How to know you support the EPRDF.

These are trying times for Ethiopians. And in trying times facts get confused, people get fidgety and governments get that certain… what’s the word I’m looking for… bloodlust.

Don’t be confused, dear Wonqettieer. Here are a few simple ways of finding out where you stand politically and intellectually.

• If your leader has bragged at one point that the elections he held were “not just fair by African standards but by ANY standards” and you believed him… you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If your party claims that it landed a “landslide” victory after losing an election, and you don’t question that logic… you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If your leader goes on the record and begrudgingly admits that there might have been some flaws in the election by proclaiming, “But because of the fallibility of human nature, mistakes cannot be avoided“, and you don’t scoff at him with derision… you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If you find yourself compelled to file things like “The complaints investigation process took place in the context of serious violations of human rights and freedoms…” under “F” for “Fallibility of Human Nature” … you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If you are also moved to file “Context of complaints process did not meet international democratic standards for elections” under “H” for “Human Nature, Fallicies and Stuff”… you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If your leader says, “The victors will establish a government soon and administer the country democratically” while threatening to “unleash fire” on peaceful demonstrators and you follow that logic… you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If one of your leaders’ lackey is quoted as saying, “Anyone who incites violence, other than those elected, will have to face the law" and a big lump of stupid doesn’t get stuck in your throat, you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If you nod wistfully and get vaguely aroused when your leader lobs out slightly psycho-sexual statements such as, “Thus what remains is to consummate the democratic process in a democratic manner”…you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If it makes perfect sense to you that your party first blames the opposition, and then the EU for making it kill 42 people and imprison thousands… you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If your leader does not have the intellectual capacity to understand the difference between an “election process” and “winning an election”, and he vomits his temper tantrum in a tortured letter-to-the-editor that has been ridiculed by most people who’ve finished high-school, yet you write a letter “exalting” praise for it… you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If you just don’t understand that killing people who oppose you is fundamentally, er, wrong… you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If your leader drones on about the sanctity of the Ethiopian constitution, yet he routinely violates at least 3-4 articles in the constitution per day, and you can’t see the glaring contradiction in that … you might be an EPRDF-er.

• Similarly, if your leader hides behind a knee-jerk, pre-programmed “supremacy of the law”, and trite “work peacefully and legally”-type boilerplate sound bites while he breathlessly violates many, many laws, yet you think he is the upholder of freedom and democracy… you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If you like your facts pre-fabed in a “Revolutionary Democracy” lab, sanitized and wobbly against even the most rudimentary intellectual scrutiny, or if you have no problem believing 2 + 2 can sometimes add to 5.6 due to “human nature and fallacy”…you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If something in you tingles with joy even if you don’t quite understand what he means when your leader says,

"If they choose the violent option by disrespecting the constitutional order, there could not be negotiation for the respect of the constitutional system with a force working for instability, a force that refuses to respect the constitutional order."

… you might be an EPRDF-er.

• If you think that frightfully archaic ethnic Bantu-fication of a country is “progressive” in the face of the digital century… you are a serious EPRDF-er.

and…

• If your understanding of democracy and what it means to have a vibrant opposition is summed up by your leader’s contention that:

"If by some reason EPRDF lets these oppositions to participate in the government it would automatically quit development activities and other works and becomes a government of crisis and disputes. Thus EPRDF never contemplates [the unity government] option."

… you MOST DEFINITELY are an EPRDF-er.

Okay, people? You get it now? You know where you stand? You’re welcome!

Oh wait… my most favorite, favorite quote from Prime Minister Meles in this must-read-and-gasp-with-incredulity interview... (I wish I was a good enough satirist to come up with this stuff…)

Asked about the outgoing parliament’s passing of legislation that says only the party that has a 51% majority can bring up items to be put on the agenda, let alone discuss and debate it, Ato Meles pops a potent unreality pill and opines:

The third country that was taken as a model is Germany. The parliamentary and federal system of Germany is somewhat similar with our own. Therefore, it was on the basis of these and other countries’ experiences that the regulation was amended. And the objective is not to limit the opposition. It is to provide the incoming parliament with the conventional practices that those democratic countries follow so that the parliament would become efficient and more democrat in its activities.

I could not make that up if I tried! No. I couldn’t. I don’t have that kind of depth in shallow logic.

Sooo… those goddamn Germans! Ever since that whole Hitler thing, I tell ya…

Errrr… and this, ladies and gentlemen, is the Ethiopian leader at work. Limiting the opposition’s power… what? The Germans (who also divide their nation by ethnicity, by the way—Bavarians vs. Frankfurters--- bitter rival since the 11^th century) do it, and, really, aren’t we more like the Federation in Germany than, say, name me another country that rules through stoking ethnicity and divisiveness. And wasn’t it that waskly wabbit Gerhard Schröder who accused Angela Merkel of supporting an Interwhame, that bastard! Come to think of it, we are just like the Germans—they’re in a stalemate over elections as well, and just today Mr. Schröder warned the Christian Democratic Union that any mass rally against election fraud will be considered an attempt to subvert the German constitution. See? See how we be the same?

(In case you find it interesting, the other countries Ato Meles based this new parliamentary procedure were India and … (ta-da!) Great Britain.)

Seriously, aren’t EPRDF supporters mortified by this, or do they think it’s okay to be led by Ato Meles’ dazzlingly retarded logic? Don't they feel tired of their intelligence being so mercilessly insulted?

Ahhhhhh… who cares? They’ll soon all end up in Washington working for the World Bank.