Ghidewon Abay

Potemkin Party Officials (speech at 12th Tana Forum by Director of NSA) are invoking "increasing Red Sea militarization... and its consequences on maritime security" to argue for a "seat on the table for its stabilization". The unhealthy obsession/irony is too palpable to merit elaboration. This regime has been embroiled in, and has become the principal incubator, of the multiple and perennial internal conflicts that have gripped Ethiopia (Tigray, Amhara, Somali Regions etc.) for most of its relatively short incumbency. It continues to host a military base in the Beni-Shangul Gumuz Region in western Ethiopia for UAE sponsored military training camp; main conduit for mercenaries; and for launching Drone attacks against the Sudan. For more than three years now, it has declared an unprovoked war of aggression against Eritrea under the mantra of "sovereign access to the sea" and projection of "naval power" in the sovereign territorial waters of its neighbour. Its destabilizing act against Somalia is another dimension of its delusional pursuit of "regional grandeur" and insatiable appetite for the status of a "surrogate mini-hegemon" under the beck and call of other regional hegemons. This charade has to stop before it entails further regional chaos and turmoil! Time to tell the aspirant "mini-hegemon" to shed these hollow pipedreams and grapple with its intractable domestic agendas. Time to openly pronounce - as the saying goes - that "the Emperor has no clothes".

Reading from a teleprompter on Ethiopia's TV yesterday, the Potemkin Party's Prime Minister disparages Eritrea's economic development, and particularly its manufacturing sector, as "stagnant and in decline" since its independence in 1991. The speech/interview was also laced with his three-year old threats of war of aggression and invasion unless Eritrea succumbs to his delusional projects of "sovereign access to the sea" and "Ethiopian naval presence" in Eritrea's coastal territory; packaged this time round in different pretexts, language, and format. To revert to his disparaging discourse on Eritrea's economic performance and potential: 1. In the past 35 years, Ethiopia was the beneficiary of a whopping 80-90 billion US dollars of international multilateral and bilateral assistance; 2. Ethiopia went through two rounds of WB sponsored debt-cancellation rounds, as well as repetitive financial bailouts from the IMF and other donors. For almost ten years in -between, Ethiopia's dire humanitarian conditions were alleviated by the international community under a customized "social safety net" and other similar "intensive care" financial antidotes. 3. The current regime itself has received over 30 billion US dollars in international assistance in the last 8 years alone. In addition, its tattering economy is being resuscitated by another IMF bailout programme to the tune of 3.1 billion US dollars. 4. And yet, as the figures below illustrate, more than 68% Ethiopians are living under extreme poverty while close to 30 million people require urgent humanitarian relief assistance at this point in time. 5. In as far as the 300 manufacturing plants that the PP leader alludes to, these were old factories built during Italy's colonization of Eritrea from 1889 until 1941. The British Military Administration dismantled many of those factories - including the dock in Massawa - as "war booty" and sold them to other foreign countries. The occupationist Haile Selassie regime, in its turn, dismantled many of the remaining factories and transferred them to Ethiopia especially during the imposed "Federation" period. 6. After its hard-won independence in 1991, Eritrea registered rapid economic growth in the first seven years (WB reports). Imposed wars and unwarranted sanctions thereafter naturally affected the pace and magnitude of its economic trajectory. 7. These externalities have nothing to do with Eritrea's open investment and economic policies and visions. 8. And in any case, Eritrea has the abundant economic endowments (blue economy, extractive industry, educated and industrious human capital, and a civilized culture that celebrates religious and ethnic diversity within robust national unity) to excel and achieve its aspirations of rapid and sustainable growth in a conducive and enduring regional climate of peace and stability. 9. Finally, Ethiopia itself could do much better, extricate itself from debilitating dependency, and use its abundant resources for real development if its leaders abandon sectarian policies of division and polarization that incubate perennial cycles of internal turmoil as well as intertwined acts of regional destabilization in pursuit of delusional and expansionist projects.