Good Night and Good Luck

I only rented it because it featured George Clooney, one of my wife’s favorite Hollywood actors. It did not hurt that it was part of the Oscar buzz just a few weeks back, with Clooney a nominee for best director. Otherwise, I had no clue what the story line of this movie was when I picked a copy at Blockbuster Videos Friday evening. We finally got around to watching the movie just before the Sunday midnight deadline for returning it to the store.

It turned out to be a movie about an American political drama of yesteryear. It dealt with one of the darkest days in the history of American civil liberties — the Joseph McCarthy witch hunt of the 1950s. It is a story many Americans would rather forget. Yet I found the movie centered on the work of the famed CBS News anchor Edward R. Morrow, a key player in the fight to bring Mr. McCarthy’s witch hunt to an end, to be a compelling and riveting drama.

Perhaps it was because the story of Senator McCarthy reminded me of one man’s capacity to do evil when good people are afraid to speak out even in a country such as the U.S. Perhaps it was the story of Morrow and of CBS news standing up to be counted and saying enough is enough, at great financial and personal risk to themselves. Perhaps it is the uncanny resemblance between the methods Joseph McCarthy deployed in getting away with it all for nearly five years and the system of terror being unleashed half a century later by another man in a country more than seven thousand miles away. There is also the fact that, just like Morrow in the U.S., some of the key players in the fight against the festering tyranny in present day Ethiopia are reporters, albeit not TV superstars like Morrow. Instead, these are men and women who are, for the most part, unknown to anyone other than their immediate families and their coworkers at the rags where they labor.

Nearly every Ethiopian has heard of the names of Hailu Shawul, Berhanu Nega, Merera Gudina, Ledetu Ayalew, Bertukan Medeksa and the other stars and mega stars of the Ethiopian democratic movement. However, most of us would be hard pressed to name three or four members of the Ethiopian free press. Yet, these are the key actors who carried the messages of the movement leaders to the people and brought the heart wrenching and heart warming stories of the hopes, aspirations and frustrations of the often forgotten people of the Ethiopian provinces to Addis and to all the other cities. They made it their mission to let all of us know that we are in this together and that no one was spared from the wrath of Meles.

Joseph McCarthy counted on people being afraid to be involved or just plain uninterested as long as they are not personally impacted by his witch hunt. Regrettably, his assumptions about the reaction of the American people turned out to be right for too long. He used his bully pulpit that was the House Un-American Activities Committee to charge, indict and convict anyone of being a communist and a spy for the USSR by simply saying so. He would routinely concoct stories about ordinary citizens and use the committee hearings as a forum for convicting without evidence those who had been charged. The hearings were often the platform for establishing or reinforcing his credentials so he can comfortably go after his next victim. No, he did not stop at the common man. He routinely manufactured charges against prominent citizens who spoke against him and against the work of his committee. His objective in the high profile cases was to discredit his detractors within their professional circles or worse, within their families. His tactics could and did work only as long as other Americans refused to speak out. As long as people simply went about their business too afraid or too busy to take a stand even as he stripped away their precious civil liberties, then McCarthy’s strategy worked like clockwork.

Meles and before him Mengistu perfected bullying tactics McCarthy would have been proud to call his own. Each of them deployed these tactics and reaped great benefits. To destroy someone, all McCarthy had to do was to label him or her as “a known communist, or a card carrying member of the Civil Liberties Union” or some such nonsense. Mengistu and his henchmen would deem you to be “counter revolutionary, abiyotu yemetaber or an adhari” and tag you as such even if all you did was to ask for the name of the one country or two where Marxism had lifted people out of poverty or let people be free of tyranny. Today, if you spoke disparagingly about Meles and his gang, you would be deemed to be a “chauvinist Amara, an anti-peace element” or worse. It matters not that it was not illegal to be a communist, or a member of the Civil Liberties Union in the 1950s America, just like it is not illegal in Meles’ Ethiopia to be Amara. Just the same, simply to be so labeled sealed the victim’s fate socially and professionally. Fifty years after America exorcised McCarthyism from American political life, people in Ethiopia are sent to prison or shot on sight for engaging in activities that are legal under the laws passed the regime.

America in the 1950s had Morrow and Paley to stand up to the sinister designs of Joseph McCarthy. Ethiopia in the first decade of the twenty first century has its own Morrows and Paleys. Sure, we don’t know their names and faces, but they are there. Some of them are walking the streets of Addis, out of work but thankfully out of prison. You find many others in Meles’ prisons. You find them in exile in just about every country. You find them manning radio broadcasts and cyber journals all over the world, trying to keep the flame of freedom burning. Unlike the America of the 1950s, our reporters come from both sexes. Women stand shoulder to shoulder with the men and discharge their heroic duties. Some of them are even expecting, but they don’t begrudge their circumstances any more than the men. They toil on until they are free to do what they were trained to do.

America’s Morrow and Paley were not trying to change anything. They were trying to protect the liberties Americans had been enjoying for 175 years which had recently come under McCarthy’s attack. Ethiopian scribes have a much bigger burden to bear. They are blazing new frontiers unknown in our history. Their struggle is based on a belief that we too have God given rights to news and information, a right to the truth about our country and about the activities of those who rule over us. They put their lives in harms way so we might know what our compatriots on the other side of the country, the other side of the city or on the other side of the world are experiencing. They earn their badges of honor everyday standing up and irking the deceitful one by reporting on his doings; fully aware but undeterred by his usual retributions.

These are new grounds in our history. If we succeed to hold on to it against the odds, Ethiopian historians will have a new kind of hero and heroine to write about. Until then, I bid my fellow Ethiopians, good night and good luck.

It Is All A Big Lie

One of the distinguishing features of the Meles oligarchy is its predilection to engage in an endless series of lies. For sure, from time to time most governments and government officials lie or otherwise engage in the dissemination of misinformation in pursuit of strategic advantages. For example, in the course of just three years, we in the U.S. were blessed with the “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinski” lie and “Saddam has illegally accumulated weapons of mass destruction” lie, to name two particularly notorious lies. We can go back in history and point to heinous lies such as Mussolini’s lie about his purpose of occupying Ethiopia (to eradicate slavery and to civilize the wild and crazy Ethiopians), Hitler’s lie about his plan to exterminate the Jews and Stalin’s lie about his death gulags. What sets the Meles oligarchs apart is not that they lie but that, without exception, all of their public utterances meant for foreign consumption (which is nearly everything) and most of those meant for their nationals are laced with lies.

The key report coming out of Addis today was one more example of how the Meles gang has mastered the art of the lie. One Sufian Ahmed, Minister of Finance within the oligarchy was reporting the great news about economic developments in Ethiopia. Never mind that we have been reading how the Ethiopian economy is being ravaged with unsustainable price inflation arising from the escalation in the price of food grains on the one hand and the price of imported oil on the other. Set aside the story which was reported only a few days earlier that the Ethiopian balance of payments and foreign currency reserve position had deteriorated dangerously and might choke off the last breath of the Ethiopian economy. Just ignore the story about commercial banks drowning in excess liquidity because businesses were in no mood to borrow and expand their operations. So much so that private commercial banks were pleading with the government to be allowed to buy government bonds and bills so that they might earn with some of this extra cash that is sitting in their volts.

I can go on and list dozens of reports mauling over an economy which is anything but well. Yet Minister Sufian had the temerity to declare that “The end of poverty in Ethiopia is in sight!” The occasion was the announcement of a revision in the projected growth rate of the economy for the fiscal year which runs from July 7, 2005 to July 6, 2006. The essence of his report amounts to a projected growth rate of 5.6% in real GDP at factor cost during the current fiscal year. If the projection holds, it would be the third year in a row that the economy would have grown. The average growth rate over these three years would amount to 7% per year.

According to Reuters, “Finance Minister Sufian Ahmed told journalists that sub-Saharan Africa's second most populous nation could jump to the ranks of middle-income nations if current growth was sustained through coming decades.” He is further quoted saying that “if the trend continues for the next 20 years, Ethiopia would come out of poverty and be among middle-income nations.” This is big talk for a country which has been unable to feed itself, much less jump to the ranks of middle income countries. Strip away all of the hoopla and spin, what you still have is a desperately poor country hardly able to maintain its dismal economic condition which could easily deteriorate even further.

Look at that impressive statistic closely and you would note that its notoriety rests entirely on the unusually high growth during 2003/04. That year, according to government statisticians, the economy grew 11.6%. That growth followed a year when the economy declined 3.9%, a fact that Minister Sufian chose to set aside. Clearly, neither the decline during 2002/03 nor the spectacular growth in the year which followed were on the normal growth path of the economy. The phenomenal growth in 2003/04 can only be explained as a return to normalcy recovering what was lost in the major decline during 2002/03. So, if you look at the average annual growth rate over the last four rather than three years, you will find that it is a more realistic 4.75% instead of more than 7% the minister sought to spin. Whoever said that “there are lies, damn lies and statistics” must have come across something like this.

Of course 4.75% growth rate in GDP in the face of 2.3% growth in the population of Ethiopia leaves you with only a pedestrian 2.4% growth rate in per capita real GDP. At that rate, neither Mr. Sufian nor I would be around to cheer our compatriots as they join the ranks of the middle income citizens of the world.

Let us look at the numbers a bit closer. According to the International Monetary Fund, an institution which is on very friendly terms with Mr. Meles and his oligarchs reports that Ethiopia’s annual per capita real GDP (the closest indicator we have to what an average Ethiopian soul earns in a year) averaged a dismal US $120 during the 1980-85 period. Six more years of Mengistu and another ten years of Meles later, the average during 1993-2001 years had declined to US $100. (Every time I relate this information to my American friends, they always think I am kidding -- $100 per year for every living Ethiopian is a very difficult number to comprehend). The IMF also reports that the average for all low income countries during 2001 was U.S. $430, 430% of the Ethiopian average. So, the Ethiopian people do not have a prayer to even enjoy the average income levels for low income countries.

Regrettably, the IMF does not have per capita data for Ethiopia beyond 2001. The data we have is enough to show to all who care to consider such things, the ridiculous nature of Mr. Sufian’s pronouncement that Ethiopia will soon be joining the ranks of the Middle Income Countries. World Bank data shows that by 2004 a country needed to have per capita real GDP of between U.S. $826 and $10,065 to be classified as a middle income country. The wide range between the high and low ends of the group notwithstanding, it remains that even the lowest level for this group is more than eight times as high as our current per capita GDP. If we can sustain the average growth rate of the last 4 years, it will take 31 years for us to just double the current $100 per capita to $200. It will take another 31 years to approach the $430 average (actually $400 but I will give the minister the difference) for all low income countries. At current growth rates, we have to work at it for 93 years to get to the $826 mark which, according to Mr. Sufian, we are destined to get in 20 years. Of course, all of this is based on two major assumptions. The first assumption is that the other countries will stay where they are with out making any progress in the mean time. The second assumption is that we can sustain the average growth rate attained over the last 4 years. If either of these assumptions does not hold, then it will take centuries, not 20 years for us to join the ranks of the middle income, if at all.

The rhetoric of Ethiopia coming out of poverty in 20 years is just that: an empty rhetoric. It is not meant to inform the reader. Instead, it is meant to mislead the reader and to buy credit where credit has not been earned. I only wish this was a slip of the tongue or an unusual exaggeration; but it is not. This is the norm for the EPRDF. The operating assumption has always been that no one will take the time to check the facts. Therefore, their modus operandi has been to tell the sweetest tale possible, regardless of whether or not it jives with the truth. The minister’s pronouncement that twenty years hence we will no longer be among the poor is not a technical error. It is a statement manufactured with full deliberation to achieve two specific ends. On the one hand, the statement is expected to mollify the Ethiopian people who have lost ground over the last 15 years (going from $120 to $100 in annual per capital GDP). It is also meant to reassure the donor community, a key constituency about which the EPRDF has been concerned as more and more countries question the sustainability of Meles’ revolutionary democracy.

The thinking in the palace goes as follows. If people believe that there is a reasonable chance of moving in 20 years from the bottom of the low income group even to the bottom of the middle income category, many would pause to reevaluate their critical comments about Mr. Meles’ frequent outbursts of butchery and his refusal to step aside even when the people loudly ask him to. After all, hunger and poverty have now been our national shame for more than a quarter a century. As such, if the EPRDF could indeed eradicate poverty in 20 years, perhaps many among us and certainly most outsiders would view the sacrifices justifiable. At least that is the thinking which under girds this lie, and that thinking reflects the low regard the EPRDF has for its audience – thinking that the people will believe anything, especially if it is repeated often enough.

Ours Race Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

The carnage and the indiscriminant shootings of unarmed and peaceful citizens by a regime bent on intimidating a population has now become old news, not worthy of mention in civilized conversation even among Ethiopians. The nationwide crackdown against dissent and the appearance of dissent has been going on for so long, mass arrests, beatings and murders transpire unnoticed beyond the immediate circles of the victims. Like the afternoon rains of mid August, these events have become so much a part of normal life, they elicit little fanfare or special note. Any notion that the fix is just around the corner has by now dissipated. Indeed, if you browse what is left of the Ethiopian free media or read the exchanges in Ethiopian discussion groups, you are bound to notice a great deal of pessimism about a seemingly lost cause.

The internet news aggregators only post reports received from such news stalwarts as Xinhua, China Post and People's Daily Online each of whom regurgitates government propaganda originated by ENA or Walta – a favorite topic being the billions in investment dollars pouring into Oromia or Afar or Amara states every other week. Meles’ brilliant strategy for isolating Ethiopians from each other and from the rest of the world through a complete news blackout has been a rousing success. His plan to annihilate the once young but vibrant private press went without a hitch. The publishers, editors and reporters find themselves in prison, or on the run. Even the ever buoyant weblogs, including this one, have of late been unusually quite for lack of news to report and developments to analyze.

Quite understandably, the mood of Ethiopians which resembled the dawn of a bright and shinny morning immediately before and after the election, is getting increasingly gloomy. A great deal of pessimism is an air, and I can relate to it. Ten moths of waiting for a resolution, ten moths of daily crackdowns, ten long moths witnessing innocent thousands detained, ten months watching our brothers and sisters hunted down for the crime of running for office or supporting legal candidates is enough to unglue anyone’s nerves.

This is especially true for so many who had taken the EPRDF at its word. Many who had long thought of the TPLF as nothing more than an invading army had begun to grudgingly think that perhaps the EPRDF was finally going to allow a free political contest. This group which constitutes the majority among Ethiopians finds it particularly disconcerting to witness the TPLF returning to its guns. It is easy to understand how such people could find this ongoing saga tiresome. Few people like a journey which seems to have no known terminus.

Of course the depth of the disappointment is attributable to the unwarranted trust the people had placed on the EPRDF. On the matter of the election, they took it at its word. For years, the Ethiopian people had been skeptical about the regime and any of its pronouncements. The regime had ruled without consulting large swath of the population. It had consistently conducted itself and taken many actions the public viewed to be at cross purposes with the national interest. Consequently, the Ethiopian public had low expectations and little to trust in the promises of the government. Until, that is, the government announced an election open to all comers and, for the most part, conducted itself as if it meant it.

As the campaign progressed, gradually people begin to believe that perhaps there was a chance that there would be an open election and that their votes would, for once, matter. So, everyone dug in and made the push towards a successful election, with the hope that by the end of the election all of the hurdles to our emancipation will be removed. Ethiopians and the entire world now know that the EPRDF was not reformed after all. Although the people’s candidates won the race, there were no medals or flower bouquets waiting for them at the finish line. As it turned out, the electoral race was not really a competition but a show – like one of those fixed boxing bouts. The only problem is those who were supposed to lose and make the favorite look good end up winning.

Having expended much energy and emotion at the election and its immediate aftermath, many of us have been laying low trying to regain our balance and sort through what just happen. Thankfully, there are increasing signs that the period of dazed disorientation is coming to an end. Many elements of the people’s movement are beginning to find their bearings and resume the struggle. Even in these early days of the new phase of our struggle, it is already clear that this is not going to be a sprint but a marathon. Our adversary is clever and very well positioned. Thus to succeed in our drive towards the goal of a free, democratic and prosperous Ethiopia which lives in peace within secured borders, we have to have the stamina of long distance runners and the wisdom and tenacity of a colony of fire ants.

While every citizen can and must play an important role in this struggle, we cannot afford a fragmented and disorganized effort. To optimize our efforts, we need to learn to work within institutionalized frameworks. We need to be able to live and work together even when we don’t see eye to eye on everything. We should resist the temptation to view every difference of opinion among us as though it were a hill to die over and an occasion to splinter our institutions. One of the enduring lessons of the last election should be the great dividend that cooperation across party lines pays. We witnessed that together, ill financed and inexperienced political forces shook the Ethiopian landscape. That lesson should never be lost on us again. This journey is long and will have many ups and downs and many turns along the way. We should never allow such events to divide and weaken us.

Many of our compatriots paid the ultimate price. I am certain that many of the victims of the June and November massacres were not even involved in the struggle. They were bystanders who were caught in Meles’ calculated move meant to scare the population into submission. Many parents lost their children and many children lost their parents. Sad as all of this is to the individuals who lost their lives and to their families, the most grievous damage that has been visited on our collective struggle is the loss of our leaders.

Meles knows this fact quite well. He launched his treasonous act with great care and continues to stand firm on this matter because he believes that our cause will be lost without our leaders. That is one reason why we need to rally around what remains of our leadership and prove him wrong. Certainly the men and women who engineered the election victory and who had the temerity to march forward in the face of great personal danger deserve the reverence with which we hold them. Yet I refuse to believe even for a second that our land of 77 million people is endowed with only two dozen leaders. There are out there thousands of able leaders waiting to be discovered. We need to identify and encourage the leaders among us to step forward. No one is born an experienced leader. That comes with time and maturity.

Each of us needs to search our souls and listen to our hearts to define our appropriate roles in this long journey. Our aspiration is no less than the emancipation of all 77 million of us. That august aspiration requires the full engagement and the maximum effort of each one of us. I recall hearing Dr. Berhanu Nega once state that neither he nor his party were in it liberate anyone. He said CUD was just a collection of people who want to liberate themselves. I know that kind of thought and language is very untraditional, but it is quite to the point. While it is important for us to work together, each of us must join in the fight to secure our own freedom. Certainly today we are not free from fear, free from deprivation, free from anarchy, free from war or free from oppression. As they say, freedom is not free. We must go out and struggle to secure it and once in hand continue to struggle to ensure we don’t loose it.

It is not necessary or even possible for all of us to join political organizations. But it is necessary for all of us to identify at least one political organization among the opposition parties and support it financially and morally. It is not possible for all of us to be lobbyists on behalf of our cause. But it is both possible and necessary for all of us who live in the West to make material contributions to the collective effort to influence the policies of the major western powers towards Ethiopia. It may not be possible for all of us to show up at rallies, but it is necessary and possible for each of us to write letters to the editor of our hometown papers and letters to our congressional representatives.

Each of these tasks is tedious and any benefits which might accrue would not be noticeable for years. Yet these are the necessary steps we must take to get to the promised land. We are fortunate to have among our compatriots many of the greatest distance runners to live on the planet. Let us closely observe and learn from their training methods. Let us monitor and learn from their race strategies. These who frequently travel on Belai Zeleke Road in Addis have had the privilege to come across these fantastic men and women in training. They trudge up the Intoto Hills down to Sululta and back up the hills and down to Shola Gebeya and perhaps back up again. They do this day in day out, every single day. To succeed at the world stage requires tenacity; and tenacious they are. They train hard in order to prepare for easy victory.

Our preparation to assure ourselves of ultimate victory requires no less sweat or tears than the preparations of our glorious athletes. There are no quick rewards in the race we are in. Our struggle is a long trudge up a steep mountain. We need to have no less than the stamina of the marathon runner. And by God, I believe we are up to the task.

Hurdles in the Transition to a Free Society

It is quite understandable for any Ethiopian to be upset and consumed with what went wrong in our country over the last 10 months. Too many of us feel cheated watching the event which was meant to usher in our emancipation from tyranny, war and poverty turned into fool’s gold. I am certain that even those among us who still have soft spots in their hearts for the murderous regime wish things in our country were somehow different. I would venture to say that even Meles, the very architect of our precipitous decent to the dark days of midnight knocks, disappearances and gulags, would not choose the course which led us to the current state of affairs if he could rewind the clock back to May 16, 2005. I continue to believe that even a man who seems to value his personal ambition over the wellbeing of his compatriots would travel a different course given a chance at a do over.

In any event, sooner or later, the citizens and the leaders of the nation have to start to think of how we are going to proceed going forward. Even while we are in the middle of our struggles over the unfinished business associated with the last election, we the people must begin to develop and discuss ideas of how we will proceed the next time around so the situation does not get out of control again. We must begin to contemplate and develop a clear consensus how we would govern ourselves whether or not Meles and his gang continue hang around the scene. After all, our cause is the eradication of all prospects of tyranny, not the removal of its current edition. In the course of one generation we squandered two separate opportunities for democratic transformation. We were so focused on the troubles at hand, we failed to prepare adequately for the fundamental task of laying the foundations required for the transformation of our system of government.

As most of you do, I often worry of what will come after Meles and what we citizens are doing to make sure that whatever replaces the EPRDF is accountable to the people of Ethiopia. It often occurs to me when I lay awake at night, when I am driving through the lonely back woods of the state I live in, or during lazy summer days as I follow behind my lawn mower letting the soft purr of the engine block out all other noise. My mind wonders solving the problems of the world. When my thoughts return to our country and our people, nearly always I come back to the same question. What guarantees do I have that the third political transition of my lifetime will be any better than the first two? What are we the people doing to make sure that when change comes, we the people rather than politicians with the escort of armed men are in the driver seat? What does it take for us to mold our country in our own image and to establish a system of government that is accountable to us? What is it that we must do to ensure that the next government understands its charge is to govern on our behalf and not a mandate to rule over us? How do we groom and develop leaders who understand that we elect them to office because we like their ideas and we will remove them from office if their deeds fail to please us?

Much needs to be done but much has already happened over the course of the last few years both to educate many of us about the requirements of participatory democracy and to highlight some of the dangers which lurk in the background. Yet many obstacles still remain which place in doubt whether the next transition will lead to the emergence of a government constituted by the people which governs Ethiopia for the benefit of all of the people of Ethiopia.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle we must overcome is what I call the curse of Ethiopiawinet. This refers to the condition that seems to prevent all of us from recognizing that the country we so desperately love is home to 77 million other citizens each of whom love her just as deeply as we do. The depth of our affection for our country is such that too many of us believe that we have the right to mold it to our personal preferences even though we must share it with 77 million of our compatriots.

As reported in another post, I have traveled more than once around the world. As I meat and learn of the history and cultures of other people, it never ceases to amaze me to learn again and again that no other people love their country quite like the way we love our Ethiopia. You see, we just don’t love our country; we guard her jealously like a man protects and guards his wife. A man cannot tolerate even the remote possibility of someone else having loving thoughts for her. I hope you can see the picture I am trying paint here. There is the love of one’s first born child, but you are glad to share your child with your wife/husband. There is the love of one’s parents whom you graciously share with your siblings. And then there is the love of one’s spouse – the one meant just for you. That is how an Ethiopian loves his country.

A love so intense that if other citizens have other ideas, we go to war with them, we call them all sorts of names and we forget that each of us has the same right to the country we must all call home. Your college roommate, your coworker, your next door neighbor and the listro working at the corner stand are all citizens of the same country with the same rights to hold and to forward their views of what Ethiopia should be. To have a different opinion is not to be treasonous. To be on the same Ethiopian team should not mean to sing from the same sheet of music. Sometimes one just feels like singing a different song and that should be ok.

Until such time that all of us learn to keep in the forefront of our collective minds that old but simple maxim uttered by our last emperor, “Hager yegara new…”, we will have a great deal of difficulty building the Ethiopia we wish to live in and I wish to leave for my kids and grand kids.

The second obstacle blocking the path to a successful transition is the tendency of so many of us to obsess over issues and incidents which transpired centuries earlier. While the problems which ravage us today and those which threaten our future scream loudly for our immediate attention, we spend much of our time either glorifying or condemning the past. We stuck in the middle of a three-decade long nightmare, crouching under the weight of repression by successive tyrannies. Yet we spend much of energy not fighting tyranny but squabbling with one another over the purported crimes of our forefathers.

Yes understanding our true and complete history is important. Yet in the scheme of things, it is not nearly as important as feeding our children, providing healthcare to our ailing parents or recreating our country so that every citizen can explore history or whatever else strikes his/her fancy unencumbered by fear of a totalitarian regime or by material deprivation. I understand that most of us would like to live and work within the cultural context we feel most comfortable in. Living in a foreign land, I know what it means to have to learn a new language and to maneuver within a new culture. But these are issues that are best addressed when we are in charge of our destiny and we have secured for ourselves the right to decide what is appropriate for us. Thus the first fight we must win is the fight to be free of tyranny. It is only as free men that we can rationally decide for ourselves whether we should have one national language and if so what that should be.

The final obstacle which we must overcome is the dearth of skilled political leaders. We need leaders who have not only the ability to convince the common man to vote for him/her but also the wisdom to inspire other head strong politicians to follow their visions for the country. We need men and women who are not only great tacticians but also great strategists. We need leaders who have the talent to analyze the many problems at hand and also have the wisdom to anticipate and plan for the problem which is destined to visit us in a decade. Most of all We need leaders who believe in the virtues of freedom and who believe that free men can move mountains. We need leaders who understand and appreciate that a truly free Ethiopia is capable of eradicating poverty and leaving in peace within its borders.

I don’t know what it takes to grow such leaders. But I am confident that we have in our midest thousands of capable leaders who can fit the mold I outlined above. There are a number of things we as citizens can do to ensure that such leaders do come to the forefront. All of us should have the temperance to accept new ideas even if they sometimes sound counter intuitive. We should recognize that a democratic solution requires flexibility and our national obsession with what Ethiopian college students call “principle” is a double edged sword which kills friends just as often as it kills enemies. Visionary leaders have to have the ability to persuade others to see the virtues of their ways. When their power of persuasion fails them, to find a common ground and to advance the greater good, visionary leaders find appropriate redress acceptable to the other side. In democratic politics, very little is non-negotiable, truly off the table a priori. The kind of leaders we need will only emerge when we recognize what their task requires and give them enough room to maneuver. When we are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to those who step forward and make themselves available for public service, when we are willing to disagree without being disagreeable, and when are no longer quick to equate a change of mind with a change in allegiance, only then will we have visionary men and women step forward and assume the positions of leadership which we so desperately need to fill.

Such are the thoughts which run through my head as I walk the lonely beaches of the Atlantic in the middle of winter or blow the Fall leaves with my power blower which loudly purrs blocking all of the ambient noise. The serenity afforded by the empty beach or by the noise cascading from the blower frees my mind to revisit events from my past, from childhood memories to yesterday’s goings at work. It is on such occasions that I free myself to daydream and to think of what is possible in my Ethiopia.