Adal Isaw
June 6, 2009
To a recent question, Berhanu Nega--the individual with the richest cue about the terrorist plot in Ethiopia answered, "I'm very suspicious that there was an attempt at all," hinting, if it has happened for real that he would have known for sure. There’s no clear indication as to what specific question induced the lead person of interest of the foiled terrorist plot to answer with such phrases, but to say the least, it was a tongue-inflicted borderline self-incrimination. What could have been considered a serious gaffe of the tongue is now a political debacle that Berhanu and his followers cannot spin to remake. It’s just too late now; you cannot massage the spasm of a mouth with butter, as our own adage puts it.
Legally speaking though, the fact that Berhanu Nega has to answer to any question at all is mesmerizing and leads me to think that he’s probably getting his legal advice from an incompetent Law firm somewhere in the States. It’s almost given that brilliant Ethiopian lawyers and others would not come to Berhanu’s camp pro bono--favoring his political inaptitude. If they would, Berhanu would have been saying “no comment.”
I declare neither expertise nor grounded knowledge of the law, but I nevertheless think Berhanu Nega should have answered all questions with “no comment.” Better yet, he should have parachuted off of the terrorist plot to disown his own making and mend fences with the Ethiopian people at large. In so doing, he would have made the dull and static Ethiopian Diaspora politics an interesting one--not to mention the lesson of tolerance that we could have amassed right after the Ethiopian people grant his failed political personality a rare chance of rehabilitation.
In retrospect, I think Berhanu may be is pondering this same scenario that I am depicting and thus guilt-ridden for having opened the gates of inquiry wider than he should have. Now, it’s too late for him to keep quite with regards to the terror plot for the chips have to fall where they may in due time. This time, the chicken has come home to roost in intense political heat.
After planning for quite some time, Berhanu never expected that his followers in Ethiopia would find a home from home in the armpits of the rule of law this soon. He considered the plot to be highly confidential and out of the area of detection by the Ethiopian security forces. Caught red-handed sooner than he expected, Berhanu is surprised and thus suspicious “…that there was an attempt at all.” He is spellbound that the leaders of Ethiopia that he denigrates at will are this quick-footed and blindingly efficient in running the security safety nets of a country with over eighty million people. He smelled no trouble for he thought that he can outsmart at ease any political life there is in Ethiopia.
This is exactly the kind of trouble that Berhanu is prone enticing on himself, primarily because he’s so busy living an arrogant political life defined in absolute terms indicative of a failed political personality. He thinks that he is the only legitimate and righteous opposition there is in Ethiopian politics and talks about others in no less than denigrating words that he paints EPRDF with instantly. Too often, he forgets that he is a convicted felon set free by the gracious pardoning gesture that Ethiopia bestowed on him that his host country would have never ever grant. He is unaware that, in America-- his host country, Presidential pardon is hard to come by for obviously deserving cases and impossible to even consider for treasonous convictions.
A little more than a century ago, Jack Johnson became the first African-American heavy weight champion of the world--only to die after years of racist torture. Johnson was on the run for seven years after he was found guilty of “violating” the Mann Act in 1913, which prohibited African-American brothers from having a consensual relationship with white American women. Tired of running, he later surrendered to Federal Authorities on July 20, 1920, and spent a year in prison.
His life after prison spiraled again as a result of the torture of hate and discrimination that he was subjected to by his fellow Americans. On the grimmest day of his life in 1946, he entered a dinner in North Carolina to suffer the heavy-handed racism and hate that he couldn’t take with stride anymore. Indignant to the absolute threshold, he started driving back to his home and crashed and died at the age of sixty-eight. Until now, no US President has been willing to grant Jack Johnson the Presidential pardon he deserved for his “crime,” partly, for the same racist reason. But now, months into Obama’s historic Presidency and out of his passion for boxing, Senator John McCain of Arizona has been working hard to ask the President to finally grant Jack Johnson the well deserved Presidential pardon.
Dr. Berhanu: go figure how utterly impossible it would be for any American to be the recipient of a Presidential pardon after he or she has declared to dislodge an American government, say, during the Bush administration--an administration which many believed lost the Presidential contest to Vice President Gore and Senator Kerry in 2000 and 2004 respectively. Seeing from this angle, an American convicted felon for treason would “kill” time and time again for an Ethiopian gracious gesture; don’t you think?
It’s therefore mind-boggling to hear Berhanu and other beneficiaries of the Presidential pardon belittle their offenses in the name of mere allegations about the 2005 Parliamentary Election. For those who are farsighted and civil, mere allegation cannot be the basis or the excuse for flagrant political behavior let alone for treasonous offense. We had had observers composed of AU, the Carter Center, EU, the US Department of State, the donor representatives in Ethiopia, the Arab League, India, Japan, China, Turkey, Russia…etc and all observers except the EU monitors reached the conclusion that EPRDF won the election with clear majority. In fact, even EU’s activist conclusion would not give Berhanu and company the extended tongue other than to say, some part of the election “did not live up to international standard” ---a conclusion many observes disagreed with. Don’t forget though, this is the same EU that dabbed the polling process as “generally positive.”
“Don’t let that who is on the edge borrow your sickle,” our ancestors would ask us to remember; so that, the sickle does what it should and that who is on the edge remains relatively sane till he gets to air out his assumed and self-inflicted psychological pain. I hope, Berhanu is somehow digesting his failed political personality to curb himself inside out by amending his insanely irrational political stance of “by any means necessary,” and ask for the second-round pardon in exchange for shorter stay in Kaliti. This way, it will be much easier for the Ethiopian people to grant his failed political personality a rare chance of rehabilitation.