Dr. Abiy’s Support Group,
From Agonafer Shiferaw
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have been thinking of my involvement in the group and what I
would like to see through our effort. In
addition, since you have asked for recommendations on what we should propose to
Dr. Abiy in the long run, I thought I would place my thoughts in a draft form for
your comments and suggestions.
I have a very good feeling about this group. That is a group of scholarly, well informed
and concerned Ethiopians who are capable of doing much more than what we are
engaged in thus far. I thank you for
involving me in this process.
One thing that I believe is that there are a lot of support groups
that are emerging all over the world in support of Dr. Abiy, but for us to be
effective we need to be slightly different in how we think and strategize to
find effective solutions. I am confident that with your imaginative capacity
that we can come up with more specific ideas.
Please take this as a discussion draft.
Your input would be greatly appreciated.
The recent social change in Ethiopia by Prime Minister Abiy,
sometimes referred to as the Lema team, is a testament to the role individuals can
play in history. In terms of its impact it represents a fundamental paradigm
shift in political thinking and ideology.
As one European scholar observed and noted, it is indeed a titanic shift
in policy and leadership in the context of Ethiopian body politics.
The implications of such development in our country including the
concept of political leadership, governance and the trajectory of the narrative
of the two leaders, Dr. Abiy and Mr. Lema, by necessity calls upon us all as
Ethiopian’s, including the organized opposition, and the resistance forces
worldwide to think strategically and show greater maturity, wisdom and the
willingness to accept the new leadership of Dr. Abiy and Mr. Lema.
For all practical purposes today, putting aside organizational
affiliation and recent history, progressive Ethiopians and political
organizations should accept these two political personalities as the leaders of
the social revolution and transformation in Ethiopia.
It means specifically that resistant forces, opposition
personalities and parties should merge in principle within the political
leadership structure of Prime Minister Abiy and Chairman Lema of the Oromo
Federal State. Because of the impending
revolutionary and dialectical transformation in Ethiopia. Such strategic and
tactical alliance will isolate the enemy of change and will leave them
politically and institutionally impotent diminishing their capacity to sabotage
the pending social transformation.
By definition, the forces of change and reaction are irreconcilable,
and it is imperative that the forces of change, in an organized manner, must
prevail as the overwhelmingly dominate factor and catalyst for social change.
If our group, the Global Doctor Abiy support group, has a
significant contribution in this process, and are any different than all the
emerging support groups including the existing political opposition, both in
the diaspora and inside country, we must be in a position to articulate and
propose a bold recommendation to Dr. Abiy that would reflect the opinion of the
majority of the Ethiopian people and its political direction.
This is a draft proposal. Your
input, insight and knowledge is needed to modify and articulate the proposal
going forward. In my opinion this draft would begin to make us different from
the rest of the groups showing superior insight and strategic consideration to
contribute.
Therefore, I recommend that the Global Dr. Abiy Support Group (GSG)
propose the following:
1.
The GSG should take the initiative to call upon all opposition
personalities and organized forces to merge, unify and integrate with Dr. Abiy’s
progressive leadership structure and political agenda.
2.
The GSG should call for a nationwide constitutional conference to
call for a change in the structure of governance and political system that
would clearly delineate power, authority, checks and balances; between the
executive branch, the judiciary and legislative branches of government.
3.
The GSG should propose that the new constitution recognize and
guarantee the individual rights of citizens and promote participatory liberal
democracy where leaders are accountable to the electorate and are directly
elected to the executive and legislative branches of government.
4.
The GSG should support the scheduled election, but only after the
current political, economic and constitutional structural system is changed to
address concerns of the influence and the arbitrary advantage of EPRDF and TPLF
as has been demonstrated in past elections.
5.
The GSG should reject the idea of a “care taker government” by the
opposition and allow Prime Minister Abiy’s government to continue with the process
of changing the political system before the next election.
6.
The GSG should acknowledge with the utmost respect the impressive
level of Ethiopian political awareness, consciousness and maturity and their
amazing capacity to understand and analyze the role of government and politics
in their lives and yet their restraint and civility in an overwhelming oppressive
environment.
7.
The opposition personalities, political organizations and
opposition forces should recognize that the fundamental social and political
contradiction of our time is between a small statistically insignificant ethnocentric
group and perhaps 99% of the Ethiopian people.
The new paradigm shift in political thinking and ideology will
facilitate an efficient process for policy formulation, execution, administrative
control and independent legislative initiative.
8.
It is public knowledge that the TPLF retains thousands of armed
cadres in major cities such as Addis Abba, Oromo and Amhara regions. These forces of reaction can at any time
create a hostile and combative condition for Dr. Abiy and the current movement
for social change. Therefore, our group
should recommend the immediate disarmament of the cadre groups and that
security be maintained independent of political party hegemony.
9.
The GSG recommends the creation of an independent commission to
investigate the loss of government assets and property through inappropriate
means including the outflow of dollars (USD) to foreign countries, non-performing
government contracts and development projects and the misuse of budgeted public
resources.
10.
Economic Concepts: Global Ethiopian Diaspora Investment Fund
To
Ethiopianize future investments and to avoid foreign financial dominance while recognizing
the recent announcement of Dr. Abiy to privatize publicly owned assets GSG
should recommend the creation of a Global Ethiopian Diaspora Investment
Fund. It is well documented that these
enterprises have been historically profitable with a great market potential for
expansion in the future.
Consistent
with Dr. Abiy’s announcement of the privatization of public assets such as
Ethiopian Airlines, telecommunications, hotels, energy; GSG should propose the
creation of a $100 million Ethiopia Diaspora Investment Fund worldwide. The details of this consideration should be
developed and left to professional economist and financial analyst both of
Ethiopian origin and American investment professionals to assist us in
determining the legal and financial institutional mechanism.
For
simplicity sake, we take an arbitrary investment assumption.
We
assume that 1,000 Ethiopians worldwide can raise $100,000.00 per person, which
translates to $100 million in cash capital. Hypothetically investors raising
$100,000 would be part of a Preferred investor group with voting rights and
dividend payments. These assumptions are
valid and based on historic Ethiopian foreign remittances which have grown from
$1.9 billion (USD) in 2010 to $3 billion (USD)
in 2014/2015.
The
second alternative investment option would consist of investors investing
$10,000.00 in groups of ten to raise $100,000.00. The overall objective is the ability to raise
$100 million.
The
third consideration is to leverage the $100 million in liquid capital with the
financial assets of the enterprises to be invested to create an additional
global financial line of credit.
11.
Encourage Ethiopians in diaspora to avoid Black market foreign
currency exchange and directly exchange through existing banking institutions
in Ethiopia to mitigate the problem of foreign currency availability for
Ethiopian stability and growth.
12.
GSG should call for Ethiopian town hall meetings across the United
States and Canada to discuss these issues and reach consensus on these or new
ideas to be presented to the Prime Minister when he visits the United States. Meetings
would happen primarily in the East Coast of the United States (Washington, DC),
Los Angeles (Southern California), San Francisco region (Northern California),
Seattle Washington (Northwest United States) and Minnesota.
Thank You
Agonafer Shiferaw
