Are we dull or Our struggle?

Are we dull or Our struggle?


As everyone of us are aware the struggle for the inception of democracy in Ethiopia goes to the last fifty years but we are not going far in terms of achievement why?are we dull or are we myopic to put a decent strategy to achieve our goal?what are our culpits? what have to be done to ameliorate our failures?
In order to discuss these issue we have to look into out history of struggle at phases and their problems attached to,so i will raise so issues and try to put my ideas so that others can discuss on it.
Ethiopians in the last 50 yeears had struggled to overthrow the fuedal based Imperial regime as well the military dictators but end up on Ethnic based dictators who do not want to hear the people as well put visionary democratic government.Besides all thios the same phenomena is growing with all the different government who came to power,that is the pestillence and hunger throughout the nation. To substantiate these one can remember the drought of Tigray and Wollo regions during the last years of the Imperial regime,the 1984/85 catastrophic hunger and drought in the country and now the severely wide spread drought in the country.Why? are we dull or our struggle astrayed by few egoist and selfish governers?
Most Ethiopians think that the catastrophs in the country are the results of maladministration.egoist policy,nepotism and corruption which i also share these ideas but the root causes also lie with in the political structure we have during the last 50 years.So we have to study what have to be done in order to alleviate the pertinent problems in the coutry.
Ethiopian economy being based mostly on agricultural production(85%employment,60%foreign exchange) one has to deal with this sector in order to find some solutions to enhance productivity as well production.The developmental strategies used by the Socialist government as well the now so called liberalgovernment do not set strategies which focus on the rural development and enhancement because these governments are using the land as a means of political tool to facilalte their election as well the sectors strategy is only a symbol to say that we have some written policy but there must be a crucial change in the country if one needs to boast productivity as well feed the escalatinly growing population boom.
If we take countries who were at the same stage of development in 1974 (korea,vietnam,kenya etc)are now moving into self suffiecent or developing countries while Ethiopian isone of the last poorest countries in the planet.Why?The root causes for Ethiopia are multifaceted but the mjor are ill agricultural,educational and health and infrastructural policies.
When i raise these problems as a core issue i do not want to state what the statistics show the per capita of health professionals,teachers student ration,productivity of land,illitracy rate,road per capita etc but what i want to emphasise is the nature of the ministries which are crucial to development and their structural organization,how they function,their budgetary allocation and some facilities availed to the rural population.
Any state has got its ministries and deprtments at all levels but the structural arrangment in Ethiopia is more or less the same as any country because it is adopted from experieces of others and taking experience is onething but copying is where governments are wrong.
In Ethiopia all facilities (budget,cars,school materials,medicines,laboratories,office equipment,personnel,communication equipments) are allocated where there is not actual beneficiary in ministry of agriculture or health,infrastructure or education,that is to say that the minister will have minimum three vechcles(atleast one sedan,two 4 wheel drive)and more than two secretaties(one serving tea/coffee,one transpoting file to and from,one special seccretary for the office) while a person working in the rural areas do not have atleast a bicycle to bring materials from a place where it is distributed or is bought.These are the same with the alocation of budgets and educational/medical supplies as well to students/patients or farmers organizers who are atelast devoting most of their time with the beneficiaries.
The second issue what i raised was ill agricultural policy launched by the now EPRDF as well the socialist government which were till 1991.
In Ethiopia farmers despite they are given the least budgets and facilities are also tenants of the government,that is a farmer can be evicted if the government thought he is against the ruling party or symphasis oppositions or as the priminister Meles Zenawi once put it "we can evict anyone(foreigner)if we hate the color of their eyes. So a farmers always is thinking about eviction so do not invest to plant perrenial crops which can bring more saving to him but focus on annual crops whether the waether(climate) is favourable or not. The other issue related to this is that the farmer due to uncertainity do not invest on technologies to produce semifinished or finished products (added costs) to earn more by putting his labour on products.
The socialist as well the EPRDF government always propagate Agricultural Led Industrialisation as a corner stone policy to launch but in a country where the producer is uncertain to decide what to produce?where to produce?where to sell his product it is a bizzare for the farmer.
Let i bring some experience i encountered during the first years of EPRDF the world bank gave Ethiopia 642 million Dollars for the structural adjustment program in the country what EPRDF did with this money is to buy political parties which are affiliated to them by allocating millions of Birr to political leaders to distribute to its members of which i know 5000000 Birr was given to ONLF(now labeled as TERRORIST by EPRDF) as well import cotton with 12 USD per kilo while closing cotton farms which produce raw cotton to textile factories in the country.
A government with a vision has to restructure the economic activities in due time but one has not replace parastatals(state owned) with parapartatals(party owned corporation)but what EPRDF did is dissolved all the agricultural input distributors and formed regional party owned firms.
If this vicious trend is to continue the people in Ethiopia are in a grave danger to be starved year in year out.
Entwurf