Siye Abraha's Groundbreaking Tour of the United States

Laeke Gebresadik

January 26, 2008

I attended the meeting called for all Ethiopians by Ato Siye Abraha that was held on January19 in Seattle, Washington state.

I am not writing to heap praise on Ato Siye or expound on his speech. Though people have been reluctant to give him the recognition, he deserves for all sorts of trivial political reasons, his accomplishments are glaringly powerful to hide, and he does not need any praise or endorsements from anyone. On the other hand, if we are going to embrace him for the good of the country, we should also recognize his contributions.

I am rather tempted to write about what really transpired in that meeting from a perspective of my own personal experience. Upon contemplating about the meeting later in my drive alone a few hundred miles back home in the blanket of darkness, I started to realize some profound changes were taking place. The reception Ato Siye Abraha received was nowhere close to the fanfare the CUD leaders have experienced. There were no people lined up with what looked like a decorative plastic fern plants imitating olive branches, like in the pictures I have seen offering the CUD leaders royal reception. The message Ato Siye was able to send across was most fulfilling and more profound than any display of superfluous treatment he could ever endure. The reception which some of us attended in honor of Ato Siye after the meeting was low key, very cordial and sincere. He was always surrounded with well-wishers and there were evidently many curious minds trying to get to know him more. His speech was cut short half way prematurely by the organizers due to timing issues denying us the opportunity to hear all he had to say.

I could see the terrible toll that his physical body has taken due to the injustice his captors inflicted on him during his imprisonment, but his speech was emitting this remarkable determination, honesty, and integrity. I remember over six years ago when he said he will make it through, when his political enemies dragged him back into prison for the second time from the street in Addis Abeba just a few hours after he was free on bail. Even then he made quite a few followers on the street protesting his arrest.

Showing the survivor that he is, for there was no meaningful political campaign from outside to help him regain his freedom, he mad it through. His release after a long and lonely struggle that he and his family were innocent, no matter what his political enemies did to keep him locked up in prison was not an ordinary case with no consequences. It is a great triumph over his enemies.

In many ways, he was a victim of the unfavorable public perception of him and his party members in the TPLF that he did not get the support he should have to pressure the EPRDF regime to secure his release. It still is heart wrenching to remember what many of the TPLF leaders have said in public on issues of relations with Eritrea and others. Their arrogance and ignorance was endless. Their arrogance bred more ignorance and what followed over the years is where we find Ethiopia now. The public�s unfavorable perception of the TPLF leaders as a whole and the subsequent indifference to his imprisonment proved to be a serious political miscalculation. Some even sought vengeance and expressed pleasure upon his imprisonment for ethnic political reasons. We have seen how other prisoners like Dr. Taye Weldesemayat, Professor Mesfin and Dr. Berhanu Nega, and then the CUD leaders got their freedom under public pressure. Needless to say, the ousting of him and his colleagues from power by the core TPLF group led by Meles-Sibhat and later his arrest paved the way for tyranny. Only the drama of Siye�s endless court appearances helped him build his case in the eye of the public. Though it is a shame that some justice had to be found in the injustice of all that for his freedom to be true, may be that is meant for him to go through the ordeal to serve his nation at the worst time.

What did Siye Accomplish?

Demolishing ethnic barriers-, He spoke eloquently, nothing like a slick politician trying to dissipate the lingering question on his role as a former official of the EPRDF. I found it quite a treat to listen to a very sincere man who put such a difficult and complex mission before any political agenda. He was able to engage his audience with his most important mission of demolishing the ethnic walls that, no doubt, Ethiopians themselves helped the EPRDF build around them. After all, Siye did not go to the EPRDF and plead to do away with its divisive ethnic policies. Instead, he came to ordinary Ethiopians and challenged them to do it themselves as the first step for dialogue and nation building. A few of the participants congratulated Siye of the meeting as the first of its kind of any Ethiopian political gathering drawing individuals from many ethnic groups. The voluntary association and candid atmosphere that the forum has created is unprecedented in Ethiopian politics. It truly was groundbreaking and trend setting for the reason that a former high-ranking official of the regime in power could take the responsibility to openly admit his mistakes and plunge himself back into the turbulent and lethal Ethiopian politics in what amounts to nation rescue mission. As many of us would realize, Siye made it clear to his audience the risk that he is taking is most dangerous and that he has nothing to gain personally.

What the meeting clearly demonstrated was that the most amicable Ethiopians who could one day walk to a meeting like this were not entirely extinct in the Diaspora community. I am sure many of the participants were people who have lived in political distress for many years due to the daily life of depressing news from Ethiopia , wide spread ethnic animosity and infighting. Many of the people like myself came to this meeting, not only to listen to what Ato Siye had to say, but with the clear intention of giving their support to start a movement for a change. Siye succeeded in demolishing the ethnic walls paving the way for this new movement. 

Cultivating political culture of trust and accountability I found the answer and question session particularly interesting in bringing out into the open the Ethiopian political psyche that made its way into society since the rise of factional politics in the 1960s. Some started to pull him apart from opposing directions with seditious statements and questions that they never meant to ask. In spite of that, EPRDF supporters were in good hands to be in their best behavior with a police watching from behind, born and brought up in a democratic nation. The indomitable Siye responded forcefully to the EPRDF side, �I founded the TPLF, I am the TPLF�; and equally to the other side, �I was with the TPLF, so what?�

After telling someone about the meeting that I attended in Seattle, he asked me what Siye�s motive is in holding the meetings. I could not understand what motive there could be after all the political drama that led to it. His question exuded the suspicion and mistrust deeply rooted in ethnic politics. His question is also about the culture and politics of secrecy that we know. Why would Siye Abraha be more suspicious than Hailu Shawl who broke up the CUD into two pieces and never asked about it? Siye is going to be treated as a special case and he is going to need to work hard to build trust among all Ethiopians by allowing himself to be scrutinized and remove the irrational suspicion. He will also have to invite and encourage people to do so not to exonerate himself from unfounded suspicion, but to teach people that it is a legitimate political practice in democracy.

Ato Siye acknowledged in his speech how important trust is. In the end, Siye was able to establish good relations with his audience as the first step of building trust by making himself accountable for his past mistakes. He reminded the people to work constructively from what we have left and not destructively in throwing away everything and start from scratch. His campaign was very effective in hammering the same message all the way from Washington DC to Seattle . That was very important in reassuring to the people his commitment to his cause of normalizing ethnic relations and tolerance for any change to happen.

Leadership- If there is anything seriously missing in Ethiopian politics, it is good leadership. Tackling Ethiopia �s gargantuan problems take more than political leadership. It takes honesty, integrity, sheer determination, and courage, including putting your own life on the line. We have not seen those qualities since Emperor Yewhans and Alula Aba Nega. Only they could manifest these qualities. None of the traitorous leaders in power could be born with these traits. National sovereignty is not to be negotiated under any circumstances and it is the one that has been gravely compromised by the people in power. While Siye has many of these qualities as a true soldier and general who led his army to victory on many fronts, his last engagement with Eritrea surely has helped him regain his lost sense of national sovereignty. He said he lived in conflict with his TPLF friends and the scandalous border conflict with Eritrea was, as he put it, �the straw that broke the camel�s back�.

Besides the sovereignty issue with Eritrea , Siye was clearly disturbed by the ethnic political division and he warned that it could disintegrate the country. The Diaspora Ethiopian community is known to be the most vocal and powerful political force wasted in ethnic bickering than in any meaningful political engagement. CUD followers could not scrutinize their leaders during their tour in North America to differentiate the good from the bad. On the other hand, Siye went under scrutiny during the meetings, which he needed and helped him to come out as a strong leader.

The meeting was a defining moment for his qualities of leadership. Siye Abraha could easily move and fill in the huge leadership gap the CUD leaders left behind. Even though, Judge Birtukan, the CUD vice chairman, was very courageous and dignified to openly apologize to the Tigray community members on behalf of her organization for the ethnic animosity and hatred they are subjected to by some section of CUD members and supporters, it wasn�t the priority of her organization to bring the deeply divided Ethiopian communities together. It is a revelation of a serious weakness of the organization which probably is one of the sources of the conflict among the general CUD leadership from early on. Its supporters were oblivious even to the fact that the organization was dying on the reception table in a foreign land in the hands of the organizers. Since the CUD could not bring itself to such high standards, it was directly or indirectly contributing to the worsening ethnic political conflicts. Siye single-handedly managed to start a movement of cleansing the Ethiopian communities abroad of the most corrosive ethnic politics, isolating the ethnic extremist elements on both sides of the power struggle in the process.

I also found Siye Abraha light years away from his former colleagues in terms of the kind of leadership this country is going to need. I am saying this after reading Arena�s communist manifesto (political program) as well as listening to interviews given by its leaders Ato Gebru Asrat and W/ro Aregash Adane.

Siye�s mission was a resounding success. It is doubtful, however, if such meetings could be replicated to make the groundbreaking association of all Ethiopians a sustainable political culture abroad and at home. It is to be seen if Siye will have freedom of movement within the country and abroad to continue with the mission of ethnic understanding and reconciliation. Will his political enemies leave him alone to fulfill his duty to his nation?

For any comments, the author can be reached at [email protected].