July 1, 2026
While hitting away at the keys of my lap from my office located around Lafto, occasionally I was peeking at the news bulletin rolling past fast at the corner of my cellphone and a familiar name caught my eyes-Melat Kiros.
I say familiar not in a sense that I know the girl or something but familiar in the context of the news which was broadcasting the outcome of the election in one of the Congressional districts of the State of Colorado.
Naturally the magnetism of a Melat Kiros mentioned even in passing amid a report being filed about American election is unbeatable What made me quit everything I was doing and ponder wasn’t just the victory of a first generation African-Ethiopian-Addis Ababan-American immigrant to win a seat in the US Congress but multiple of other factors. She is under thirty; she is a Juris Doctor; she is a practicing lawyer and guess what? She unsettled an incumbent, a Caucasian, a 15 time veteran member of the US Congress since 1996. Meanwhile we, her compatriots back home, are butchering each other ‘to the last man standing’ over the manner of demarking an administrative County somewhere in the periphery of a country of 130 million strong.
I have come to learn that she has run the campaign chiefly on a pro-choice ticket, something that screeches on my conscience and legal background firmly anchored to the way of life established in the Horn of Africa. Then she is almost at daggers drawn with the policies of the State of Israel, something we could easily relate to. At any rate that isn’t the point. The point is she puts our ethnic capsuled peripheral politicians to shame. Go Generation Z!
I will have to admit it. I borrowed the phrase Peripheral politicians from Gebru Tarek’s book titled “Power and Protest of the Peasantry in Ethiopia”. By all accounts it is a good read; though the period it covers is way back, the premises it advances do hold true to date. In a nutshell, a peripheral political question is incapable of redefining itself as a National all valid class struggle. The best it could do is act as the dress rehearsal or the flashpoint for the enlightened elite driven better organized and well critiqued ideological power struggle.
There is something that makes one withhold or withdraw respect from an ethnic politician, even when one sympathizes with his cause and celebrates his world class intellect. Something doesn’t feel right. Something feels cheap, coarse, primitive and even occasionally creepy. An ethnic politician or activist is like one lodged in a cul de sac- mind and heart that is. You could easily liken him to a dog chained to a pole along a village road, foaming at the corners of its mouth, frenziedly barking at all sorts of motorized vehicles driving past it indiscriminately-woof! woof! woof!!!
I am not being naïve. Woof- woofing has baked tremendous fat injera for a multitude of politicians these past five decades. Oh, yeah I cannot deny too, a good half of them are trying to get it right, though in a halfhearted manner.
The good thing is every ethnic politician eventually matures out of the slimy quagmire even if late in the twilight years of his life. Of course you could easily detect the lingering sense of shame that hangs heavy on their faces. I swear to God I really mean it. You have only to read memoirs of recanting ethnic warriors like Abera Gadisa to get the general idea. I chanced on Abera’s book back in 2020 at a fair around Saint Mary Church in close vicinity of Arat Kilo. To this day I remember my friend trying to wrest the book out of my hand. I bought it anyway and kept it.
Lenco’s book didn’t give me half the perspective Abera’s book had given me in spite of the former’s sophistication and the high esteem of the sponsors. It all begins with the choice of language. Abera wrote his book in Amharic. He has good command of the diction though some of his attempts at originality might have bothered his editors. To this day his Amharic rendition of the English expression-a blessing in disguise– makes me smile happily. God Bless him.
The thing is when politics is defined by ethnicity it goes counter to the general historical trend of the socio-economic evolving of the human race. It is a contradiction in terms to speak of politics and ethnicity in one breath. Let us not forget it, with all its faults, at the end of the day it is the multi-ethnic liberation struggle of Eritrea that had succeeded to secede not the monolithic narrow and tribal liberation movements of the rest of the country.
One thing is for sure. Ethnic politics defies the healthy and natural political renaissance and struggle of competing interest groups to prevail over one another. Instead day in and day out it has to find ‘historical nemesis’ to fight just to stay relevant. It dwells on false myths and reiterates meaningless polemics like ‘going back to the imperial roots’ or something like that.
Bottom-line it remains a peripheral force at odds with itself and the environment even if the leaders are established New Yorkers or erudite Londoners. Afterwards the only thing that keeps it together is the innocent blood spilled for a cause no one seems to have a full grasp of. There is this funny passage in the memoir of Fasika Sidelel. He goes out of his way to ‘extricate’ himself and Co from the rest of the military junta on the ground of not being party to the barbaric extra judicial execution of ‘The Sixty’. The way he writes one would assume he didn’t hear of the senseless butchering of a bunch of elderly statesmen by the Derge when he joined the ranks. Major Brehanu has a different take on the subject. Ruefully as it is he recounts how a non-commissioned member of the Dergue had gleefully gloated saying ‘now that we all have stained our hands with innocent blood nothing is capable of coming between us’.
God Bless.
The author can be reached at : estefanoussamuel@yahoo.com
Editor’s Note: Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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