It is with total shock and bewilderment we received the Ethiopian Prime Minister’s announcement of a five-point peace proposal he claims will lead to a durable peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea. If appeasing a modern-day Hitler will bring about a lasting peace, we will be the first to congratulate PM Meles Zenawi for his "bold new initiative". But knowing what we know about dictator Issayas Afewerki, lasting peace is a daydream or a cruel joke.

As we speak, the Eritrean dictator is making war preparations. He has bought all the necessary military gadgets. He has trained enough troops. He is ready and more than willing to unleash another aggression against Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s military preparedness on the other hand is up in the air. If military spending is an indicator of preparedness then Ethiopia has been slashing its military budget every year for the last three years. From what we hear moral in the Ethiopian military has been declining as well. The Prime Minister’s bombshell “new peace initiative” will not help to stop the decline either. It is in fact a double-edged sword- it emboldens shabia troops and demoralizes the Ethiopian defense forces.

Source: Hmbashaa

This does not mean the Eritrean dictator will succeed in subjugating Ethiopians. It is impossible. However, what it means is he will get whatever he wants from Ethiopia by bulling the current leadership. Folks, we either have a government that lacks backbone or has intentionally lost it to please the Eritrean dictator. Either way it doesn’t bode well for our country.

The prime minister’s argument that our priority should be tackling poverty and not safeguarding our sovereignty, is perverse. Perhaps he can give us examples of countries that have successfully eradicated poverty by surrendering their land to a war-addicted menace. There are dozens of dirt-poor countries like ours in the world. If they thought they could get rich by giving up their land to the neighborhood bully, we are certain many wouldn’t hesitate to go ahead and do it. But they know this is voodoo politics.

We don’t think deep down the Prime Minister genuinely believes appeasement leads to prosperity either. That is why we say there must be another explanation for doing the unthinkable. At the beginning we thought maybe he is calling shabia’s bluff by accepting EEBC’s unjust decision “in principle’. But then we read on Reporter website that the government media is given directive to stop calling the Eritrean government shabia and its leader shabia leader. Instead they are to refer to shabia as the Eritrean government and its leader as Eritrean President Issayas Afewerki. This is when it hit us. The Ethiopian Prime Minister is dead serious about his new old Eritrea policy. He really wants to normalize relationship with the butcher of Asmara.

No body put a gun on Meles’s head and told him to normalize relationship with a man who has made his life long ambition to be the Kingpin of the Horn of Africa, a man who has worked day and night to create a hegemonic government in Addis Ababa, a man whose contempt for our country is deep and sickening. The only reason we can come up with that makes sense is the Prime Minister feels secure enough in his job to do what he always wanted to do, which is help Eritrea. We are not saying this because we support the TPLF dissidents or any other political party. We’ve already endorsed EPRDF in our previous editorial. It is just that there is no other plausible explanation.

What do we do now? Do we start supporting the dissidents? UEDF perhaps? What about CAD? The dissidents are inconsequential at this point in the game. UEDF is a weak political entity that EPRP runs by a remote control from Washington D.C. And EPRP’s history on Ethiopia’s sovereignty is well known to Ethiopians. Therefore, just because Beyene Petros voted down Meles’s five-point peace plan doesn’t give us confidence the feeble coalition will better serve Ethiopia’s interest. Besides, over the years Beyene Petros and other opposition MPs have been voting down every domestic/foreign policy initiatives of the government. They have been opposing for the sake of opposing. The newly formed coalition CAD looks strong on foreign policy, but its domestic agenda is scary. It doesn’t believe in unity based on diversity. It is comfortable turning back the clock to pre-1991 era.

So where does it leave us? It leaves us at the mercy of a Prime Minister who is determined to make peace with Eritrea at the expense of Ethiopia. God save our country.

The UEDF [which is rather relevant to be named Union of Ethiopian Un-Democratic Forces (UEUDF)] is nothing but the gathering of vulnerable species such Aregawi Berhe. It was an insult to our intelligence to listen to an EPRP radio interview with Aregawi Berhe last Sunday. Ayte Aregawi is sarcastically crying wolf, that: "Meles is delivering Badme to Eritrea; Meles allowed Eritrea to go independent with out the consent of the Ethiopian people".

No question that we have problems with PM Meles and his colleagues in the TPLF/EPRDF. But, Aregawi Berhe and the likes don't have the moral authority to blame PM Meles as far as the Eritrean issue is concerned. 

It is a recorded history in Tigray and Eritrean records that long before Meles came to the scene Aregawi Berhe led six other Tigrayans to the EPLF controlled Eritrean countryside and became the Chief Signatory of a document that accepted "the Eritrean question as a colonial question". It is the consequence of this lethal agreement between Aregawi Berhe and the EPLF that has brought Ethiopia to the current limbo.

To see the UEDF having Aregawi Berhe (who is also subject to answer for the many innocent lives of Tigrayans and other Ethiopians, members of the EDU and EPRP) proves that this UEDF is mostly a collection of vulnerable species that would not escape a day in the Ethiopian courts of justice unless and otherwise they snatch power in the shortest way they think possible when they return to Ethiopia. It is not going to happen and the UEDF will go to the history books of Ethiopia with out achieving anything but helping us to write the reasons why a viable united front was not possible to mineralize. 

As the Aregawi/UEDF sort of drama continues, it is also ideal for this discussion forum to continue. But to label Aiga operators, which has provided us with this opportunity of learning different viewpoints, as "traitors" is an EPRP linguistic culture of polemics, which Ethiopians are well acquainted with.