The Blame Game Does Not Work

Along the way, some of our politicians, intellectuals, and commentators seem to have latched on to the silly idea that with enough negative commentary, they can mobilize a political force to fulfill their aims! "If we criticize Abiy enough, we'll get people to take action against him or he'll be forced to change,", they say.

Well, we have seen over 27 at least that this patently does not work. There was ample propaganda against the TPLF, and yet it was not because of this propaganda that people resisted and revolted. They resisted mainly for one reason - Tigray/TPLF favouritism that they experienced and perceived in their everyday lives. Note, that they experienced and perceived in their everyday lives, not what they were told by opposition media and politicians. Every protest, voiced and silent, was against this 'Tigrean domination'.

When the 'great change' came about, the change agents were not opposition politicians or media, but from within the EPRDF. This amply illustrates how weak the Ethiopian nationalist opposition was (and is). Even after 27 years, it had not mobilized into a powerful enough force to become the main change agent.

One of the reasons for this was the silly strategy of focusing entirely on the 'blame game' on negative propaganda about the TPLF, and completely neglecting the necessary task of mobilizing a powerful Ethiopian nationalist party and/or civic organization. This resulted in no one working on the task of mobilization, an extremely difficult task at that, and no results.

Unfortunately, even today, most of our politicians and commentators are stuck in this same old mentality of focusing on others, this time Prime Minister Abiy, the ODP, OLF, NAMA, etc. Yes, some of our intellectual class have come to understand that we have to focus on our own agency, but these are still few and far between. But this cannot continue like this. Things must change. A powerful, well-funded, and mature Ethiopian nationalist organization is a sine qua non for the survival of the nation, and as such deserves our full attention. Politicians, intellectuals, and commentators, I urge you to stop the blame game; I urge to stop blaming everything on 'others'; and I urge you to dedicate yourselves fully to the task of mobilizing Ethiopian nationalism.