23. June 2011 by Assimba.

What follows is a brief excerpt from my forthcoming book (planned to be a little over 300 pages), “The Ethiopian Revolution and the Generation of the 1970s: Dreams, Memories and Harsh Realities.” The two main characters – Jembernesh and Kurat – were childhood lovers in the 1970s. After being apart for many decades, they unexpectedly met at a conference in May 2006. The Kitchen Story takes place while Kurate is visiting Jembernesh in Paris, where she lives.

By Maru Gubena

It was a sticky, hot July, and we had spent a long and extremely tiring day visiting the Eiffel Tower and many other museums and sights of Paris. Immediately after arriving home, my Jember of the 1970s and I went upstairs to rest for a while. A little more than an hour later, we went downstairs to prepare and eat some food.

Jember held my right hand tightly and pulled me towards the kitchen. She said lovingly “Kurate Hode, wouldn’t you like to stay here with me in the kitchen while I warm up our dinner? We still need to eat, it’s pretty late. I think the children will probably stay ’til late evening or perhaps the whole night, enjoying themselves with their father at Disneyland. By the way, am I offending you by bringing you to the kitchen? I mean, traditionally speaking, many Ethiopian males don’t even enter the kitchen, and since you and I have grown apart over the last three decades, I really don’t know what you think about it. In many cases, even if a man wants to enter the kitchen, his wife and other female family members will not allow it. In Ethiopia the kitchen is strictly forbidden territory for most Ethiopian males, as I was taught in childhood.

“Isn’t this a very strange and a tragic pattern of our culture? Just imagine, Kurate Hode, if a man were starving to death and there were no women and no girls around, what then? What is he going to do? What will he eat? You know, I can vividly recall what my mother, and more particularly my maternal grandmother, used to tell all of the female family members.

“‘A real man, a real Ethiopian patriot,’ said my grandmother, talking to me and two of my younger sisters, ‘would never, never go into the kitchen. It is a room just for women, where they prepare and cook all the food for the family. The man is just supposed to enjoy the food prepared for him by his wife, mother, sisters or grandmothers, after a woman has brought the food to the dining room or wherever he is to eat. But certainly not in the kitchen’.

“When Kuku, my youngest sister was just eleven – she really enjoys provoking her family – asked grandmother a question that was a bit confrontational, grandma got somewhat emotional. Kukuye’s question was in fact simple and it was valid, at least in my eyes. It was enough, though, to annoy grandmother. In her usual bossy way, Kukuye loudly asked grandmother and all of us ‘Imagine now Eneye, grandma, that I am married to a very handsome, gentle and hardworking young man, who is very caring and loves me so dearly, what will happen if I take my husband into the kitchen to help me cook and talk with me? Why would this be wrong, Anchi Eneye?’

“My grandmother began to stare at me and my sisters, Kukuye and Kiduse. She began to shake her head in a way that clearly showed her surprise and her complete disapproval of Kukuye’s question. Grandma then spoke to my sister, saying ‘my love Kukuye, come here in front of me and listen! You are not going to do that. You are not supposed to take your husband into the kitchen, however deep his love for you may be. If you do that, then your husband will no longer be a man. He will be seen by the neighbourhood and by all the villagers as a man without his manliness. A man married to a lovely girl like you, like my grandchild, is supposed to be sensible. He must be responsible for the entire community, to help save lives, secure peace and restore hope for our entire people and beyond. But he must never be allowed to accompany my lovely girl into the forbidden “women’s territory” of the kitchen. If any of you do that, you will never see my face again,’ concluded Eneye angrily. As can be imagined, Kiduse and I were a bit scared by her frowning face. But not the bossy Kukuye! Instead she kept on irritating Eneye.

“‘What is that?’ asked Kukuye again, challenging the strong traditional beliefs of our grandmother. Grandmother looked more and more irritated, tired of the confrontational behaviour of her own granddaughter. ‘Listen my love, it simply means that if you allow your husband into the kitchen, he will not be a complete man. He will be seen by the whole community as half man, half woman, someone who is not capable of protecting his family and his country.’

“Kukuye wouldn’t stop, however. She kept challenging, asking more and more questions. These were interesting and relevant, though not in the eyes of our grandma. Kukuye said ‘but Anchi Eneye, that wouldn’t be true. How is it possible that my husband wouldn’t be a complete man? Who says so? What makes him incomplete? Of course not! Such things wouldn’t happen to my husband; unless people in our village did something crazy to him, my husband would remain exactly the same man as long as he still had all of his body parts. That is what I believe, even though I will have to wait and see for myself.’

“My grandmother had become increasingly angry. She seemed to have had enough of trying to advise and teach us. She reacted not just to Kukuye and her confrontational questions, but to all of us. ‘I don’t want any more talk with any of you. Woregna hulu! Please leave me alone! Leave this room immediately! Please go away. I don’t want any more of your talk and questions.’ Then we all ran outside to play hide and seek, which we always enjoyed.

“But you know, Kurate Hode, this is an important issue, and a difficult one for me. Let me tell you a little more about how I feel. I see myself as an agent, an engine, of change. I often go places, not just to inform people, women and men, young and old, but more importantly, to make them really understand the broad gaps that have always existed between women and men. They need to see how urgent it is to change the inequalities that have lasted so long. I honestly love doing everything I can to bridge these gaps. But unfortunately I have a real dilemma. Even though I completely disagree with the views of my grandmother and people like her, when it touches deep inside my own household or my personal life, I often find it extremely difficult to accept, not to mention enjoying it. Whenever I see Hailu, my husband, standing in an apron in the kitchen cutting up a whole chicken or trying to make Enjera, our traditional food in Ethiopia, I just can’t stand him; I can’t tolerate him being busy with women’s business. I actually don’t mind seeing him making some small things, like breakfast or salads. But not those big dishes, certainly not our traditional foods. I honestly really hate it. Yigermehal Ayimechegnim. Betam Yidebregnal! I always prefer to make our big dishes by myself; then I feel so happy, so satisfied when I see my husband and my children enjoying the food.

“Also, I remember how worried I was when I used to travel long distances and attend a conference for two or more days, leaving my children behind with my husband. Even though I am 100 percent certain that my husband loves his children just as much as I do, I nevertheless always felt that he might not take care of them in the same way as I do. I used to spend many unnecessarily sleepless nights.”

I found Jember’s story and her experiences fascinating, and listened attentively. Now it was my turn to say a few words – just a few words, especially since I could not disagree with Jembere’s story and her experiences: I am undisputedly part and parcel of Ethiopian culture and society, and often heard such stories being told to my own sisters. On the other hand, I was somewhat surprised by Jembere’s hazy memory when she said “I really don’t know what you think about being in the kitchen,” so I tenderly repeated what I had told her some time ago.

I looked directly at Jembere and said softly and adoringly “I thought I told you a few days after we met again, at the conference, that I love being in the kitchen – especially with you, with my Jember, my Mukete. In fact, cooking is something that I enjoy so much. Whenever I cook I always feel creative and joyful. I hope you don’t see this as an advertisement, but cooking, cleaning and ironing are among my favorite hobbies, especially after sitting in front of the computer for a long time. Those physical activities relax my mind and my entire body. I might even say that I become more energetic and enthusiastic, and I am able to produce great text for articles or academic papers.

But what I want to tell you most of all is that I am fascinated by the story from your childhood. It is a great example of something I see all the time. Ethiopian socio-cultural values and norms seem to have been constructed to discourage girls and women from enjoying their relationships with their husbands, lovers and friends to the fullest.”

“Oh yes!” responded Jembere enthusiastically. She looked a bit serious and went on: “that is part of the reason I am always running from place to place or from symposium to symposium. Those harmful traditional values and practices like keeping males out of the forbidden territory of the kitchen mean that men cannot share household responsibilities. But there are so many complex issues for African women, including their socio-economic position within African society. Then there are things like female genital mutilation (female circumcision), which permanently affect the health of women and girls in Africa. None of us should ever stop lobbying and campaigning against traditions like that.”

Maru Gubena

Readers who wish to contact the author can reach me at info@pada.nl

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23. June 2011 by Assimba.

 By Yilma Bekele

“… within an established totalitarian regime the purpose of propaganda is not to persuade, much less to inform, but to humiliate. From this point of view, propaganda should not approximate to the truth as closely as possible: on the contrary it should do as much violence to it as possible. For by endlessly asserting what is patently untrue, by making such untruth ubiquitous and unavoidable, and finally by insisting that everyone publicly acquiesce in it, the regime displays its power and reduces individuals to nullities. Who can retain his self-respect when, far from defending what he knows to be true, he has to applaud what he knows to be false – not occasionally, as we all do, but for the whole of his adult life?”ⁱ

That is the capability the Meles regime is trying to build in Ethiopia. Anthony Daniel observed this and other strange behaviors by human beings during his travels inside totalitarian regimes of East Germany, Albania, North Korea and Cuba. The Ethiopian regime is modeled after them. All the above countries were/are economically backward, single party dominated with a sick megalomaniac in charge and highly armed. Cultivation of fear was their number one industry. The fear administered by these regimes is studied for its effectiveness and meant to strip the individuals of his/her self-respect. To dehumanize the person into submission was the main goal of the totalitarian state.

In Ethiopia the regime has all the tools of coercion at its disposal. The regime is the number one employer in the country. All our cousins rely on the goodwill of the regime. All land belongs to the State, thus ninety percent of Ethiopians live at the whims of the Federal government, the Kilil, all the way to the Kebele level. One false move and it is the end of the World, as they know it. They are victims of engineered fear.

Part Three of the video with ‘Ethiopian Merchants’ was all what the meeting was about. It is the Crown Jewel display of a regime bullying its own citizens that contribute the most. It was to give a public spanking to the people that have been operating under tremendous pressure to eek out a living. It was a moment to emasculate the Ethiopian merchants. We are talking about a breed of people that survived the socialist, military, and ‘strong man’ rule Ethiopia only to be administered a public flogging by The Leader himself. I am sure there are some that take the short cut. They are a few. The biggest and insurmountable threat was coming from the State subsidized, Privately owned conglomerates like EFFORT and its offsprings.

Despite all this our merchants were finding ways of going around obstacles and supporting family and friends. Our merchants are our best ambassadors. They travel to the remotest of Chinese villages to get a bargain. These naturally smart people seasoned in the art of trade on international level by sheer determination and drive were declared unnecessary and irrelevant by Ato Meles. He said the regime would rather involve in meaningful development rather than ‘being a soap peddler’ like the merchants. That was said in contempt, which is very sad. I guess we all can’t be Prime Ministers.

The meeting was to humiliate our merchants. Ato Meles was hitting hard. He meant to completely obliterate the middle class. This meeting was the unfurling of his new scheme. His new attempt to copy Wal-Mart and incorporate that success into nation building scheme. I told you he was unconventional. To go with our new flag, we will have a new name. Welcome to the Federal Democratic Republic of Wal-Opia where the regime ‘buys in bulk, repackage it, determine the profit margin and allow the worthless peasants to distribute it.

Fasten your seat belt; Ato Meles is the driver this time around. Looks like Colonel Mengistu jettisoned off a while back. If you close your eyes, you are excused, no one likes going off a cliff without a parachute. So sorry about that, there is only one parachute in this bus. Hope you enjoyed your final ride.

In Part Three Ato Meles was using the power of his office, the absolute control of Parliament and security under him to bully the merchants into submission. At the end of Part Two He called them common thieves that present false vouchers never to be trusted (7:37) then went into bully mode right away. In Part Three he started off by mentioning the last meeting with the same merchants and remembered it this way:

We assumed that the road from the existing system to the correct system would be a rocky one when we discussed with you earlier, and we agreed on the ‘price set’ I remember the questions some of you asked. You said if this policy does not work what are you going to do next, the question might have been innocent on the other hand it might have hidden messages like we are going to sabotage the price controls so what we are you going to do next

I would say this type of approach does not encourage frank discussions especially if the PM sees ulterior motive behind every question? He said that to lay the ground rules for this meeting. The story he told next is the map of economic activity under the rule of TPLF new and improved formulae.

He said the economic policy he had in place for the last twenty years assumed that by shielding the trade sector from foreign capital our people would accumulate enough capital and move into industry, farming and manufacturing. It did not happen. (1:01) Thus the blame lies on the merchant class for not involving in those activities. He reminded them of what he said before of the possibility of opening the market to foreign competition or the State being forced to participate in the trade sector. Thus due to the sabotage by the merchants against his ‘price control policy’ and the general lack of competition he announced, “we have decided to pick a few main commodities such as Oil, Sugar and Wheat and restructure the system how they are imported. What that means is one central authority purchases for all of Ethiopia and in bulk and we will have several choices to get cheap price in other words like what the Koreans do. (Please note he did not specify which Korea and what exactly they do?) We can buy it unrefined and refine and repackage it here.” (4:14)

Next is where the theory is seen in its practical form. The plan is as elegant as any devised by a committee of academicians sitting in their high tower and equating ants to human activity. You can see the problem a mile away. Looks like he forgets the pesky ugly trait humans possess that is known as ‘free will’ and it never fails to show up. This is what the Great Leader for life said “Upon buying it in bulk we do not want to assume the distribution end of it. We want plenty of distributors and retailers in every town what we don’t want is vertical integration between retailer and distributor. (5:03). It will be done in all the Kilils. We want your cooperation here. In the future we are not going to worry about the price of beer here and meat over there we want to make a fundamental solution. (9:03). We want to start slow and include all commodities.”

The Ethiopian government just declared a section of its most vibrant and creative citizens irrelevant. This is not the first time. Ato Meles and company have this nasty habit of taking a section of society and making an enemy out of. There was a time when Ato Meles declared University professors unnecessary. The best and experienced were fired. We kept quiet. Independent Trade Unions were deemed superfluous and leaders like Ato Assefa Maru were fatally shot in public. We turned a blind eye. Political Parties not organized by TPLF were seen as the enemy and Ato Meles used state power to murder leaders (Professor Asrat Woldeyes) Imprison elected leaders (Kinijit) jail leader of an opposition Party (Judge Bertukan Mideksa) disrupt (All Ethiopia, OFDM, OPC, Andenet) and we turned our face away. Independent News Paper editors, publishers, reporters and even street venders were systematically eliminated and we betrayed all by our silence.

Is there room for optimism here? Do you think our bosses found the secret formula to grow our economy and usher in a period of peace and harmony? You know the answer. If it has not borne fruit in twenty years it is not going to happen even if you give it additional hundred years. I am not being a naysayer, just realistic. There comes a time where you swallow your pride and admit defeat and get out of the way. That time has arrived. Ato Meles and company were given a clean sheet and given the power and authority to draw any picture they wanted. There was no opposition, no organized force to stop them and no external enemy to threaten them.

When you consider Meles and company never have any experience running a little kiosk let alone a national economy there is no surprise for that uneasy feeling we all have. There is one thing al the TPLF leaders have in common before they assumed power. They never had a bank account, they have never worked for wages, and they have never paid rent, bought a car, shopped for insurance or received utility bills. All their knowledge comes from theory not real life experience. There is no substitute for actual experience.

When Ato Meles speaks of being a distributor of oil and sugar and when he talks about vertical integration and stuff you know it all came from books, not real life situation. The fact of the matter is Wal-Mart is successful because it is driven by purely personal interest. The central motive is making a profit. Wal-Mart faced competition and relied on the creative potential of the founder and his associates to build such a colossal successful enterprise. It is testimonial to the power of the individual to excel when given the chance. Cadres are not capable of understand that fact.

The Ethiopian people are under tremendous pressure. The Meles regime has used the last twenty years to sharpen its weapons of coercion. They might have failed in growing the economy but they have excelled in constructing a prison that passes itself as a country. They might not have enough books for our children, they might not have medicine for our sick, they might not have enough food in storage for our people, they might not have enough teachers, doctors and other professionals to make our peoples life better but they have the best army fully equipped, they have the best security force that is embedded in every house hold and even have the latest and fastest computers to spy on, collect information and intimidate the population.

That is in Ethiopia. How about outside? What is the situation with those that escaped from this national jail? Have they managed to conquer the fear? What do you think? I am asking you my reader, yes, you! Are you afraid of Ato Meles? Shouldn’t distance from the source of fear relieve us of some of that anxiety? I see, you claim you are not afraid. Good, I will take your word for it. But I got a question for you. Now tell me when Ato Meles and company are abusing your cousins, squandering your wealth, exposing your parents to famine and starvation, exiling the young and able how did you respond? Did you say hold on a minute this does not sound right?

Some did. A vast majority of us choose the road of see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. Why? Because Fear cannot be wished away. Fear has become part of our persona. Fear of authority, fear of elders and the tendency to conform is a sickness we are unable to overcome. Most of us are aware that the current regime under the TPLF is not the way out. We all talk of the incoming apocalypse. We are always predicting civil war, internal strife, bloodshed around the corner and implosion from inside. What is so curious is that most of us are not willing to do what is necessary to avoid this horrible scenario unfolding in front of us. May be it will be a good idea if we take the time to self analyze and find the reason for this self-destructive behavior.

It is not true that the individual is helpless to do anything about it. That is a cover we give our self to avoid responsibility. As it is said not a single raindrop will admit to be the cause of the flood. The same with us, we might think our individual action is insignificant in the scheme of things but how wrong we are. It is our individual action that empowers the tyrant, plus you can only answer for your actions not for mine, so what do you say fellow country person? Are you contributing to your liberation or slavery?

The last few days we are really happy that Secretary of State Clinton told the AU and Ato Meles about the importance of Democracy. I am very happy. But why do I get this feeling that her words do not match her deeds? Isn’t Ato Meles coddled and propped up by our foreign friends? Who trains and equips his army, who grants him loans from World Bank and IMF, who lets him sit with elected leaders in International settings, who bestows legitimacy on him? So tell me what is all this excitement about?

I understand now. It is that old habit of wishing others to do the dirty job for us. It is that dysfunctional tendency we have acquired to outsource the liberation struggle. It is not going to work. It has been tried for the last twenty years with nothing to show for it. Looks like the burden is on us again. May be it is about time we do some growing up and face responsibility? May be it is about time we cut out this pretension and stand up to be counted. No one can force you to do the right thing. No one can make you see the light. No one can help you regain your self-esteem. It is one thing to play dead, what I don’t understand is this tendency we have to feverishly oppose even those that are trying to stand up for our rights. Some of us are an embarrassment to our heritage and our brave ancestors.

i Anthony Daniel ‘The wilder shores of Marx.’

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23. June 2011 by Assimba.

fekadubekele@gmx.de  

From the outset I would like to express my frustration that Professor Messay`s article does not have any new substance or cannot be accepted as entailing a thoughtful idea. Those who side with the position of the Professor may think and believe that Professor Messay wrote a grand theory which might be seen as a panacea to save Ethiopia from all the evils the Meles regime has inflicted.

After reading the article twice, I cannot detect the theoretical and methodological foundation of the article of Professor Messay. Howerver, Professor Messay believes that his approaches in characterizing the Meles regime, and Meles himself, and the theory of developmental state are new theoretical reflections which can be carefully studied. In all the three points I cannot scrutinize the exact methodological and scientific approaches to substantiate his theory. Except that he commands the English language which makes impossible for many to detect his theoretical weakness, I am not convinced that the article can teach us new things. 

If somebody writes such an article he must either explicitly or implicitly clarify that he follows some paradigmatic approaches to prove that the article he writes reflects things which are taking place on the ground.

First of all to pursue authoritarian politics is not a matter of choice, but it is a desire of certain groups to impose their interests and thereby to shape the entire political landscape according to these interests. Such kind of authoritarian politics emanates from the nature of the person who seizes political power. In order to understand the character of such an authoritarian ruler one should study the society and the circumstances he grew up in, and the education system which shaped his mind to behave like this. Family backgrounds also play decisive roles in shaping the mind of such an authoritarian ruler. As Meles and his compatriots are the products of a particular area, even though they boast that they follow this or that ideology, what ultimately decides their thinking and handling is the socioeconomic condition and the family background in which they grew up. Philosophers, psychologists, and men of drama like Schiller have already proved that the exercise of political power for good or bad can be conditioned on the particular circumstance in which the political actors are grown up. To say that Meles had no other option than to be an authoritarian means that he can alter his mind at any time and become a democrat. That is why Professor Messay thinks that there is no other option than building a grand coalition before the country falls into pieces or the situation ends in bloodshed.

If we accept the argument of Professor Messay as he tried to analyze in his essay, what Meles and his friends did against Ethiopia was not calculated from the outset, and they were compelled to follow an ethnic and a neo-liberal policy because they did not have any other choices. As we all know Meles and his group could not seize political power without the help of Blair and the American government. The West in general and America in particular did everything to eliminate the Mengistu regime to wipe Ethiopian nationalism out once and for all. Therefore ethnic politics and neo-liberal economic policy as Meles had introduced and practiced in Ethiopia could not be materialized without the help of America and England. In all his previous analysis when Professor Messay accuses the Meles regime, he either deliberately or unconsciously omits the role of the Americans and the British in shaping the Ethiopian politics over the last 20 years. Only in a weakened country in which a regime which pursues ethnic or any other politics which fits the interests of the West and practices a neo-liberal economic policy, it is easy for the West to meddle in the internal affairs of such a weakened country.

Coming to neo-liberalism, it seems that Professor Messay did not understand the economic policy of the Meles regime prior to the 2005 election. As if the regime until then did not follow a neo-liberal economic policy, Professor Messay tells us that the Meles regime understood well the danger of neo-liberalism and has done everything to convince his comrades to follow his developmental policy which is strictly regulated and manipulated by the state. To my understanding, prior to the election of 2005, Meles and his regime had agreed with the IMF and the World Bank to strictly apply the structural adjustment program (SAP). Devaluation of the Ethiopian birr in relation to the US Dollar, privatization, liberalization of the internal and foreign market, reducing state budget for social purposes, so as to canalize the money for productive “purposes”, are all instruments of neo-liberal economic policies. In all Sub-Saharan African countries where such a policy was applied, though the negative effects vary from country to country, in general such a policy has enriched the few and impoverished the masses. There are well documented studies which show the negative effects of SAPs. In short the main agenda of SAPs was to de-industrialize Africa, and to make her dependent on one or two raw material or agricultural products. The chaotic situation in many Sub-Saharan African countries, including Ethiopia prove that how SAP was designed to impoverish the entire continent and canalize wealth to the capitalist West via different mechanisms. If any country accepts the shock doctrine of the IMF, it will end up in permanent debt, and payments of this debt permanently by transferring her hardly won wealth every year become a natural law which must continue indefinitely. It is a calculated intrigue of the West to systematically unlock such kinds of governments to pursue a macroeconomic economic policy which does not work in such backward countries like that of Ethiopia. After the Meles regime has been applying for almost fifteen years such a bitter economic policy, to say that he has well understood the danger of neo-liberalism is a pure mockery against the Ethiopian people. The misunderstanding of the work of the IMF and the World Bank is not only the fault of Professor Messay. Many Ethiopian economists whom I know have the same attitudes; and many of them cannot understand the ideological foundation of neo-liberalism. Because all hate the Meles regime, they believe that what our country had to experience over the last 20 years is solely the work of one dictator. It is perceived that all foreign forces and their international organizations which shape economic polices for Third World Countries are by their nature innocent. The widespread belief is that African dictators block the application of the policy as is prescribed by the IMF and the school books and thus all countries are condemned to poverty.

Coming to the developmental state, many development experts, by eliminating social history and economic anthropology from their heads convinced many Third World students that the policy of developmental state is a new phenomenon which can be reduced to few countries. If one studies the economic history of Europe, at least from the fourteenth century onwards, state systems had played crucial roles in shaping and manipulating their economies and social systems. Especially from the sixteenth century onwards, European Monarchs had pursued an active economic policy to develop a home market in their respective boundaries. Their approaches were holistic, and supported by all available instruments to build a coherent and strong nation in their respective countries. If we come to Japan, there were well established relationships on one hand between the German and the Japanese governments, and on the other hand between the United States of America and Japan during the Meiji dynasty. Japan had sent some young men to Germany to study the economic performance of Germany, and sent others to America to study modern administration systems. The Meiji dynasty which had a well disciplined military organization, and which was determined to modernize the economy had forced the industrialization of Japan. The unique socio-cultural condition of Japan and their disciplined psychological make-up helped Japan to materialize her inward looking strategy. Without a disciplined bureaucracy, and without a unique culture which prevails in the society, it was not possible for Japan and others to pursue their policies. As Professor Messay believes these countries did not follow a strict free market economic policy and the rule of law, but the unique relationship that had prevailed between the banking system, the state and the industrial sector helped the industrialization of Japan and South Korea. During the 70s and 80s South Korea was governed by military dictators which did not allow any political participation, and the organization of trade union was strictly forbidden. As some critical analysts affirm, foreign debt and military dictatorship are behind the industrialization of South Korea.

To apply in countries like Ethiopia such a strictly state oriented economic development policy like that of Japan and South Korea is an impossible task, because the cultural situation of the society and the psychological make-up of the intelligentsia are factors which block any meaningful economic agenda. The fragmented and intriguing characters we have, and the loss of our self-reliance, and weak theoretical background we posses, are some of the factors which block our wishes to develop Ethiopia. I do not know any Ethiopian economist who has extensively studied the role of Mercantilism, and the Works of Friedrich List, Heinrich Pesch, and others, which are crucial indeed for the application of a developmental state economic policy. Neither do I know who has a good understanding of philosophy and tries to combine philosophy, sociology and cultural transformation with a kind of renaissance economic policy to foster industrialization policy in our country. As so long as we are stick to the market economic policy of the IMF and the World Bank it is practically impossible to get Ethiopia out of the present situation.

Having this in mind, if we come to the advice of Professor Messay to create a power-sharing arrangement with the regime, I do not believe that the Meles regime with such a bloody past, and which has been selling our country to the so-called foreign investors, and systematically destabilizes our country so that patriotic feelings could not develop among the youth, will accept an arrangement which could save Ethiopia. Meles and his clique are determined to see a much weakened Ethiopia, and could stay on power when they follow such an intriguing policy. Foreigners who know the regime very well say that Meles and his clique hate Ethiopia, and the divide and rule system which they have been systematically applying nation-wide over the last 20 years weakened the entire nation. Today we have in Ethiopia not a political elite as Professor Messay thinks and believes; instead we have a Mafia system across the country which has corrupted all the local administrators. How is it possible to build a grand coalition with such a regime which dreams day and night to see a very fragmented and weakened Ethiopia? Meles like his masters, the West hates the concept of a Nation-State, because only through a strong Nation-State the people of a given country could freely exercise their true freedom, and build a strong economy which is based on science and technology. It seems that Professor Messay does not know what is going on in Ethiopia, and the real economic and social conditions which the Ethiopian people are subjected to. Therefore, not only from a theoretical, and paradigmatic point of view, but also from the conditions which are existing on the ground, and from the nature of the regime, the proposal of Professor Messay is not acceptable. At the same time when the Meles regime is in a very desperate position, and no more in a position to cope with the social and economic crises of the country it is unwise to call for a grand coalition.

The writer can be reached at fekadubekele@gmx.de

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