be buried under so much garbage that it would be virtually impossible to excavate them. As it turned out, the statement has some big, really big, lumps of truth in it, and it is relatively easy to remove the garbage that has covered those lumps of truth.

“While I was expecting a huge garbage damp all I got was newly started garbage damp that was unable to bury the truth. The letter cannot but therefore start by identifying and highlighting the lumps of truth in the statement,” he wrote.

He argued that the rampant human rights violations in Ethiopia including the June 8 massacre, the monopoly of the public media by his party, the ban on public rallies and demonstrations, the mass detention of opposition supporters and sympathizers, the questionable tabulations and count had no bearing on the conduct of the elections.

The Prime Minister tried to avoid directly answering concerns raised by the EU-EOM on the June massacre, which the report identified to have aggravated tensions and fear among the people.

“One can rightly challenge the conclusions of the EU-EOM with regards to the June disturbances. But that would take us away from the main point. Let us instead focus on the impact of the "tension" on the investigation process,” he said and went on to justify the conduct of the contentious election fraud investigation process.

In a bid to appear much more sophisticated than he appears, he even borrowed the song of a famous singer though it had little relevance to his arguments. “The rest of the contextual factors have no relevance, whatsoever, to the investigative process. Indeed, they remind me of the famous Tina Turner song. What has love got to do with it? What indeed have they got to do with the investigative process? Nothing! The criticism by the EU-EOM of the complaints investigation process based on contextual factors has no leg to stand on because the contextual factors selected by it have no relevance at all to the investigations,” the PM ranted.

In his emotive outburst, Meles even thought that Ana Gomes, the Chief EU observer, was killed or dead. Defending the duplicity and overlap of Chief Justice Kemal Bedri’s offices, as President of the Federal Supreme Court, President of Council for Constitutional Inquiry and Chairman of the Election Board, Meles wrote: “To the author of the statement, God save her soul , that is enough to condemn NEBE of impartiality and the judiciary of lack of independence. After all, the standard they prefer to use is that if you are accused by the opposition of doing something wrong, or perceived to have done something wrong, that is all there is to it, the case is closed. You are guilty as accused, or perceived.”

Meanwhile his wife, ‘First Lady’ Azeb Mesfin appeared less disturbed by the report. A day before the release of the EU preliminary report, she visited the Amanuel Hospital, and Gefersa Center for the Rehabilitation of Mentally Ill Persons with the aim of getting information necessary for the implementation of a project to be launched together with the wife of Former US President Jimmy Carter, ENA reported.

According to ENA, Azeb said the Gefersa Centre has to be particularly equipped well with materials to make it comfortable for mentally ill patients.
The Carter Centre is expected to release its preliminary elections report next week. There was no explanation as to why Mrs Meles and Mrs. Carter have decided to launch the joint project at this particular time.

Email: ethio@yahoo.com

City: Addis