Dear CUD- how can you work with a dead party?
According to NPR radio, some CUD officials currently in America are claiming they want to start a "dialogue." They are quoted by Ethiomedia and NPR saying “we are still ready for political dialogue”
Ironically, they are telling this to western officials, not to the Ethiopian officials. No matter, let us all Ethiopians finally welcome the CUD leaders in America back to the civilized world!
Welcome back!!
It took you many years to decide to have a dialogue. Maybe it is the millennium bug. Who knows, but, all Ethiopians are saying – thank you for finally choosing the path of dialogue! As you can see in Ethiopia , more than eight opposition parties have been benefiting with their right to contest everything done by the ruling party. They have been thru various dialogues, especially since 2000 when the UEDF opposition party gained enough parliament seats to make the ruling party accountable in parliamentary level. The same has been happening in Ethiopia , in a much larger scale, since the 2005 election where various opposition parties took seats including the opposition UEDP-Medhin that took large shares of the Addis Ababa seats. Not only these two opposition parties, but also many more opposition parties including OFDM, SPDP and others have chosen political dialogue with the ruling party instead of violence. So it is the representatives of the majority of Ethiopians that are saying welcome to CUD Diaspora!
If you really mean it, we say thank you for caring about peaceful discourse and dialogue. If you really mean to abandon your alliance with armed groups like ONLF inside the AFD, we say welcome to you. If you really mean to abandon your slogan “ Tigre wede Mekele,” we say welcome to you. If you really mean to abandon claiming there is no need to speak in local Somali language for dialogue with our Somali-Ethiopians, then we say welcome to you because you can't speak spanish to a person who only knows English. If you really mean you abandoned your boycotts on Ethiopian businesses, your boycotts on everything Ethiopian , then we say welcome back to dialogue! If you really mean to abandon your rebellion, then we say welcome to you! If you really mean to abandon your wild claims that the ruling party is “dead" and nonexistent then we say welcome to you!
If you really mean it, all of us EPRDF supporters want to congratulate you for joining the rest of Ethiopia . All of us have been enjoying the fruits of the victory that came due to the blood sacrifice of not hundreds but thousands and thousands of allied patriotic EPRDF fighters who defeated the Derg. The patriots defeated the Derg after watching more than half a million northern Ethiopians perish in front of their eyes from the face of this earth – never to be seen again. If you want to calculate these big numbers, an Ethiopian population size equal to two country in 1986, Bahamas and Djibouti, COMBINED was the total amount of Ethiopians that perished in front of our eyes. The EPRDF patriots were also joined by other patriotic Ethiopians who watched near 150,000 more Ethiopians get executed by the Derg in the streets of Addis Ababa and everywhere in Ethiopia . All of these Ethiopians did not die fighting a foreign invader like Italy, Eritrea, Egypt or any country. They simply dropped dead everywhere in Ethiopia. So we invite you to join the freedom and democracy cemented by the sacrifice of your fellow brothers and sisters who died from 1974- 1991 to liberate us from Derg. It would be a shame if you decide not to enjoy this right given to you by the blood of your fellow Ethiopian patriots.
Meanwhile, we want to remind you how much you have hurt us the last two years of your existence. From telling a 5 million population of Tigrayans to leave and be confined in Tigray via your slogan “ Tigre wede mekele.” To your actions that initiated a revolution. To your alliance with the ONLF terrorists who have been assassinating courageous Somali-Ethiopian officials. These same courageous Somali-Ethiopian officials, who truly wanted to choose a path of dialogue to repair historical grievances, were re-buried by your choice to ally yourself with the ONLF assassinators who killed them for being "traitor Somalis."
Finally, let us remind you what some CUD members including Engineer Gezachew, said during a pro-CUD demonstration almost two years ago. This video taped evidence was one of the many anti-peace, anti-democracy statements announced by CUD. In this videos, the true nature, the propaganda and the anti-democratic goals of the CUD was displayed again. In this video, we learned that CUD talks peace, talks democracy but it deeply wishes war and hate. To the cheers and pride of CUD supporters and members in that day, it says in Amharic “Ehadik wedqual! Ehadig yelem! Ahune tegelu Ehadig kewedeqebet bota anseten eneezelewu newu! … Yetem yelale derejet gar abren enesra? enezelewu? eneshekemewu? Yeha yeqorat, ye asteway meriwoch sera aydelem!! [http://youtube.com/watch?v=dT1fjJCGI5A] Fast forward to 12 minutes 15 seconds for this statement.
Translated in English, in front of thousands of CUD supporters, and members, it says “EPRDF has fallen, EPRDF is dead! Now, is our struggle to pick up EPRDF from the place it has fallen from? This is not the work of a steadfast and intelligent leaders!”
This CUD speech was followed by Engineer Gezachew saying “We have confirmed that no one in Ethiopia from north to south, from east to west wants EPRDF.” [http://youtube.com/watch?v=dT1fjJCGI5A]
So...as we congratulate our CUD friends in the Diaspora for finally choosing dialogue, we must still ask them if they have finally abandoned their support and their alliance with armed struggle.
Most of all, we ask CUD, since you said “EPRDF is dead” how can you really work with a "dead" party? If some entity does not exist, you don’t need to even mention its name, let alone deal with it. So why do you want to work with a "dead" party? Or maybe, are you changing your mind and willing to finally join the current multi-party parliament?
efrem hagos, 10/13/07