The Landslide Victory of Zenawi’s Regime

25 May 2010
(Press Release)

Ethiopia, the primal hellhole, that best exemplifies the enduring power of savage repression, has just concluded the much-anticipated 2010 election. Zenawi’s regime is claiming that it has won a landslide victory (unconfirmed reports put the winning at 98 percent). This type of unparalleled victory depending on one’s political persuasion can be heralded by the “victors” as a miracle and by the “vanquished” as ample evidence that Ethiopia for, all intents and purposes, is headed for a one–party dictatorship.

The 2010 election was staged with Meles Zenawi’s regime in full control of the Election Board, the media, the judiciary, and the security forces. In fact, the whole purpose of the election was to gain symbolic legitimacy and to look clean in front of donor nations than satisfying the growing democratic appetite of the Ethiopian people. This basic fact underscores the point that Zenawi’s regime, in order to satisfy the demands of the timid international community, will continue to hold ritual sham elections that are totally meaningless to the effort of building democracy in Ethiopia.

Time and again, the dictatorial regime has shown its contempt for the ballot box and lack of respect for its own Constitution. Rather, it seems hell bent on maintaining the status quo through brute force no matter how much clamor for change there is among the Ethiopian people.

The international community, for its own sake, needs to break its “conspiracy of silence” and vehemently condemn this sham election and seriously look at the damage its hypocracy will cause to its long-term interests in a geopolitically important Ethiopia. Its turning a blind eye to the intolerable repression and to the incessant rigged elections is viewed by the Ethiopian people as a measure of the West’s collusion with a despised regime ruling at the barrel of a gun. The “stability” over freedom stance of the EU and the U.S. has given Zenawi’s regime the green light to obliterate the hunger for democracy that Ethiopians showed to the world during the 2005 election.

Additionally, the misguided notion by the West that the Meles regime is a force for stability in the volatile Horn of Africa region is patently false and has further emboldened the regime to be more repressive and commit egregious human rights violations and extra-judicial killings. Today, more than ever, Ethiopians have become convinced that the only way to defend themselves and their rights against a terrorist regime that is brutalizing them is to fight for their rights by any and all means necessary. A spiraling conflict in Ethiopia will, of course, have dire consequences for the stability of the strategically important Horn of Africa.

Meles has concluded that the West is satisfied with the status quo and is going to give him a free pass, intermittently issuing the same old tired statement of “concern” while never forcefully condemning his repressive actions. This cynical attitude will certainly run its course and in the long run prove to be a costly mistake and inimical to the vital interests of the West. It is time for the West to wake up before it is too late. Dictators are neither reliable nor very good allies against the forces of extremism. It is absolutely impossible to stabilize the Horn of Africa without first restoring peace and stability in. Ethiopia.

Ginbot 7 pays homage to all those who lost their lives in this farce of an election and calls, once again, on the Ethiopian people to join hands in bringing this national shame to an end.