Ephrem Endale Contributer
Now that the elections are over and the heavy political air whatever that means, has mellowed it’s time for serious thinking. Looking back one can’t wondering, “Did all these things really happen?” Ours was an election which, maybe for the first time ever, the ‘uninvited international stakeholders’ were so many almost everybody dipped their hands. (And not very clean hands for that matter!) From those who tried to instruct us to postpone the elections to those who prophesized it will be D-day for our country, and perhaps the whole region, it was sort of a game where the whole stadium went after that single ball. Unfortunately, things don’t work that way.
After so many political events some of which weren’t any better that the worst standup comedy, after so much a-dozen-a-dime talk from ‘politicians’ and ‘activists’ who seemed to have been in it for the action and media attention, after the Armageddon talk of foreign ‘experts’ ‘politicians’ ‘International correspondents,’ ‘commentators’ and the whole lot of them we’re here on the side of the river. Hello! Aloha! How are you guys over there doing? Don’t you think we deserve some thumbs-up! And while we’re at it, what’s the next agenda? Come on, be good sport and give us prior notice as to the next ‘point of attack’ just the whole show would be more interesting.
Back to our own guys, we don’t yet know the full results; but given the bits and pieces that keep coming our way, it seems you guys are not doing that good. Ok, just a minute, before berating us for ‘political ignorance,’ for being ‘aliens to the democratic culture’ and for having been fooled (What a word!) by the other sides I’ll tell you a couple of things we the ‘masses’ have been talking about! I mean truth be told some of you shocked us at the eleventh hour at some things your members have been saying in public.
All of a sudden things sounded anything but politics! How insane do you think we are to applaud such massages which do absolutely nothing to national reconciliation and in fact frustrate all the effort being done. What! And all this time we thought they were genuinely serious! One thing was sure even as Election Day was drawing closer they’ve been doing their homework. And not doing homework is not a sign of brilliance! Some innocent souls were saying that maybe your guys saw the writing on the wall early and reacted. Well, even then that doesn’t make Dracula any more handsome than he is!
Who are we to tell you where and what you’ve messed up! I mean since quite a number of you were on the political Cloud Nine you weren’t open to any suggestion. You weren’t open to new ideas; you weren’t open about your real plans and most of all of you failed to convince us you had any.
Look, most of us out on the streets think modern politics is no more about yesterday. It is no more about the kings and the queens; it’s not about the colonels and the generals of yesteryears who were where they shouldn’t have been; it isn’t about past generations which kept the country intact and yet have their names dragged all over the place! Politics is about today; it is about tomorrow and beyond. That’s where you guys miserably failed. Be good sports; pick yourself up, brush off the dust and live to fight another day.
Your most damaging undoing were the ‘yesterday’ narratives! Yesterday! Yesterday! Yesterday! The sad part is in our politics, unfortunately, yesterday is about hate! It is about throwing mud balls at those who can’t defend themselves. It’s about betrayal of all the sacrifices that have been paid over generations!
‘Tomorrow’ is about hope. To talk about yesterday the only thing you need is mastery of all the negative terms some of which are no different than four-letter obscenities. People want to know how we can free ourselves from the quagmire
we’re in now and move closer to the mountain top; they want to hear about real roadmaps for the future; they want to hear how we can ensure food self-sufficiency and throw away the begging bowl that has been behind most of the abuses thrown at us; they want to know how the loss of life over diseases which have become footnotes in much of the world are to be eliminated; they want to know how we can do away with the hate politics that has been ripping us apart for the past decades and foreign entities are trying to weaponries will be subjected to the dustbin of history.
You know, many in you ranks knowingly, or by missteps contributed to these state of affairs. And what have most of you be doing? Cursing past generations; Cursing! Cursing! Cursing! I’ll tell you what the mother of all curses is… being shunned by the very people you claim to fight for! That’s pretty much the prevailing picture.
Very few of you guys said anything about today and tomorrow; politics is a chess game where the more moves you preplan the better your chances of making your mark; And preplanning demands looking forward. So reclaim your senses, study what have been your shortfalls, draw up plans that can survive governments and only then can we dine at the same table.
The Ethiopian Herald July 4/2021