Meles has received accolades from various sources, especially from western intellectuals and politicians. On the other hand, many Ethiopian observers see nothing redeeming, but malaise, destruction of Ethiopian nationalism, high inflation, ethnic tension, disfranchised people, and a nation lagging the world in all development benchmark.
The accusations by Ethiopians are numerous. He left a country more destitute and desperate than ever, primarily due to his control of every aspect of the economy, nepotism, and denial of access to technology.
He carved a false image abroad, but remained highly detested at home. He created a unique power based on one party dictatorship or Tigrean monopoly of power primarily by pitting one ethnic group against another. Meles era was a lost and miserable two decades for Ethiopia in all aspects not forgetting absence of economic development, absence of national unity that Meles deliberately promoted.
He might appear brilliant for his supporters and some in the West, but he was perceived as an evil dictator and deeply resentful of the Ethiopian state. Meles used brute force at home and a massive PR machine abroad to crowd out the opposition and to hide his evil designs.
Internationally, far too many individuals have become unintentional victim and a party to the Ethiopian untold tragedy. Meles has on his side notables like, Susan Rice, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Donald Levine, Dick Army, Nancy Polesi (via Richard Gephardt), Senator James Inhofe and more.
He has hired who is who in America to parlay non-existing achievement. He has become a modern alchemist, who invents something out of nothing, higher GDP in land of abject poverty and starvation, democracy in land of oppression.
Meles sounded great on many fronts on prima facie; however, further scrutiny turns out that he has been a disaster for Ethiopia in many areas: economy, national unity, social cohesion, and hope for the new generation.
Unraveling his economic system shows it is built on wrong statistics and baked to show an illusion of progress, by showcasing big projects such as the construction of the Nile Dam, which is a gigantic misuse of resource that will unravel sooner or later.
Meles’ era will leave a huge cleavage of cicatrize of a scar that will never heal from the wedges he promoted, from making Ethiopia landlocked, denial of access to technology, and from driving the economy into the shades in his attempt to enrich his clan, with little empathy for the rest of Ethiopia.
Despite Meles’ rhetoric about transforming Ethiopia, Ethiopia was found to be one of the failed states following countries like Somalia, Chad, and others.
Meles besides putting or wasting Ethiopia’s meager resources in projects with no investment merits such as the Nile Dam, a Wind Turbine ($220 million Euro) in Tigre, the Tekeze hydroelectric dam ($360 million dollars) in Tigre, and planned Rails from Djibouti to Mekele, failed to articulate or deploy the most important economic tool, efficient allocation of scare resources, such as capital. This also vindicates those of us who stated that he is leading Ethiopia not only to a failed estate, but close to an economic Armageddon (see Voodoo economics…) at http:www.ethiodemocat.com.
The Index published by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace found that Ethiopia is critically in danger of becoming a failed estate based on demographic pressure, refugee flows, group grievances, human rights violations, uneven development, economic decline, and the continued deligitimization of Ethiopian nationalism. The most vulnerable states next to Ethiopia are Somalia, Chad, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Haiti.
None of these countries had such a flamboyant and arrogant leader like Meles, who brags about a fabricated GDP growth data to keep his wretched rule and continued economic decline of the wretched country.
Though Ethiopia is the birth place of humanity and one of the cradles of civilizations, but for the last four decades, it has been one of the most wretched places on earth with little hope of reversing worst case scenario given the current leadership of the country.
With the arrival of Meles, secessionist and anti-Ethiopian force mushroomed supported by his ethnic federalism disrupting commerce and the natural flow of trade, destroying institutions and promoting ethnic and religious division once in a very cohesive nation.
To stifle further the country’s economic growth, Meles created ethnic blocks like in Apartheid South Africa, thus creating tensions and making commerce almost impossible among some Ethiopians, cutting existing trades’ relations, while Europe was forming the European Union and the U.S. was pushing the North American Free Trade Agreement. In Ethiopia traders or business people, primarily Gurages were massacred and their possession ransacked by ethnic groups aligned with Meles and by his own cronies. In some cases, TPLF cadres used their access to import duty free thus driving the competition out of business or outright denial of licenses or charging exorbitant taxes to put mostly Gurages out of business. To his own credit, Meles clearly stated that the Amharas in politics and the Gurages in commerce as his primary enemies that he has to eliminate to take full control of the economy and the country.
To add insult to injury, he confiscated land and denied access to technology for the majority, except in Tigre where Mekele, Adwa University and Mekele Institute of Technology (MIT) are provided unfettered access and grants.
The advent of Internet and technology as a whole was heralded by some as a panacea to ending not only the economic divide between the have and the have-nots, but also between the developing countries and the developed world. Unfortunately, Ethiopia was left out by design by Meles because Meles was afraid that technology will be used to organize against him by the majority of Ethiopians that he knew detested his dictatorship.
Ethiopia land locked, void of access to technology, void of free market and good leadership was toiling on the brink of economic disaster that will lead to further starvation and famine beyond the current millions being fed by World,
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