Mekelle, February 28፡2025 (Tigray Herald)
A PRIME MINISTER WASTED BY MENTAL DISORDER
Written by Yonas Biru(Phd)
The following are three sections taken from my 2022 article titled: “The Solution to Ethiopia’s Crisis Resides in PM. Abiy and the Amhara Tribal Land”
In 1998, I proposed to side with Eritrea and kill TPLF dead. Today, anyone who supports Abiy and goes to war against Eritrea needs to have his head checked. Abiy is an existential threat to Ethiopia more than Isaias can ever be.
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I.1. Sacred Sin: Ethiopia’s Failure to Side with EPLF and Kill TPLF in 1998
Ethiopia is where it is today because of many missed opportunities. The most damning lost opportunity that allowed tribalism to take root in Ethiopia was our failure to side with Eritrea to defeat TPLF in the 1998 Ethio-Eritrean war. The popular opinion at the time was that Eritrea was working in cahoots with the US and TPLF to dismember Ethiopia. Herman Cohen was accused of masterminding Ethiopia’s destruction.
I was the lone voice arguing against the paranoic outlook and advocating to side with Eritrea in an article titled “Sacred Sin: Beyond Political Razzle Dazzle.” The sin was siding with a foreign country to defeat our own government. I saw it as የተቀደሰ ሓጢያት because the ultimate objective was to save Ethiopia from the evils of TPLF. Just like today’s #NoMore daspora, the diaspora forces of the time were out on the streets of Washington, London and Brussels wrapped up with green, yellow, and red, and jumping up and down. Missing an opportunity is opportunity the Ethiopian elite never misses. One can only imagine what the turn of events would have been had Ethiopians joined forces with Eritrea in 1998.
Avoid war at all costs, but Keep Eritrea as an Insurance Policy
In 1998, “Sacred Sin: Beyond Political Razzle Dazzle” piece, I wrote: TPLF is a potent force with an ability to destroy Ethiopia. Its ethnic policy has already started to erode the very fabric that holds Ethiopians together. The longer TPLF remains in power the more damage it inflicts. Whether we like it or not, in TPLF’s political equation EPLF remains to be the only check. In many ways, EPLF has in the past served as a balancing force against TPLF. In the absence of a potent Ethiopian opposition force, if we help TPLF defeat EPLF, we will learn the hard way that we have fortified our own worst enemy. Ethiopia has never seen a more potent, and dangerously reckless enemy than TPLF. This was in 1998.
The same logic applies today. Eritrea will be a prohibitive force that will put TPLF in check. If TPLF feels it has 10 percent chance of winning a war, it will not hesitate to sacrifice 500,000 children as canon fodders. Eritrea serves as depressant of TPLF’s appetite for war. Ethiopia has every right to sign a bilateral Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) with any country it chooses. In 2015 alone, nearly 100 DCAs were signed between countries within and across continents such as Indonesia and Turkey, South Africa and Liberia, and Argentina and Russia. This is one area Ethiopia should stand firm in any negotiation.
II. PM Abiy: An Extraordinary Visionary and an Abysmal Manager
An unfortunate pilot who finds himself flying through a thunderstorm with a malfunctioning and unresponsive aircraft and 200 plus people on board has no room for error. Similarly, the Prime Minister has no room for error in managing the nearly unmanageable crisis in Ethiopia. But alas, his governing management is inherently error prone.
What is saddening is that he is a visionary. He has what it takes to transform the nation not only out of abject poverty but also into a modern society. The world saw this in 2018 and 2019 and rightly praised him as a “visionary” and a “hope for Africa.” Some went as far as comparing him with such transformative world leaders as “Nelson Mandela, Justin Trudeau, Barack Obama and Mikhail Gorbachev.” The Nobel Foundation deservedly awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Sadly, his poor management squandered an extraordinary political capital that he so brilliantly built. What is most bothersome is that he is oblivious to his failings. Read my articles titled “A Midcourse Correction is Needed in the Management of the Change Process” (April 2019); and “The PM’s Vision Is Like a Ferrari Driven by A Volkswagen Engine” (October 2019).
The root cause of the problem is his omnipotent tendencies and his venture to recruit God as his spiritual political adviser. As a result, he relies more on divine guidance than on subject matter experts. Many of his appointees to high offices had zero-experience in the area they were asked to oversee. Presumably, he sees God as their pilot as they navigate through bureaucratic turbulences and development challenges.
Prayers is not the answer for our developmental problems. Ethiopia has been praying since Psalms 68 revealed “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands to God.” A 2017 Pew Research Center Report found “The majority of Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia say they attend church weekly (78%).” It is not hard to imagine Ethiopian Muslims, Catholics, and Protestants are just as committed to their respective religions. According to Statista, only 22 percent of Americans attend church weekly.
Even worse, religion is a foreign concept in China. If prayers and religious beliefs were determinant factors for economic development, Ethiopia, not the US and/or China would have been the sole superpower.
At bottom, the Prime Minister vision may be what Ethiopia needs for peace, security, and prosperity. His poor management is not fit to run a country even in the best of circumstances leave alone in time of constitutionally created existential crisis.
V.3. The Path to Hell: Intractable Challenges of Tribalism
Historically, the evolution of human society progressed from families to clans, tribes, kingdoms, empires, and nation-states. The human development evolution continues as nation-states willfully devolve ever greater amounts of their own sovereignty to form member states as it is the case with the European Union.
Social evolution by its very nature moves societies to a progressively more advanced and civilized system of governance. In Ethiopia, we reversed the evolutionary process. Rather than reforming and perfecting the imperfect nation-state that we had, we regressed backward past empires and kingdoms and constitutionalized a tribal system of governance.
Tribal Politics is Primitive and Degenerative by Nature
Our recent history shows that tribalism is primitive in its outlook and prone to impulse-driven behaviors and animal instinct. This should not be surprising when we humans relapse from being fallen angels to bestial remnants of our heritage as risen apes. Consequently, we have borne witness to unimaginable barbarism take hold of our nation from Oromo to Amhara and from Tigray to Benishangul. What is happening is not an unintended consequence of tribalism. Savagery is par for the course for tribalist societies tattooed and laced in their social construct.
