Hailu and Lidetu: Dysfunctional Leaders or Proven Lowlifes?
By Dawit Addisu
In a recent piece discussing recent political events in our country, the usually learned Dessalegn Asfaw appears to have missed his target by a wide margin. To begin with, he seems to have been arguing in an obvious vacuum, but more on that later. His piece starts with the benign issue of whether or not the now-defunct Kinjit should have taken Meles’ admonishing orders and joined the essentially pointless Parliament and also taken over the Addis Ababa Administration (implicitly assuming that TPLF would have been friendly to a rival political entity, actually elected by the people, at its door step).
Dessalegn then empathizes with Lidetu, lightly implying that Lidetu was insightful and prescient enough to recognize the psychological makeup of the men from Dedebit to play by their rules. That’s fine as far as it goes, but is isn’t also possible that TPLF – taking advantage of the plurality of opinion in Kinjit and identifying a weak link in Lidetu – simply bought him off, with a substantial cash and a guaranteed parliamentary seat permanently rigged for him. Lidetu’s motives are not known to either Dessalegn or the rest of us, but it’s not unlikely that Lidetu has fallen for the allure of wealth. Dessalegn prefers to blame Lidetu’s actions on a dysfunctional trait characteristic of the culture at large (in this particular case, a possible a grudge for being passed over to a prominent leadership position in Kinjit that he felt was his). In other words, Lidetu was a victim of the wider culture. This may or may not be true, but it inconveniently absolves any public offender as yet another victim of the all-pervasive cultural trait. Personal responsibilities, honor, dignity, sense of shame and the like can thus be conveniently sidelined. Besides, if we ascribe every stupidity, callousness and ignorance that Lidetu and Hailu have shown to national traits, why not absolve the atrocious brutality of Mengistu to these same vaunted traits? Why bother about Meles’ ruthlessness if his actions can be handily explained by the same dysfunctional behaviors (say, he may be avenging the slights that he imagined his forbears have gone through at the hands of a certain ethnic group)?
Some people may prefer not to begrudge Lidetu on his decision to abandon his colleagues when TPLF turned nasty after losing the May 2005 election. Some may think he may have feared for his life given the nature of his opponents or maybe he made a deal with TPLF along the lines suggested above. But – even if we give him the benefit of the doubt – is it likely that his true motive is his stated one: namely, “to fight TPLF from within”? He must have something to show for his “valor from inside”, or does he? The 2008 local “election” must be one for the books: the chances of TPLF winning all 4 million but 3 seats in any meaningfully contested election is like all the next consecutive 1000 births in Gandhi Hospital ending up being triplets! Such results are embarrassing even for Mengistu’s Shengo. Where were Lidetu and his party in all this spectacle?
It’s possibly a stretch, but Hailu’s embarrassing deeds in an earlier time can similarly be explained and it may not have been an isolated incident after all: his over-eagerness to be a member of the dreaded and dictatorial Derg/WPE party. People in the democratic movement must have been unsettled by that embarrassing letter written to Mengistu, but even more so by his rationale: “I had to feed my kids.” – (“I wanted to send my kids to the United states,” may have been a more honest answer, but we digress). True, being a member of WPE shouldn’t be held against him (or anyone) for it was the only legal party at the time, but the nature of his asking (nay, begging) to be in good grace with Mengistu should give people with good conscience a pause. In 2005, his supporters looked the other way because they thought he had redeemed himself in his recent fight for representative government. [By way of a contrast we might mention a mostly self-adulating memoir of a national bank governor at the time of the Derg that came out a couple of years ago. Elsewhere in his memoir, the banker describes himself as an admiring acquaintance of Hailu Shawel, but he also relates a story that, for most of his career, he was trying to avoid being recruited to be a member of WPE until he was unable to refuse the offer given by the party chairman himself.] Make what you will of this, but the way Hailu went out of his way to be in favor in the eyes of the butcher of Addis should tell you a lot about his values and priorities. Similarly, coddling with a savage mind who charged him as a leader of an Interhamwe just four short years ago and was seeking a death penalty on him should say a lot about the person Hailu than some trait of national nature. Again, all these second-guessing of Hailu and Lidetu may be wrong and the examples listed may have been taken out of context, but they are listed here simply to stress that we can exaggerate some factors to reach favored explanations (national traits) while leaving out other possibilities (personal characters).
To push this a little further, does Dessalegn seriously believe that Meles would be willing to sit down, in public, with a committed democrat like, say, Birhanu, or a now-wiser politician who is all too keen to redeem his past misdeeds (Seyee or Gebru Asrat comes to mind)? Of course not! We all know that people like Seeye and Birhanu are too serious about their causes to be bought off by wealth or by closeness to power or some such thing. As far as one can tell, they are for an open society; they are for truly contested elections; they are for a legitimate government, even a coalition, as long as it is governs within the boundaries of accepted norms. Such people, including Birtukan, grown out of the same national traits that brought forth a Hailu or a Lidetu, are persons of character and principle; ethics means something to them. The same can’t be said of Hailu and Lidetu; in any case, their public persona doesn’t show it.
But ultimately, Dessalegn arguments, no doubt very well written and creative fail to be of utility in Ethiopia’s current political scene because everyone including Dessalegn knows that TPLF is not an entity to be reasoned with: TPLF doesn’t have a use for game theory, not when dealing with Ethiopians, anyway. As a woman who recently moved from Addis to the States told me in a conversation on a similar topic, “Are you kidding me? They fought for this [power] for 17 years. Now you think they would hand it over in an election because they feared a popular uprising?” I think her thoughts are as good as any for a description of things as they truly are. Now, we may want to choose to suffer fools gladly, get overwhelmed by clever arguments, and prefer to believe that a semblance of democracy would come to pass in Ethiopia in our lifetimes, with TPLF at the helm, all the while building elaborate arguments on the functions (and dysfunctions) of an incapacitated opposition. But before we get carried away, let’s pause for a seemingly arbitrary fact and scan through a list of dictators now following the time-honored traditions of kings in handing over (or preparing to hand over) power to their children or siblings: Syria’s Assad, Egypt’s Mubarak, Libya’s Gaddafi, Castro, North Korea, and, according to some Eritrean websites, Isayas Afewerki, too, is aligning his son for the reins of power. By the time Meles leaves this earth in his sleep, nearly 50 years after he moved to the most exclusive residence in Addis (if we wish him good health), his daughter, by then a master in the ways of power, would unanimously be selected by the sons and daughters of the current TPLF henchmen to take her rightful throne. Wild speculation? Maybe. Unlikely to happen? Well … let’s wait and see if the likes of Hailu and Lidetu would have some other thoughts…
I believe it is well past time to see things as they are, fully absorb the nature of TPLF, and choose the option that is all too obvious to merit mention. Some still expect a change of heart, a softening, from TPLF. They still believe a possibility of free elections, rule of law, independent courts, non-party military, etc, in TPLF’s Ethiopia. That would be nothing short of miraculous and of course a great delight, finally! But, again, a democratic order enshrined in Ethiopia, with TPLF as a spearhead, is an unlikely as the results of the 2008 local elections to be exactly reversed. In other words, nil. It had taken a people’s revolution to obliterate the feudal system. Similarly, the Derg didn’t give up its grip on power of its own accord – it had to be defeated. The communist parties in China, Vietnam, N. Korea, etc. aren’t too keen to submit to the popular will, even in the very distant future …
However we detest bloody confrontation, deep in our hearts we know that that is the surest (indeed the only) way to end TPLF’s tyranny.
dawit.addisu@gmail.com