Is G7 heading to a recycling plant or to a grave yard?
By Dilwenberu Nega - July 15, 2012
Dr. Birhanu Nega brain child Gingot-7 is heading to a recycling plant or to a grave yard
Thanks to Aigaforum’s investigative journalism which unearthed an audio recording of Dr. Birhanu Nega’s fulminations against dissenters within G7, (please listen to “Dr. Birhanu in his own words on dissenters!”) we now know that the ongoing tug of war between those dead against G7’s arrogant and dictatorial leadership, and those who wish to prolong its rotten status quo, is much more than a storm in a tea cup.
Who would be the winner of this latest tug of war? While it’s difficult to extrapolate far from the epicentre of G7, there, however, is a consensual agreement among Ethiopia watchers that a split within G7 now will be – to use an English idiom –“the straw that killed the camel’s back.” Morale among G7’s rank and file is said to be at an all time low as members come to terms with the reality on the ground: that G7’s four long years were nothing more than an ego trip to Birhanu Nega and the Tsiege Brothers. In other words, G7 has failed miserably to either dent public support to EPRDF’s policies, or to calm Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s rise and shine at internal arenas.
Not only is G7 Birhanu Nega’s brain-child, but he is believed to have invested huge amount of his own money on its upbringing. The problem is his input has instilled in Birhanu a false sense of security: because my share of investment in G7 is greater than everyone else, I have the right to hire and fire members. It does seem that it has not yet dawned on Economist Birhanu Nega that running G7 is very different from running Nega Bonger’s financial empire in Addis Ababa.
Those who know Birhanu from his days with EPRP talk of his conflicting characteristic traits – arrogant, coward and over ambitious. And these traits did come out crystal clear when he fulminated against “the muddying crowd” - his erstwhile comrades-in-arms.
Does Birhanu Nega have what it takes to be the leader of diversity-celebrating Ethiopia?
Birhanu seems to be raving mad at the G7 members who – instead of glorifying Birhanu Nega and the Tsiege Brothers – had, instead, demonstrated brazen audacity by questioning the infallibility of the Great and Peerless Leader and his henchmen. Thank God, I am not a member of G7, but if I were one, I don’t see any rhyme or reason to oppose the demands of the dissenters. Demanding greater transparency and calling for the uprooting of cronyism and nepotism must, instead, be embraced by genuine democrats in G7. But there again, you might ask, are there genuine democrats in G7? For if there were genuine democrats, how could they possibly digest Birhanu’s obsession with terrorism or stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Isaias Afewerki’s lapdog, Andargatchew Tsiege?
During the past couple of weeks the popular Ethiopian proverb “You can tell a wholesome Injera from its pan” was in the lips of many Ethiopians in London as they commented on two new developments in Ethiopian politics. The first development was the yawning of a gulf in G7 and secondly the meteoric rise of another Shabia lapdog, Sileshi Tilahun, who now is The Speaker of the self-styled “Ethiopian National Transitional Council” (ENTC). What is self-evident in both cases is not only the scarcity of leaders who can appeal to wider Ethiopians, but the toxic diaspora’s affectation with pampering shabia’s lapdogs.
All tensions and splits inside opposition parties are, of course, music to the ears of the ruling party. What is, however, unfathomable to me, and I hope to you too, is that given the fractured state of Ethiopian opposition parties, why is it then that foreign governments and rights organizations continue to blame EPRDF for the inadequacies of Ethiopian opposition parties?