Ethiopia – Berhanu and Andargachew - Diaspora Rabble Rouser
By Tekle Bekele <tbekele@gmail.com>
Introduction:
From the outset I’m deeply worrying about the
indifference I observe these days among the vocal Diaspora when it comes to the
future of Ethiopia. As audience and on lookers from our comfort residence in
Diaspora, we never ask ourselves twice if we are really and critically
organized enough to play the role of legitimate substitutes to the incumbent
regime in Ethiopia. No matter how bad we may judge its activities and style of
governance, are we really doing our homework in preparation for the take over
of power in a more structured and convincing manner? Or are we simply shouting
to end in power vacuum? Viewed from our current hair-splitting and paradoxical
political stand perspectives at least we can fairly admit that TPLF is in a
better position as an organized political group in its own way and manners;
that befit TPLF’s principal objectives and standings. How about us that oppose
the TPLF-governance styles in Ethiopia? We have not yet put our homework in
order; we don’t try to compromise and co-exist relating to or organized as a
fraternity; we prefer going unilateral without achieving any tangible success
story to tell. Are we still expecting a miraculous change to take place in
Ethiopia? I leave the likely responses to these paradoxical and open-ended
quarries to readers’ own judgments. In what follows let me explain what I mean
by Berhanu and Andargachew as the ‘Diaspora Rabble Rouser’.
The Men on the Twilight
Zone
These few days the global mass-media was busy telling
us about an attempted coup de stat by Ginbot-7 group in Ethiopia. Much has been
said by way of comments in different websites too. In connection to this, let
me share my own opinions. I may be provocative to most readers but for its own
good. If it stings anger or delight in who ever is reading it from what angle;
so be it. I think it is time that each reader should really rationalize the
case in point and come up with his/her own conclusive judgments than to drift
away with the wind in the ocean of emotion laden political discourse. What is critical is how we solve the riddle
political puzzle left in our hands. That said let me briefly touch upon the two
fellows about whom much is being talked in all corners of discussions these
days. It concerns Berhanu Nega Bunger and
Andargachew Tsigie of Ginbot-7 political group
(hereafter labeled as Gunboat-7). These two fellows traversed their earth
shaking political moves from abandoning their trust worthiness to EPRP in the
1970s to becoming TPLF loyalists and pro-Woyane advocating-tugs throughout the
1990s. Their long political muddling march took them through to KINIJIT and
ultimately into molding a new terrorist group called Gunboat-7 conspired and
organized no where else but under the blessings of the Shaabia leader Issayas
Afeworki. To our dismay Berhanu and Andargachew were running in desperation
left and right to comfort the Ethiopian Diaspora by working hand and gloves
with the Regional God-father of Pirates and fundamental Islamist
terrorist-organizer - Issayas Afeworki of Asmara, Eritrea.
Particularly the forked tongue Andargachew, who is characterized as an arrogant
political adventurer, was a student at Teferi Mekonen High along with Yared
Tibebu of ANDEM. In early 2005, when Berhanu came to London to garner support
for his newly formed political party - Keste Demena; the first person he
contacted was Andargachew who since then remains on the long political journey
to attain their day-dreams and hunger for power through the barrel of
Gunboat-7.
The first time when Berhanu and Andargachew made a go
at it and joined TPLF, one should recall, they had Africa Group Entrepreneurial
mandate at their disposal. Not only did they simply overstep their mandate of
running business; but also they overreached themselves by transforming each
into a He-Messiah ordained to heal the political pathologies that poor Ethiopia
has suffered for decades thus far. Especially when
Berhanu followed TPLF in 1991 and entered Addis Ababa as one of its loyalists
he was immediately designated as part of the AFRICA GROUP Ltd., an
entrepreneurial group designed by TPLF to attract business ideas in the honey
moon days in TPLF-Ethiopia. While in AFRICA GROUP Ltd., Berhanu took huge sums
of loan from Woyane regime treasury and became an entrepreneur and founded the
Ethiopian Agro-Maize, a fertilizer producing company, and Addis Village Family
Home Builders. Later he aspired to hold ministerial position but in vain (see
note # 1).
In fact, out of sheer personal
disappointment of not getting their highly aspired ministerial positions from
the TPLF regime, the two fellows dropped KESTE DEMENA; instead they grabbed and
hijacked the platform of KNIJIT initially created by Lidetu till Berhanu and Andargachew
were taken into jail for causing urban unrest in 2005. Upon his mystical
release from captivity Andargachew traveled to Asmara and consulted Issayas
Afeworki prior to officially establishing their Gunboat-7 group in Diaspora;
and operating in semi-clandestine fashion as those ones orchestrated by Issayas
Afeworki and assigned for covert mission inside Ethiopia (see: note# 1).
Andargachew who initially crafted and drafted Article
39 in the current TPLF constitution still remains a diehard advocate of
self-determination up to secession of Ogadenia, Oromia and Gambela. That was
what he promised to Issayas Afeworki while in Asmara. And that is what Berhanu
and Elias Kifle of Ethiopian Review are standing for to this very day as I
write. The reason is simple. They believe in realizing nationalities to
determine their secession without any challenge. Indeed, no matter what it may
cost, the Gunboat-7 group shall fight any one or any thing that stands against
Article 39. Both Andargachew and Berhanu are operating against the hardliners
of AEUP and EPRP, etc. on this critical national matter. Both of them openly
support UDJP and/or Medrek, the coalition made up of loyalist opposition parties
with ethnic based agenda who signed on to the TPLF-charter for
ethnic-federalism and secession up to self determination (for details see notes
# 2).
Worse of all, some among the Ethiopian
Diaspora go to the extent of suspecting Berhanu and Andargachew as likely CIA
agents. Incidentally, we should not be alarmed about such revelation. These
days it is conventional political game and quite natural for any politically
motivated group to work hard and come to power in any part of the developing
nations by networking with and by way of ensuring their loyalty to CIA if they
want to come to and remain on power for a longer period of time. That is
exactly what each leader in Africa is doing these days. Those who refuse are
sanctioned until they surrender and show their loyalty to the West (especially
USA and UK).
A case in point is Issayas Afeworki that
is suffering from global isolation for refusing to be part of the CIA-club;
consequently in order to draw attention and to secure substantial amount of
desperately needed hard currency he has nowadays resorted to training pirates
and Islamist fundamentalists who earn him funds, and material support the fluid
and feasible way (for details see notes
# 3).
Dashed Day-Dreams
Is the Gunboat-7 leadership in Diaspora day-dreaming
of climbing up to power in Addis Ababa on the back of those that are toiling
and putting their lives on the lime-line against the sharp-shooter TPLF? And if
so would some of these generals succeed in any form of grabbing power? Would
TPLF relinquish power without much resistance? Do the Gunboat-7 leaders think
they will snatch power from these generals upon their arrival at Bole
International Airport without any challenge? Let us assume they succeeded in
taking over power; how would they sort out critical national issues including
the border dispute with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s access to the sea, the ethnically
federated regions, the question of Ogden, Oromia, Gambella etc.?
To one’s dismay, Berhanu and Andargachew just don’t get it, no matter what! The world could be
changing before their eyes - winds of change would blow right through their
nose - and yet they hold onto their good-old worldview with their ‘clock-stop-syndrome’.
History - for these 2-people - has stopped at some fixed location in 2005 -
spatial and temporal. They believe in a ‘clock stop syndrome’ while living in
the midst of mind-numbing motions both at home and abroad. Berhanu and
Andargachew of Gunboat-7 preach the gospel of fixture on 2005 to anyone
who has the stupidity to listen to them. Often times they have the propensity
to imbue their message with messianic fervor. Whatever the discipline they like
to indulge in - be it politics, economics or business - they tend to have a
penchant for the religious. All their strongest convictions - whether they make
friends or enemies - are the stuff of fairytales and their passion for the
abstract often gets the better of their worldviews. Quite simply, Berhanu and
Andargachew constitute a class of their own. Entitled as they are to their ‘clock-stop
syndrome’ worldview, they become sometimes nuisance beyond measure. Their
momentary fame seeking coup de stat attempts - as the medium on whose back
Berhanu and his street smart comrades were hoping to find themselves in the
corridors of power - may immediately have proved just a mirage; nonetheless,
they have chosen to cling on to that illusion.
Chanting The Usual May 2005 Election:
The May 2005 election was lasting mantra, and by far
the magnum opus of Berhanu and Andargachew’s entire political career. It appears, judging by the hysterical level of
deep-seated resentment that is evident in just about every statement both Berhanu and Andargachew make in their public appearances ever since, that
role they dreamed through Kinijit back in 2005 was the closest they came to
wielding a real enough political power. Four years on, they remain
harping on the same good old string as if the entire world had gone down the
drain along with their illusory king-making opportunity. The election in May
2010 is approaching while we are singing the same good old 2005 melody to date.
How strongly are we prepared this time compared to the 2005 attempts made by
various groups? Have we learned from previous mistakes yet?
In my view we are far poorly organized than ever
before; disintegrated to work at creating ethnic-led mini-states by setting-up
chains of political kiosks spread throughout the world for collecting alms the
conventional EPLF-TPLF way. Consequently, what is happening?
At the end of the day, Berhanu and Andargachew maintain
a misplaced trust in Ethiopia. Their Gunboat-7 group passion and vision for
democracy remains badly ludicrous with the apathy prevalent in Ethiopia.
Berhanu and Andargachew put too much emphasis on democracy, which is even hard
to put into real action in a very educated and informed society like the USA
and Western Europe. So instead of
barking on and bragging about war of words on the urgency to topple TPLF
through wishful thinking, we would have been blessed if they reconsidered clear-cut
solutions for our paradoxical national homework that remains in the hands of
the opposition groups with serious, systematic and strategic deliberation. TPLF
is doing what is in its priority agenda to execute the way it perceives. We
should not expect to incorporate our in it while at the same time remaining
intolerant with it. We have to devise ours and find ways and means how to
realize it. Indeed it is disappointing to even observe the likes of Berhanu who
simply make empty slogans and shouts for momentarily causing havoc in Ethiopia
at all costs. Without organizing supporters and sympathizers to potentially be
considered as better alternative governing groups; and without impressing the
overwhelming majority Diaspora Ethiopians to follow suit with them; simply
these fellows continue to muddle and commit same old mistakes. What good does
it make to persistently complain and harp on the evilness of TPLF; and continue
shouting in bravado for any silly action that may incidentally happen; as if
war of words can bring lasting solutions to the country in critical needs for
peace and progress?
Only God knows if Berhanu and Andargachew still fancy themselves as someone who can rid
Ethiopia of all its ills - in which case they and only they would have been
proved totally insane in the membrane. As though to make up for their all too
quick descent into the depths of irrelevance, Berhanu and Andargachew luckily
have secured a rock-star status and place in a very tiny corner of Ethiopian
politics: the clock-stop syndrome caucus of the Ethiopian Diaspora that claim
support for Gunboat-7. For both Gunboat-7 and their handful of Diaspora fans,
only cynics or those disposed towards the ‘evil-TPLF’ could dissent from the
self-evident truths of absolute dictatorship and human rights violations in
present day Ethiopia. Apparently, only that – to indulge their
questionable wishes and tastes to the Gunbot-7groups - is what constitutes just
about everything they are left to do in the way of active politics. In what
would amount to a dramatic reversal of role, Berhanu and Andargachew have
ironically transformed themselves from an inconspicuous - inconsequential no
less – University Professorship and lampoon proletariat respectively into a
full-time crusader for the grab-power-by-any-means coalition of Diaspora rubble
raisers who have long renounced all sensibility rather choosing to hold
tenaciously onto their make-believe world of melt away politics.
It looks as though the laws of physics - that depicts
on how like poles repel each other - totally gave way to coincidence in order
for similarly charged entities to attract each other in a given magnetic field
thereby forming such a strange constellation of resentful -losers – the Berhanu
and Andargachew crafted Gunboat-7s. Laughable enough their recent coup de stat
attempt at making sense came by way of an interview with the VOA-Amharic
program (Part I & II) this month (April 2009). Interestingly, though,
Berhanu’s interview - very typical of the kind of sloppy analysis that often
boosts the morale of few Diaspora doomsayers - has not received much publicity.
Could that be because Berhanu has already outlived his importance even for
Gunboat-7 enthusiastic fans? May be yes, may be not. Like Berhanu or despise
him, he is a bag of curiosity in his own right; at least a series of his recent
radio interview he gave in the USA are
.
To say that rigorous analysis has never been
Berhanu’s forte is almost to state the obvious. Not surprisingly, the series of
radio interviews are all showcases indicating the extent of Berhanu and
Andargachew’s anger and the length to which they would go to portray the
incumbent government - and harp on the same old TPLF-string in a negative light
in anyway they can. To try to focus on all the issues Berhanu and Andargachew
raise during their series of radio interviews is very difficult; since most of
their talk is downright sloganeering deprived of any substantial solutions
whatsoever. They are simply overstuffed with numerous inconsistencies and fallacious
claims that I personally refuse to dignify them by their responses. But I think
a word or two is well in order to address two topics I believe can mutually
exhaust all that can be said of the Gunboat-7 leadership. The first has to do
with the version of democracy the likes of Berhanu and Andargachew want to
impose on Ethiopia and the mindset that made such arrogance possible in the
first place. The second point - also related to the first - has to do with what
sort of things the Gunboat-7 leadership thinks - despite the effort to conceal
it – Berhanu and Andargachew can and will do to help remove Meles Zenawi’s
government and the Gunboat-7’s case for that.
Apart from the usual diatribe against the incumbent
regime - most of which was pure sloganeering – the series of their recent radio
interviews simply contain a rather childish blather on issues that the two
fellows clearly don’t have any grasp whatsoever. Their notion of the process of
building democracy could win the Gunboat-7 leadership a name in the annals of the
authors of worst political theories. Biting more than they can chew,
Berhanu and Andargachew rush back in forth in a mindless rambling all the while
drawing strange parallels and making contradictory suggestions in a
matter-of-fact ease. For instance, they talk of nationally divisive article-39
stipulated in the incumbent regime’s constitution as legitimate while at the
same time talking sustaining of a united democratic Ethiopia. It turns out
these two die-hard fellows don’t blink even for a second when it comes
to reconciling the irreconcilable; democracy and armed struggle; violence
and nonviolence; border dispute with Eritrea; Ethiopia’s legitimate access to
the sea through Assab Port; western intervention and independence; the fate of
Birtukan Mideksa and what not. Their notions of democracy or freedom are
idiosyncratic at best and idiotic at worst. As the series of recent radio
interviews reveal Berhanu and Andargachew’s take on the relation between
democracy and national stability could have put their fans to shame. As obvious
as this patent ignorance is, there must however be a method to their stupidity,
if the pattern is any guide. More than anything, the series of radio interviews
they give these days reveal tons of materials that point to their eternal
marriage with conducting coup de stat or for a take over of power in the notion
that the democratic process in Ethiopia can and ought to be remotely controlled
by the Western world acting on behalf of Ethiopians (see note # 4).
Living in their comfort zone some ten thousand miles
away from Ethiopia Berhanu and Andargachew complain that Europeans and
Americans have made it “business as usual with Ethiopia” despite
Gunboat-7’s scathing website reports back in the days. The 2-fellows decry the
G-8 for inviting PM Meles to their summit “as if he was a respectable leader”.
Berhanu and Andargachew hope Barrack Obama will correct the wrongs of his
predecessor that they blame for discouraging democracy in Ethiopia. Berhanu and
Andargachew claim that George Bush was to blame for what they believe was the
reversal of the democratic process, namely - the fact that their power sharing
proposal was turned down systematically - because Bush did not force PM
Minister Meles to choose democracy over Stability. In parentheses, what
does it really mean democracy takes precedence over stability? That democracy
can coexist with anarchy? That stability is just an excuse for dictators to
cling onto power? It is very difficult to know what exactly these two fellows
meant to say; whatever their relentless intentions, however, that kind of
idiotic argument is enough to put the two fellows in a class all of their own:
they remain in the category of un-teachable political lightweights.
Looks like Berhanu and Andargachew cannot come to
terms with the futility of such a bona fide mandate bestowed upon each
as the Mayor of Addis Ababa Municipality. They love this title more than
any thing else. Berhanu and Andargachew have ever since been tirelessly
straining every nerve and muscle to bring what little influence they may have
left to bear on the manner the rest of the world conducts itself with the
Government of Ethiopia. Now a spent force even in their own chambers, Berhanu
and Andargachew seem to have found a consolation of sorts in what they believe
is a gathering storm against Meles Zenawi’s government: Gunboat-7 (Berhanu
Nega’s May-15 movement). With his Gunboat-7 reports flashed down the toilet as
pure nonsense by none other than those who supported their mission in the first
place, Gunboat-7’s new-found weapon is an uncanny campaign on behalf of a group
of desperados led by their ‘best friend’ Elias Kifle of ER (see note # 5).
But their fanciful rise to the Babylonian heights of
king-making was dealt a shattering blow once the two were told they were simply
out to grab power by any and by all means. It seems that Berhanu and
Andargachew haven’t learned their lessons of Ethiopian history. No amount of
domineering by Diaspora Fanatics will ever arm-twist the situation inside
Ethiopia into changing the course charted by TPLF by way of remote control from
their comfort seats in Diaspora. We should sacrifice ourselves, our time and
energy if we want to see change. That was the case yesterday; is the case at
the present; and that will always be the case in generations down the road; it
means we must force ourselves to delve into doing our home bitter works well
enough; before we open our mouths ahead of time. Unfortunately for the good
Berhanu and Andargachew, it looks like drawing such lesson has eluded them even
four years after that 2005 fateful day of costly gamble has gone once and for
all. Throughout the series of recent radio interviews and website reports, they
make rather flimsy (or was it phony?) claims that they are going to fight the
incumbent regime by all means including waging war. When the real thing comes
to the fore, here is Berhanu denying blind-folded as not knowing any of the
Gunboat-7 suspects except for one cuisine of his. It is not the superficial disclaimers
that matter but the subterranean similarities of their so-called ‘ways out
of dictatorship’ for the Ethiopian Opposition with that of Berhanu’s and
Andargachew’s protégé-in-exile, Berhanu
“Mayor-Elect-of Addis”; Andargachew “X-Mayor of Addis”. That they
are working in cahoots with groups with hideous agendas of violence and
subversion is anything but hidden. Only the Gunboat-7-people assure all of us
to raise our hopes; have the magic wand that can do the tricks in this would-be
comprehensive, no-holds-barred Gunboat-7 movement; a harebrained PR stunt
Berhanu coughed up to try to explain away his wishy-washy ways of conducting
opposition tactics including, but not limited to, waging war against the
incumbent regime.
Notes:
(1)
http://nazret.com/blog/index.php?title=ethiopia_arrests_35_suspects_in_alleged_&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
(2)
http://ethioforum.org/wp/archives/974#comments;
http://nazret.com/blog/index.php?title=kin_of_exiled_ethiopian_opposition_leade&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
(3)
http://ethioforum.org/wp/archives/981;
http://ethioforum.org/wp/archives/978#comments;
http://ethioforum.org/wp/archives/974#comments;
(4)
http://ethioforum.org/wp/archives/981;
(5)
http://mahder.com/fishing-in-troubled-waters-elias-kifles-unabated-servitude-to-issaas-afeworki.html