The Hoopla of the Millenium: Woyane's Millenium Dam

The other day I was calling home to speak to my parents on the occasion of the Easter holiday. As usual, after the initial greetings and enquiries about the wellness of immediate and extended family members, we contnued our conversation about the neighborhood, the community and the general frame of issues dominating the small southern town where my parents live.

Unlike other times, what struck me most during this round was, my mother's mention of the "the issue of the Gojam river dam as the deafening news of the time". It didn't take me long to realize that she was talking about the, "The Millenium Dam of the Woyane", the dam that will never be built under the ethnic dicatorship of TPLF.

That this dam is just a hoopla to divert the public's attention from the growing repression, escalating inflation, dissatisfaction, anger, frustration, poverty and famine, and above all, from the increasing signs of a sweeping revolution, can be noticed well from the absence of any mention about such a huge dam as a key energy development strategy in the much purported Five Year GTP of the country, and the conflicting and inconsistent propaganda of the regime's own mouthpieces, like Amare Aregawi's Reporter and Aiga Forum.

The so called Five Year GTP, that was endorsed by the rubber stamp parliament as the offician development plan of the nation in November 2010, does not mention as single word about the "Mellenium Development Dam" as neither a starategic direction nor as an implemetation startegy of the the energy sector development. It would be so absurd not to mention about such a dam, that is supposed to cost hundreds of billions of dollars of tha nations budget, in the plan document that is supposed to direct its implementation.

Another evidence that this dam is just a hoopla is the fact that, of the estimated total Five Year GTP budget of around 700 bln Birr, the whole of the energy sector's budget constitutes, just 177 bln Birr, jus a few billions more, than the cost of cement required to build the dam, as Amare Aregawi tells us.

Over the last couple of months, this "dam" has been the editorial of Amare's Reporter week after week. But the story he has been telling us does not hold water. Just the other day he tells us a delegation of 45 Egyptian diplomats came to Ethiopia to express their support of the launching of the dam and another day, his editorial laments about that delagation trying to sabotage Ethiopia's efforts to develop its river, once they are back in Egypt. One week he tells us the famous PM Mele Zenawi had laid the corner stone of the dam and its construction is in progress, and another week he tells us, that a study team has been established to reasearch about the dam, and again he tells us about the amount and cost of cement required to complete the construction. What a speedy research! And yet gain, he laments the famous Meles Zenawi has agreed to halt the whole implementation of the dam until an elected government is formed in Egypt.

Do you remember how the whole hoopla about the dam started? The dam that was no where in the GTP in Novemebr 2010, just became a "national sensation", following the popular revolutions in Tunisia, in December 2010, in Egypt, January 2011, in Libya, February 2011, and so on....We are already witnessing the start of its death before even its birth, with lots of the lame excuses of its delay escapegoating Egypt.

Dear Ethiopians, for now, let us focus on uniting and getting rid of this ethnocentric dictatorship, using the revolutionar momentum in our region. No distraction by Woyane's hollabaloo!