Mezgebu Tsegaye | July 30th, 2010 | Source : AddisVoice.com

Azeb Mesfin, wife of dictator Meles Zenawi, member of the rubber stamp parliament and boss of the biggest corruption scheme in Africa called the Endowment Fund the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT) has been pushing state banks to the brink of bankruptcy.

According to well-positioned banking sources, since Azeb took over EFFORT from Sebhat Nega last year she is personally pressurizing banks to illegally grant huge amounts of loans in local and hard currency. EFFORT, which allegedly owes close to 10 billion birr in unpaid loans mainly from the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, the Development Bank of Ethiopia and the Business and Construction Bank, is well-known for defaulting on the multi- billion birr loans it is raking out of the coffers of state-owned banks.

A coalition of Ethiopian opposition parties will take steps toward becoming a single party by forming a front, said Negasso Gidada, co-deputy chairman of the so-called Medrek alliance.

The change will result in the opposition group having “one general assembly, one center, one leadership and one long-term strategic policy paper that is binding for all parties,” Negasso said in an interview today from the capital, Addis Ababa. Negasso is also deputy chairman of the Unity for Democracy and Justice and a former president of Ethiopia.

Dr. Ture Hirbe | July 30th, 2010

While living in democratic countries we envy the citizens of these countries to see them exercise their right to elect their officials at all levels of the government. For example, the USA possesses more than 500,000 elected offices. Other things being equal, the greater the number of offices subject to competitive election, the more democratic a political system becomes. We Ethiopians are dreaming for the day that we will be able to choose our leaders and officials without fear, harassment and intimidation. Definitely Elections are the defining institution of modern democracy. However, I believe that Elections alone may not solve all problems and protracted social conflicts in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is facing multifaceted and complicated problems which need complex approach to solve them. I would suggest three problems, which might need immediate attention.

Prof. Alemayehu G. Mariam | July 26th, 2010

Note: This is the second installment in a series of commentaries I intend to offer on U.S. foreign policy (or lack thereof as some would argue) in Ethiopia. In this piece, I argue that the price of U.S. lip service to human rights in Ethiopia without action is demoralization of the brave and dedicated Ethiopians who struggle everyday against dictatorship and tyranny, trivialization and crippling of efforts to build a strong human rights movement and disempowerment and discouragement of ordinary Ethiopians aspiring to a democratic future.

Zeinab Amde | July 26th, 2010

In today’s Ethiopia, the grip of real power is blurred as a real political system has given way to the rise of a dictatorship that sustains its existence on sheer power, brute force and arbitrary actions.

Under a democratic system, power emanates from the will of the people and no one is attributed with any power that is exercised without the legal framework or outside of the institutions that lubricate the rule of law. Now Ethiopia’s government has increasingly fallen under the rule of strongmen of the security intelligence apparatus (a.k.a. hizb dehnibet) than the rule of law. This is not more vividly seen than in the security intelligence’s awry and disarrayed scramble for power that is traditionally known to have been exercised by the courts, the police, the army or other executive and judicial bodies. Now the forces that make up the security intelligence can make or break anything in Ethiopia in a form and magnitude that has become even untamable to the creators of this apparatus. One source describes the intelligence’s building muscle and growing influence as the lions in a zoo that had gone astray and uncontrollable to the political leadership that created it.

Abebe Gellaw | July 26th, 2010

Live Aid, which celebrated its 25th anniversary earlier this month, was conceived after heart wrenching TV footages of dying children and emaciated adults weeping for the dead, as well as the abhorrent misery they had to face, globally brought into sharp focus the forgotten horrors of war and famine in Ethiopia.

Though it was too late to save nearly a million Ethiopians, who perished with unimaginable indignity during the 1984-85 famine, so many people across the globe reacted with tears and compassion as BBC correspondent Michael Buerk and the late cameraman Mohammed Amin brought the gruesome footages to TV screens across the world. Buerk described the scenes as “the closest thing to hell on earth.”

Eskinder Nega | July 23rd, 2010

Ethiopia’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, this week passed a ruling against Medrek’s legal bid for a re-run of the election in unyielding words:

“No substantial case for a re-run has been presented,” it said of Medrek’s 80-pages long petition; concurring in almost exact words with an earlier ruling by the Supreme Court. This being the end of the legal recourse (but not the constitutional and political recourse), Medrek, rather to the surprise of its supporters, did not even feign an outrage; but in line with its abruptly subdued tone after the election, simply relayed the news to select journalists.

Hindessa Abdul | July 22nd, 2010