Äthiopien

[Schneemann]

Recht interessanter Artikel über den auch international - auch von der deutschen Presse - vormals hochgejubelten "Polit-Sunnyboy" Abiy Ahmed, den äthiopischen Ministerpräsidenten (und Träger des Friedensnobelpreises). Zu Beginn (2018) als Reformer und Demokrat hofiert, entwickelt er sich seitdem und vor allem auch im Kontext des Tigray-Konfliktes zu einem Menschenverächter und skrupellosen Machtpolitiker sondergleichen. Und auch obwohl seine Reformvorhaben quasi über Nacht von der Agenda verschwunden sind, hat er aktuell bzw. im Juli mit seiner EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front) einen großen Wahlsieg eingefahren...

From Nobel laureate to global pariah: How the world got Abiy Ahmed and Ethiopia so wrong

(CNN)​​ - "Abiy, Abiy," the crowd chanted, waving Ethiopia's tricolor flag and cheering as the country's new prime minister, dressed in a white blazer with gold trim and smiling broadly, waved to a packed basketball arena at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, part of a whirlwind three-city tour of the United States to woo the diaspora. It was July 2018, just three months after Abiy Ahmed had been appointed leader of Africa's second-most populous country, and his star was rising both at home and abroad. [...]

In less than two years, Abiy has gone from darling of the international community to pariah, condemned for his role in presiding over a protracted civil war that, by many accounts, bears the hallmarks of genocide and has the potential to destabilize the wider Horn of Africa region. [...] Critics say that by blessing Abiy with an array of international endorsements, the West not only failed to see -- or willfully ignored -- those signals, but gave him a blank check and then turned a blind eye. "Soon after Abiy was crowned with that Nobel Peace Prize, he lost an appetite in pursuing domestic reform," Tsedale Lemma, founder and editor-in-chief of Addis Standard, an independent monthly news magazine based in Ethiopia, told CNN on a Skype call. "He considered it a blanket pass to do as he wishes." [...]

Abiy's appointment had been intended to quell tensions. Instead, his drive for a new pan-Ethiopian political party sparked fears in some regions that the country's federal system, which guarantees significant autonomy to ethnically-defined states, such as Tigray, was under threat. [...] This July, in the midst of the war, Abiy and his party won a landslide victory in a general election that was boycotted by opposition parties, marred by logistical issues and excluded many voters, including all those in Tigray -- a crushing disappointment to many who had high hopes that the democratic transition Abiy promised three years ago would be realized.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/07/afric...index.html

Schneemann.