A
New Year celebration is not a simple marker of the end of the old
year. The New Year comes with great hope and anticipation on our
part for better opportunities and fulfillment than the previous one.
It is a crucial moment to set our resolutions and wish list
that reflect our priorities for the New Year.
Thus,
it is with great fear and trepidation, but also with great hope,
that, we, at this Website present our Ten Resolutions for the Year
2006 herein below. We are thankful to the millions of visits and
hits to our Website by our readers, and for the chance you gave us
to serve. We aspire to continue our patriotic, loyal, dedicated
service to the people of Ethiopia with our Website and all other
means. Thus, herein are our Resolutions:
Resolution One: To make sure all Opposition leaders and other
political detainees are released from prison without any
precondition or pending charges. To help heel the wounds of all
victims of all past and present oppressive Ethiopian governments. To
encourage young Ethiopians to get involved and take up leadership
positions in Ethiopia�s economic and political life. To bring a
degree of compassion between warring political groups, and to remind
all political organizations the fact of our undeniable
brother/sisterhood because it is only our enemies who will benefit
from our conflict and cruelty to each other.
Resolution Two: To fight the current insidious hate mongering and
threat against a segment of Ethiopians of one particular ethnic
group (Tygreans) by some supporters of Mengistu Hailemariam, former
Red Terror participants and leaders of the defunct Workers Party of
Ethiopia, some reneged individuals whom we have identified as former
Meison and EPRP supporters, some leaders from the now defunct EPDM,
and possible insurgent �Eritrean� government agents, and all
other narrow minded ethnicists. These groups and individuals are
using as excuse the violent and oppressive government of Meles
Zenawi in order to condemn all Tygreans of disloyalty, of betrayal,
and of looting the Ethiopian national wealth. In order to promote
their own agenda to grasp power, such subversive anti-democratic
groups of disfranchised megalomaniac individuals and destructive
groups are using their support and membership in the Opposition and
particularly the good names of some of the honorable leaders of CUD.
[One can read some of their hate filled messages in chat groups on
the Internet and hear their call-to-arms in radio programs.] We warn
such individuals and groups that what they are doing is illegal
under international law and practice and subject to prosecution by
the International Criminal Court (ICC) other than the fact that it
is a threat to the continued existence of Ethiopia; we will take the
necessary steps to insure such criminal activity is not going to
create civil war in Ethiopia.
Resolution Three: To challenge all secessionist political
organizations that are based on ethnic identities whether in the
organization of the current Ethiopian Government or in the
Opposition. We promote democratic principles and universal
suffragette in order to bring about the formation of political
parties and organizations based on economic and political programs
and not on ethnicism or religion.
Resolution Four: To promote equality of opportunity, equality of
justice, equality of cultural development, and equality of identity
among all Ethiopians. Especially to promote the human rights and
dignity of Ethiopian females through education and special programs
designed to promote the protection of young girls from early forced
marriages, genital mutilations and other forms of mutilations, and
all other negative cultural practices.
Resolution Five: To promote Ethiopianness and commitment to the
territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ethiopia. To promote the
development of well-organized and well-equipped national military
forces. In addition, to promote social cohesion, tolerance and
understanding among all the people of Ethiopia.
Resolution Six: To promote new economic policy that will help
develop the natural resource of the nation. To help towards the
elimination of foreign aid program that has crippled Ethiopia from
standing on its own feet, and to that end to give all priorities to
rural development.
Resolution Seven: To
promote a new education policy that is universal in approach solely
designed to benefit the economic, political, and cultural
development of Ethiopians.
Resolution Eight: To fight for the total elimination of the HIV-AIDS
devastation and other pestilence that has scourged Ethiopians for
decades. To help bring about comprehensive health cares for all
Ethiopians.
Resolution Nine: To bring about better relationships between
Ethiopia and all foreign governments based on mutual respect, and
equitable economic and respectful cultural relationships. To be
vigilant how We Ethiopians in the Diaspora are treated with dignity
to our person and respect to our human rights and identity.
Resolution Ten: To bring about a change of leadership of the current
Ethiopian government through peaceful means. To promote the crucial
concept that legitimate political opposition is not about personal
or group enmity or hate or a fight to the death, but a peaceful
process to win the voice and approval of Ethiopians in order to
serve the people of Ethiopia in the best possible political,
economic, educational et cetera programs.
Note From the Artist:
�The Ethiopian�
I
painted the �The Ethiopian� in 1970 in my senior year at the
Faculty of Law, Haile Selassie I University. The
idea for the painting evolved over several years, which goes as far
back to my early years at my beloved Woizero Seheen Comprehensive
High School. [Seheen is the best school that fertilized, enhanced,
and fully provided me, as a young restless and adventurous boy, with
a rich and diverse program the equal of any around the world. We had
music and art programs, drama and debating clubs, and an academic
and vocational training with modern Biology and Chemistry labs,
technical drawing facilities, and a great faculty that included
teachers even from South Africa who opened our eyes to the plight of
our African brothers and sisters under the Apartheid system of
Government.] There are sketches of heads of people in my portfolio
at that time that were the prototype leading to the final studies I
made for the head of �The
Ethiopian.� The last model who paused for �The Ethiopian� was
a farmer, with an illustrious past who fought as a boy of seventeen
in the defense of Ethiopia in 1935 against the Italian Fascist
aggressors, my family member from Seyo, an area north of Dessie
about thirty miles in the escarpments of one of the great mountain
ranges of the great Rift Valley.
�The
Ethiopian� is my interpretation and my admiration of all the great
warriors of Ethiopia who fought almost everyone in the neighborhood
and some even from afar to preserve our independence as a people for
thousands of years. It was also painted just after a short trip I
took to Gondar and Lalibela, wherein Ethiopian history took a real
dimension of people and marvelous places that came alive from the
pages of history books I had studied. It was also a time of great
turmoil in the life of students at HSIU, period of student
demonstrations for change of government challenging the old Emperor
and his Cabinet of Ministers. It was also a time of painful
realization of our national humiliation, a period that famine in
Wollo crept into the consciousness of the student body at HSIU. In
short, it was a time of confusion and doubt about the value of
Ethiopia itself, and as a consequence the pseudo Marxist student
leaders in speeches trashed our history and political pamphlets
written and distributed by underground movements at all campuses of
the University.
In
a way, I painted �The Ethiopia� to assure myself that the
history I love of the great heroes of Ethiopia remains intact as a
beacon to point the direction of our future no matter how much we
protested against the Emperor and his government. Not all of my
�revolutionary� friends liked the painting; some challenged me
that I was deep under my skin a traditional �Nefitegna� who is
simply glorifying a class interest of the aristocracy and the
nobility of Feudal Ethiopia. The obvious fallacy of such criticism
was the fact that I did not choose Emperors such as Tewodros,
Yohannes, or Menilik et cetera, who are larger than life figures in
Ethiopian history, but a simple farmer-soldier as the embodiment of
the great virtues of Ethiopians. Of course, I had also very many
defenders including the art historian Esseye Gebre Medhin, art
connoisseur childhood friend Yilma Adamu, and a number of prominent
student leaders of the time who saw in the painting a universal
appeal to all people of courage not just bracketed to glorify a
feudal order. In fact, it caused a healthy debate among students and
in the public. What I tried to depict is the heroic, the courageous,
and the high moral character and the pride of being an Ethiopian not
just a depiction of a particular segment of the Ethiopian society.
To hundreds of thousands of people who saw the painting in the
original or in cutouts from Shell Calendars, �The Ethiopian� is
still a force of nature, primordial, captivating, and romantic.
The fact of the matter was that �The Ethiopian� was
supposed to have three more companion pieces I was going to paint
that would have gone some distance to give a more accurate picture
of Ethiopia as I appreciated our marvelous and heroic history.
More
than ever, we need now symbols that may help us navigate through a
political tsunami that is threatening to drown us. I thought, in our
present time of turmoil, which is almost similar to 1969-70, the
time period I painted �The Ethiopian,� in order to reassure
myself the continued existence of Ethiopia and appreciate our
wonderful history of struggle and survival longer than any
civilization on Earth, I thought sharing �The Ethiopian� as our
Christmas and New Year goodwill offering to all our brothers and
sisters in Ethiopia and in the Diaspora as a timely homage to our
past and a beacon to our future. END
Tecola W. Hagos, December
20, 2005
|
