Another Lie Fades When Put to the Sun Test

So who was it really who first said that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. Was it Joseph Goebbels or was it Vladimir Illych Lenin? Actually, when the choice is between those two men, the difference fails to impress. The tyranny that is the EPRDF would not have cared who made that observation first. What matters to Meles and company is that there might be a chunk of truth to the saying. And so, the regime has adopted the tact as its most important weapon of survival next to the sniper’s gun trained on fleeing demonstrators. Indeed, Meles Inc does not even have one ministry of propaganda or one Goebbels. Instead, every minister, every diplomat, every officer and agent of the regime who is high enough in rank to possibly be called upon to speak on behalf of the regime is trained in the art of the lie. It seems that lesson number one in the training regimen is “when in doubt, lie like hell”.

What else would impel a minister of finance to call a press conference and announce to the world that Ethiopia is on the verge of graduating from the ranks of the poor? In an earlier post It Is All Big Lie, I reported how asinine it was to tell such a bold face lie when the world knows the truth to be different. Well we now learn from the publication capitalethiopia that no less than the IMF has corrected the record. According to this report, the IMF is insisting that the average growth rate of the Ethiopian economy over the last three years has been 4.68%. That is far short than the 7% average annual growth proclaimed by Minister Sufian Ahmed and even a shade less than my own calculation of 4.75%.

That of course still ignores the fact that what the minister was insinuating was about sustaining growth at nearly double the record of the last several years going forward when the reality is far bleaker. One does not need training in economic forecasting to see the bleak circumstances reported by the Capital and the one or two pubs still around. The reports are worrisome. It seems that the country is more likely to experience economic contraction than growth over the next couple of years. So, Ato Sufian and others will be well advised to spend their energies looking into finding ways to steer the economy out of danger before it begins to roll down hill uncontrollably. Every day they spend sitting around the conference table trying to come up with another clever lie is a day that passes without giving the economy the attention it deserves.