Ethiopia is watching

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Paulos Yrgaw(06/23/05)

Four and half years into this world, I joined the human race in its real sense. The entry of this article of course could give an impression to the interested reader that, the writer is of a different (non-human) genetic milieu. Of course, I am a product of a DNA molecule, "The Selfish Gene" if you will, in a human form with a human hopes, aspirations and other dimensions as well. The couple who brought me into this world, truly believed in the goodness and beauty of life and in the compartmentalization of time where I grow, go to school, get married and have kids. They embraced Rousseau and negated Hobbes. Again, they truly believed that, life is more about the sunrise rather than the sunset. And they were determined to raise me in the former. In the year of 1976 however, Hobbes proved them wrong, when the forces of evil killed my father. In that year, I joined the human race in its crude and naked sense. The horrible death of my father however, has its own context, historical glitch and most of all epitomized the Ethiopian tragedy. A certain Dergue colonel had been assassinated in the down town of the city, when his loyalists with Kalashnkoves stormed into family houses to avenge the killers of their commander. One of the thirty plus brutally slain, whose life line artery snapped by the loyalists’ bullet was my father. He was only forty six.

As the defenseless looked vertically ( to the gods in Mount Olympia, Brahmins in Bagavagita, Allah and Jehovah in the heavens) for consolation and answers to the injustice that had befallen upon them, I looked horizontally and saw hope and a golden promise of social justice in young and energetic idealists who took to heart, Attila the Hun’s famous dictum where "Sacrifice is the passion of all great men". My generation saw in them, the advent of Phoenix and the fade of the ashes. They fought the colonel to the end and they brought Ethiopia to life. They are the true sons and daughters of Ethiopia. With a grey hair, they are still young at heart and they are young to their promises. A promises to take Ethiopia to the higher level, to a horizon where democracy, social equality and economic prosperity are the ends. While the military junta was at its helm of power, however, there was a divide. A historical divide. Amidst the political turmoil, and with in the political spectrum, there were those who pledged their loyalty to the Ethiopian people to deliver them their well deserved social equality, democracy, and economic prosperity, and those who got terrified by the sight of the junta’s leader and kept their tail between their legs and subscribed to the "if you can not fight them join them" lingo. And worse of all, there were opportunists, cowards and charlatans who fled to the West to decorate their living rooms with Ph.Ds (what ever that means) at a time when Ethiopians got their spirit amputated by the military junta beyond limit. They betrayed my generation and left us on the altar. Interestingly and sad enough that, time is attesting, the latter-day opposition parties are remnants of both of the latter. What happened to intellectual honesty and integrity? Cowards do not have answers, as they say, what they have is, grab what a lacuna of time offers. As they attempt to fill the lacuna, Ethiopia is watching, there is no a Royal road. There is democracy and there is evil in the guise of democracy, which one are they? They need to come clean. Again Ethiopia is watching. In the 1980s or prior to that, the streets of Atlanta, Washington DC, London, Toronto, Copenhagen, et al, were barren. Simply because, those who truly dared to fight for the Ethiopian people, took their grievance to the mountains of Ethiopia and those who resided in the above cited cities were too scared to stand to the frightening edifice of the Dergue. At the present time, as the websites relentlessly roll the pictures of demonstrators in the Western cities, one couldn’t help it but ask: why did not these people take it to the streets when the Dergue was killing us left and right and taking away our rights to vote, speak our minds and render us to live in a sunset? I leave the question to the reader to ponder. The placard reads, "Meles is a butcher", "We need democracy". I am not sure if the words in the placards carry any merit, one thing I know for sure is that, the legs that carry the placards can still go back to Addis at will and roam the city at ease. At least Meles deserves a second thought and a credit for the safe stay which is needless to say unthinkable when the colonel was in power. Behind the placards however, there is an agenda, an agenda in Pandora’s box which can potentially render Ethiopia live one more time in her dark years. It is true that, political convictions do not die. They don’t fade away, they have their own life. They do come back. Dergue is a case in point.

Paulos Yrgaw
Ottawa, Canada.

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