Please dear fellow Ethiopians, it is time to say NO to sham elections in Ethiopia under TPLF thugs!!
Remember, TPLF’s slogan closer to the 2005 election was an “errorless election”! (enken yelesh mircha)! In fact, that slogan just was a pretense to deceive the international community, not a genuine belief in democracy within the TPLF. They soon revealed that it was a terrible miscalculation on the part of the TPLF after witnessing their defeat in the aftermath of the election.
That was when they decided they would never repeat that miscalculation in any future “elections” in Ethiopia. If you remember, that was when dictator Meles Zenawi openly came up with the discredited idea of the “Developmental State” argument and he forcefully asserted that Ethiopia does not need a multiparty democracy, lest the long term “development” goal of TPLF be interrupted. Following that assertion there were numerous incidents where Meles and Co. strongly argued in favor of the developmental state theory and that they openly stated that liberal democracy posed danger for Ethiopia’s development and existence.
Remember dear fellow Ethiopians, at least for the purpose of pretending, prior to 2005 election, they were opening up some space for the opposition to express its position to the public and to campaign. After finding out that they lost that election to the opposition, TPLF’s actions were to completely close the little openings for fair opposition maneuvers.
You know what followed after the election: mass killings of innocent Ethiopians and opposition supporters, mass jailing of supporters including opposition leaders (CUD). For almost the five years following the 2005 election, TPLF demonstrated that it can no longer entertain the slightest effort to accommodate opposition in the country. In effect, it was accusing and in logger heads with independent and international human rights organizations, media and public institutions that criticized its handling of human rights in Ethiopia.
In the subsequent years that followed, TPLF thugs and their supporters more openly advanced their argument that liberal democracy and multiparty politics are detrimental to the Ethiopian polity and were indicating that the best system for Ethiopia is Revolutionary Democracy led by one party. They were also openly advocating that what Ethiopians need is development not democracy, accusing western democracies of sabotaging Ethiopia’s “democratic” process.
The TPLF thugs have clearly demonstrated that they would not entertain any challenge from opposition groups and rights advocates by enacting the draconian NGO law and the “terrorism law”.
Even in the most recent interview that dictator Meles gave to local reporters, he preemptively indicated that opposition members who are complaining of mistreatment by TPLF will be tried by his kangaroo court and will be sent to jail after the “election”. Hooray, the verdict is already made on the opposition by the “Prime Minister” Meles, who is also the “supreme judge”. He said that they will only be tolerated now so that TPLF is not implicated as disrupting the “election”. In effect, Meles told us that he is holding an “election” just for the rhetoric and drama, not for the meaning and substance. So why should we go to vote for an already won “election”?
It is big time to say NO to sham election in Ethiopia!!!
