How did Colonel Abiy Ahmed seize his opportunity to become Brutal Dictator? What springboard did we provide him to sprung from? -

By Kebede Mammo August 21/08/2020

(Disclaimer: Long post, read at your own convenience)

A Situational/Contextual View of How We Made a Brutal Dictator in Ethiopia

A couple of weeks ago I adopted an old school psychology (Personality/Traits Approach) to describe Abiy Ahmed as an evil ruler emphasizing that he has dark traits at his core with examples of the malevolent behaviors he frequently exhibted in the public office. That discussion was typically focused on Abiy’s personal traits that served as a benchmark for identifying him as an evil ruler.

In this piece, I’ll adopt a modern perspective in psychology that is known as the situational/contextual perspective to look at the situations that served as springboard for Abiy Ahmed to sprung from, and the behaviors of his followers that scaffolded and held that springboard in place as he prepared to take a giant leap to a brutal dictatorship that we are living as of today.

Researches in the situational approach emphasize that a dictator leader in the making elicits maximum performance from his followers through directive behaviors (one-way communication) and supportive behaviors (two-way communication) tailoring his behaviors to his followers’ willingness, abilities and level of confidence with the desire to build and maintain strong relationships with them. With this premise as a theoretical framework, let’s consider some 15 situations/contexts that made strong and well-situated springboard for Abiy Ahmed to leap into brutal dictatorship:

1) His inaugural speech & first day in office: Through his inaugural speech, Abiy unmistakably cemented in the public memory that his mother’s dream of him to become the 7th King of Ethiopia became true, which most of his supports graciously accepted and applauded with few exception of dissenting views that made his remark a subject of few weeks of mockery. On the same day, as he walked into the Menelik’s palace, he boldly showed admiration and nostalgia for the past dictator emperors like Menelik and Haile Silassie I, and that performance of him bought him more supporters from those who regarded him as a unifying leader while the rest of the public chose to remain silent garnering him more confidence.

2) The Bahir Dar Stage Rant about Oromo Nationalism: In attempt to fetch greater support from the Amhara elites through bringing the contending ANDM and the nationalist NAMA supports together, Abiy chose to dismiss the idea of political movement based on nationalist perspective in which he ridiculed the Oromo Nationalism, claiming that Oromo nationalism reduced the Oromo people to a village arena and made them invisible eventhough the available evidences provide contrerary to his claim. While this maneuver yielded him considerable support from the Amhara groups, the greater majority of his supports from the Oromo remain silent with few exception of Oromo elites in abroad. This silence was marked a warmup for Abiy for another game plan or performance.

3) The removal of Lemma Megersa from Oromia and subsequent dismantling of #Team_Lemma. This maneuver of Abiy was considered as a betrayal by some Oromo elites and a book titled ‘The Hijacked Revolution’ was written about it as a signal to warn the Oromo public that Abiy is on the move of hijacking the people’s revolution. Even with this amazing whistleblower’s attempt to expose that Abiy Ahmed is engaged in illicit activities, the majority of the Oromo masses gave deaf ears to the warning and continued rallying behind him.

4) Investing millions in resorting the legacies of Oromo people’s historical enemies: Abiy’s belligerent move of poking Oromo’s injury through glorifying the past dictators like Menelik and Haile Selassie I by making brand new statues and installing it in the national palace was not met with proportional resistance as expected from the Oromo masses despite Jawar Mohammed’s and Lencho Leta’s defiance in which they declined the invitation to attend the inauguration of the statues instead travelled to Annolee to pay tribute to the Oromos massacred by the emperor Abiy chose to glorifying.

5) The training of the Republican Guard and repeated appearance in Military Fatigue: Abiy’s ambition to act as a military leader started with the training of the elite security forces, and appearing frequently in military fatigue to the public though he leads a civil administration, which is contrary to the behaviors of his predecessors who held the premiere position. This behavior was also not appropriately met with due rebuke from the follower masses.

6) The I’m Meles’s son rant at ECA meeting: Abiy’s dream of rigging an election if one takes place, and his ambition to make sure it doesn’t exist was made public during the consultation with opposition political parties’ leaders during which these leaders stressed for fair and free election to take place by mid 2020. Instead of properly address the opposition leaders demand, Abiy resorted to dismissing the urgency of the matter, and bluffed all along by boasting that he’s raised by Meles and well skilled in ballot rigging if pushed for immediate election out of his convenience. Neither the opposition political leaders nor the public met this scandalous behavior of Abiy and he simply got away with it, may be to his surprise!

7) Repeated romanticizing of the Brutal Dictator in the Horn of Africa-Isaias Afwerki:
From the outset, it appeared that Abiy’s excessive bonding with the Eritrean dictator was to solicit mutual solutions to the long standing boarder crisis and reestablish healthy bilateral diplomatic relations with neighboring country. However, it turned out that Abiy was facilitating for vicariously learning the dectorial leadership style from the man how ruled his people with an iron fist for nearly 30 years. This eventually lead to the deployment of Eritrean security agents and elite commandos in the country’s capital to reinforce Abiy’s repressive measures against dissenting voices. Yet, the public lent deaf ears and blind eyes to this treasonous act.

8) The assassination attempt of Jawar Mohammed. Although this incident was instantly met with strong condemnation and wider protests by the Oromo people, Abiy overcame public anger by employing the idiosyncratic talents of the regional president, Oromia police, even Lemma Megersa that the attempt was a mistake and that they could take measures on the perpetrators. The failure to put forth well thought deterrence mechanism for similar attempts from happening led us to further crisis following the plotted murder of our prominent singer, #HaacaaluuHundessa.

9) The rant about smashing Oromummaa and breaking Oromo for thousands years. This was emerged as Abiy’s new strategy to intimidate some junior officers and cadres of the then OPDO/ODP, who showed indifference to his much adored medemer and prosperity rhetorics. Though practically Abiy has no capability to do what he meant to do against Oromummaa and Oromo people, the mere silence of the greater mass to counter his intimidation gave him a false sense of a feared and strong man who smashes anyone who rise up against his way of doing medemer and prosperity.

10) Training of the Oromia Special Forces aka Janjaweed Militias. Abiy’s outrageous move of sidelining the Oromo Police who supported the Oromo people’s cause, and deploying the newly trained Janjaweed Militias to jail, torture, kill the innocent civilians, and vandalizing their properties was not met with strong public protest or condemnation.

11) The define, defame, and destroy propaganda against the Oromo in the name of ‘Shanee’. Jawar Mohammed’s out cry to the Oromo people about this propaganda was not seriously taken from the populace, but it turned out, right in front of our eyes, to be an elimination strategy of any Oromo person or group showing defiance (actual or imagined) to Abiy’s malice.

12)Sponsoring the neo-neftagna group to wage staged and media based deregotary and defamation war against the Oromo. It was through Abiy’s support and under his watch that a group of neo-neftagna supermacists spearheaded deregatory humilation beginning right from the stage in the plalace and in his prescence. This latter grew into a wider media based defamation campaign targeting anything Oromo. Abiy used this scenario as a divide and rule strategy as he forged his path to dictatorship. This disguised behavior was not properly addressed by the Oromo masses, and served as a blessing for Abiy’s callousness.

13) Disbanding multinational parties and installment of one party system. In a major move to single handedly control the country’s politics, Abiy embarked on dissolving the nationalist political parties and traded some buy-in from the peripheries to establish his Prosperity Party. This camouflaging behavior of monopolizing the country’s politics was graciously endorsed by the follower masses.

14) Manipulation and privatization of the constitutional process: Through instrumentalizing the justice system, Abiy extended the national election indefinitely, and prepared himself to rule without mandate. This maneuver was also not met with strong condemnation from the follower populace or the general public, except some opposition political leaders and activists.

15) Huge investment to control the masses through ideologies:
i) The propagation of Menelikian Rhetoric bought Abiy support from the majority of Amhara nationalist groups and Ethiopianist masses.

ii) Prosperity ideology (adopted from Prosperity Gospel) amassed him support from the Protestant religious groups.

iii) The Ilma Abbaa Gadaa Rhetoric (the claim to uphold the Gada democratic values in his leadership) -though gradually debunked-garnered him considerable support from the Oromo masses thereby creating silent majority amidst his brutal and inhumane war atrocities against the civilian and innocent Oromo people.

Therefore, here we are with the brutal dicator named Abiy Ahmed made with the character contents of past emperors, and in the image of Isaias Afwerki!