A Candid Letter to Fekade Shewakena
Dear Ato Fekade
Thank you for your Response to my rebuttal (Ethio-Media 13th March 2006)
I am pleased to learn that you had gathered enough morale and intellectual vim to have been able to provide me with a response which is, unfortunately, as meaningless verbiage as it is desultory.
It is not my wish here to engage in a mud slinging exercise with you for that would be inflating your already inflated ego to an even higher level. What is needed here on the other hand is some kind of ‘counter-counter criticism’ so that I would be able to put the record straight.
You see, Ato Fekade, I am a far cry away from the person you perceive me to be. Though I was not born by application, rest assured that I am every bit proud to be the son of dear and loving parents. Unlike you, I have spent 9 years in prison for being born from ‘the wrong parents’ by a government bent on vendetta and whose policies were clouded by antediluvian paradigm. I am not an annex of my family nor would I allow myself to be stigmatised because of my pedigree. Like many in similar circumstances, I have accepted with grace the will of the Ethiopian people to be the masters of their destiny. Whose son I am is, therefore, neither here nor there to me. That, fortunately, has always been the affectations of those who suffer from acute inferiority complexes. As Alem Mekuria’s “Specimen of Coloniality” (www.admin@aigaforum.com) has dealt a death blow to your line of argument, I consider this matter to be done and dusted.
Dear Ato Fekade
How very interested to know that you have “this huge urge to explain patterns of behaviour in society” and to know from your psychologists friends whether or not I would be a good candidate. Our Sigmund Freud, why bother to cross the Atlantic in search of Mulugeta while you have the ideal guinea-pig in the person of the new Leader of the Derg sitting next to you? Rest assured that he, of all people, would pass your criteria with flying colours. Perhaps you would do your country and people great favour if you were to make your findings public.
I simply do not understand why you kept rabbiting on Professor Mesfin Wolde-Mariam. The issue here is not the merit or demerit of the Professor but whether – as you have claimed in your first article – “he can make Mulugeta’s kind of brain from pure mud.” I have found nothing from your lengthy citation of Professor Mesfin to make me change my stand of the Professor not having the cerebral capacity of making even the brain of a Fekade Shewakena. Please don’t get me wrong, I respect your ‘democratic’ right of turning a Professor into God, all I am asking you is not to foist your idea on me for I am perfectly comfortable and at peace with my God.
You have accused me of bad-mouthing the Professor. You are not wrong, but mistaken. What I have done is something that falls well within the orbit of free speech in a democratic milieu. Criticising the actions of public figures is the daily diet of journalists every where including Ethiopia. It is only a crime when one fabricates stories or defames the good name of the person concerned. In the case of the Professor, all I have done is to point out that his non-stoppable gaffes were costing Rainbow dearly. What is wrong with underlying the obvious? Tell me Our Mehur; is it right in you opinion to say that there are no such people called Amhara? What about Emperor Tewodros being a worse human rights violator than Mengistu? Or What about the Bademe Question not being an Ethiopian issue? Besides, I said what I said about the Professor a year before his unfortunate imprisonment.
Ato Fekade
You also had the nerve to implicate me with the on-going trial of CUD leaders by stating that I had been giving false testimonies. I think these sorts of utterances are the symptoms of mental derangement for the treatment of which I urge you to make it, post-haste, to your nearest health centre. I have never been asked by any person/authority to testify on the CUD leaders. The truth of the matter is I know nothing about these individuals to testify. If in case you are referring to my ETV interview, I am pleased to inform you that I am more convinced now than ever before that the CUDP is redolent with men and women of the Derg era who hunted and hounded innocent Ethiopians.
The mere fact that one of CUD’s big guns in Washington D.C. has stood in defence of the new Leader of the Derg is proof, if it should ever be needed, that CUDP is being guided and goaded by sanguinary kakitocrats.
Last but not least, please note that I do not need being reminded by you about the relentless effort I should put in to bring ‘The Butcher’ of Ethiopia from his hideaway in Zimbabwe. However, with his London-based personal security officers completely etiolated and the new lotus-eater Leader of the Derg in Washington decaffeinated, the determination to bring back to Ethiopia the former man-eater Leader of the Derg will gather momentum.
This, as far as I am concerned, brings to a close my exchange of views and rebuttal with you. Should you wish to pursue the matter any further my turning a blind eye and deaf ear is guaranteed.
With my best wishes
Mulugeta Aserate Kassa
14th March 2006