BY SIMACHEW ALEMU
Dear readers, last time I tried to discuss the impact of the nature and expansion of the educational system on the development of a nation under the heading of “The bottlenecks of Ethiopian overall development.” It was published on Sunday 14 February 2021. At the end of that article, I promised to discuss the negative impact of irresponsible and non-visionary politicians on the nations’ development.
Politics is a system of leadership and administration and politicians are those persons who exercise and promote their political view on nations and peoples as their political view is right and true. In this regard, most politicians in most developing countries have no broad political perspective that enables the public to climb up to the best development ladder.
Hence, their political view in most cases cannot improve the public life style. Instead of striving to change the life of the public to the best, they become promoters of their own various agendas and involve in different activities mostly having dangerous consequences to the public life and the nation.
To mention a few of their political points of views: some of them have the motto to emerge as wealthier considering politics as business and to achieve this goal they blindly and fully engage in corruption and money laundering activities.
“Transparency international” said that each year 600 billion dollar transits abroad from Africa by African leaders and politicians. To make the environment conducive to their personal interest they are the first to break the laws they have formulated.
Some of them have the agenda to make their ethnic groups supreme superiors on others. Some of them mainly work hard to come into power and rule the peoples towards their political affiliation interest. Some of them work to expand their religious sect doctrines by ridiculing other religions interests.
Some of them make political rallies to take vengeance on their antagonistic groups. Some of them, like Mohamed Gadafi of Libya, dream to rule a continent not a nation. Some of them have the wish to be politicians but do not have even the basic knowledge about the concept of politics.
It is possible to say that all these and other political premises of developing countries’ politicians streamed from irresponsible and non-visionary mentality. Such politicians in Africa and other developing countries usually fabricate different obstacles against the overall development progress of their nations. They push and immerse the nations into the dirty political system of oceans and aggravate the socio economic problems of their respective countries and communities.
Such politicians mainly focus on trivial issues such as linguistic, cultural, religious and ethnic differences that are natural. Their political doctrine emerges from the egocentric mentality which says “me and mine” instead of “we and ours.”
They have taught human differences not humanity; they have taught how peoples can be detached from their social bondage ; they have taught hate and discriminations among communities; they have taught about the local boundaries but not the importance of globalizations; they have taught how communities can snatch their brothers and sisters’ wealth and land and become rich; they have taught how one can harm his fellow persons and damage their lifestyles; they have taught how to conduct aggressions and non-peaceful protests; they have taught peoples how to conquer their neighboring countries and abduct a sovereign nation.
It is quite true that the main cause of African and other developing countries’ backwardness especially post-independence Africa leave alone the interference of foreign bodies, is the existence of such irresponsible and non-visionary African politicians.
It is not untrue that once in history the ex-emperor of Central Africa, Bokasa event was eating children’s flesh. This information was released from a person who had worked as a food cooker of Bokasa after the fall of dictator Bokasa. So the cruelty of some African irresponsible and non-visionary politicians is to this extent.
Therefore, how dare such politicians having such mentalities in Africa and in other developing countries can lead the public to the best socio economic and scientific development? Most African politicians, when they are in opposition positions, promise the best change to the public but when they become leaders they repeat the past devastative politics in the worst form. Forget what has happened in other African countries and try to recall our own recent history in politics.
The military regime had highly condemned the monarchy of Ethiopia that ruled the country for about 44 years. But while it had taken over the state power from the king of kings it has repeated the political mischief in a very dirty way.
It was quite clear that the military regime basically made a great mistake on the economic development of the country by redirecting the economic progress to the socialist command economy.
By doing so, the military government paralyzed the economic progress of Ethiopia towards entrepreneurship and capital development. Next, solely for the sake of its power the regime killed thousands of prominent intellectuals and left the nation behind bars.
TPLF had worked day and night to agitate the Ethiopian people about the worst scenario of the military regime political system while it was an opposition political organization. But when it came to power this group had committed vast crime on the public which cannot be completed by enumerating in this article.
The TPLF politics mainly has smashed out the good social and cultural norms and values of the Ethiopians; even some social groups have been changed into inhuman due to the bad political brainwash; the sovereignty of the nation has faced high risk; the sense of unity and the peaceful co-existence of various communities has been almost in vanishing stage; the history of the country has been reformulated and distorted.
Ultimately, the forerunners of the dirty politics punished themselves in capital punishment after devastating the infrastructures in Tigray and the Tigrian communities’ socio economic stability.
Dear readers, you see how severe is the impact of irresponsible and non-visionary leaders on the overall development of a nation? Africa is a better endowed continent with natural resources than the other world. But unfortunately the irresponsible and non-visionary politicians who were/are oppositions and leaders have continued making chaos on the continent and making the lives of their communities’ miserable time and again.
But we do not deny that Africa has seen a few best persons in politics such as Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Patrice Lumumba of Congo, Julius Nerrere of Tanzania, Nelson Mandela of South Africa and others.
But these a few best African politicians had no sufficient power to change Africa to the best because of various reasons including the political sabotage of the previous colonizers.
For instance, Patrice Lumumba of Congo was assassinated by the political conspiracy of the Belgium rulers. Apart from this some foreign powers still give support and assistance to the rebels against good leaders in Africa.
To conclude, Ceteris paribus, Africa needs to have highly responsible and visionary leaders to break down the iron chain of poverty and backwardness and to become a developed and civilized continent. Because there is no doubt that the role of visionary leaders is a decisive factor in the development of nations.
The Ethiopian Herald March 26/2021
