While Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi may insist on his country's booming economic performance, the evidence speaks differently, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam. With the International Monetary Fund (IMF) strangely indulgent of the Ethiopian financial institutions' statistics, the picture is one of glaring exaggeration and inaccuracy that does a huge disservice to the Ethiopian people, Mariam concludes.

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has damned a recent report by the US Department of State into the country’s human rights practices in 2009 as ‘Lies, lies and implausible lies’. Alemayehu G. Mariam imagines how Zenawi might respond to a sample of the findings included in the document.

While many respected sources have raised serious concerns about the health of Ethiopian political prisoner Birtukan Midekssa, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi alarmingly continues to insist that her situation is one of 'perfect health', writes Alemayehu G. Mariam.

A recent report by the Carter Center’s observer mission to Ethiopia’s 2005 national elections provides a unique academic opportunity to learn how an election is stolen, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam. But carrying out the perfect theft is not a task for the faint of heart, says Mariam. Beyond the essential qualities of cunning, audacity and brutality, Mariam shares here the five basic principles an accomplished thief will need to understand, master and apply in order to ‘steal an election in broad daylight’.

With Meles Zenawi comparing the Voice of America (VOA) Amharic radio service with the infamous Radio Mille Collines in operation during the Rwandan genocide, Alemayehu G. Mariam argues that the Ethiopian prime minister should apologise. Such outrageous, nonsensical accusations represent nothing more than an attempt to divert attention from the recent aid-for-arms scandal, Mariam stresses.

Sir Bob Geldof may not wish to believe recent BBC reports alleging the misuse of famine relief funds in Ethopia in 1984, but, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam, he needs to ‘face the truth’ that ‘aid is stolen and diverted for…corrupt purposes in Africa everyday’. The famine that needs to be cured, argues Mariam, is the ‘famine of democracy, justice, accountability, transparency, rule of law and human rights.’

Two former leaders of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front have alleged in a BBC radio programme that the TPLF leadership – which included Meles Zenawi – used millions of dollars earmarked for famine relief in the 1980s to buy weapons and enrich themselves. ‘The facts are plain to see,’ writes Alemayehu G. Mariam, ‘We know now that these thieves did not stand for the people of Tigrai at the critical hour in 1984. They sure as hell do not stand for the people of Ethiopia today.’

Anticipating Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's departure from office is much like waiting for Samuel Beckett's character Godot to arrive, Alemayehu G. Mariam writes – it never happens. Zenawi's preference for mud-slinging over logical debate in the face of criticism means everybody gets covered in mud, Mariam stresses, and merely underlines his administration's determination to rule according to its own greed and fear.

Ethiopia is the site of a scandalous trade in child trafficking, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam, in which agencies and the Ethiopian authorities conspire to permit the 'harvesting' of local children for adoption abroad. The Ethiopian government must honour its commitments under international law, Mariam stresses, and put the protection of its children first.

While Ghana appears to be taking steps to make its natural resources sector transparent, accountable and open to public scrutiny, Alemayehu G. Mariam sees Ethiopia slipping further the other way. Mariam understands Ghana’s background in the sector is by no means clean, but he believes the very different attitudes of its new presidency should be an example to Ethiopia and the rest of Africa. He finds Ethiopia instead shrouded in secrecy over its farmland and borderland deals with Sudan.

Deeply unimpressed with embassies' inclination towards silence, Alemayehu G. Mariam implores foreign officials to speak out in the face of the Ethiopian government's human rights abuses. Suspicious of the 'veil of diplomatic anonymity', Mariam argues that remaining silent while activists like Birtukan Midekssa are kept locked up simply amounts to complicity.

Alemayehu G. Mariam reflects on his evening at Ethiopian musician Teddy Afro’s concert in Los Angeles. In Teddy, Mariam sees more than a talented young musician, for ‘it is plain that [Teddy] does not sing just to sing. I really believe the man sings for one reason only: He is hopelessly in love with Ethiopia.’ Mariam describes a zealous crowd and a passionate scene, where a musician has the power to bring Ethiopians together and ‘revive’: ‘he is that strong steel bridge that spans the generation and geographic gap among Ethiopians.’

In the wake of the Ethiopian government's objections to the conclusions of the

Alemayehu G. Mariam attacks the common concept that economic democracy must be achieved before abstract political rights. Mariam holds that this ‘democracy before democracy’ notion is rooted in Kwame Nkrumah’s dangerous legacy of one-man, one-party rule designed to ‘avoid genuine multiparty democracy’ and buffer personal power. Mariam warns African rulers following Nkrumah’s ‘political formula’ that ‘Africans want Africa no longer to be the world’s cesspool of corruption, criminality and cruelty.’ Ghana is today, Mariam argues, ironically the best model of democracy in Africa. He concludes that in contrast to beliefs that economic needs precede political rights, Africa wants genuine multiparty democracy now.

Ethiopian politics needs to reinvent itself if it is to offer the country a coherent and convincing alternative to the current culture of oppression and corruption, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam. ‘Reinvention’, argues Mariam, is ‘a multi-step process whose ultimate aim is to cultivate a true democratic civic culture shared by all Ethiopians.’

As famine and hunger envelop Ethiopia, Alemayehu G. Mariam asks why the alarm is not being sounded. Instead, with Ethiopia’s leaders flatly denying the existence of famine and the international community hiding behind the jargon of ‘food insecurity’, Mariam sees a predictable pattern to Ethiopia’s history of responses over the last four decades: ‘Always too little, too late’.

On the one-year anniversary of her imprisonment by Ethiopia’s Zenawi government, Alemayehu G. Mariam pays tribute to political leader Birtukan Midekksa, ‘an ordinary woman irrevocably committed to the rule of law, freedom, democracy and human rights’. ‘The dictators are not afraid of Birtukan,’ writes Mariam, ‘but they are terrified of what she represents: Ethiopia's bright future.’

Sharing the faith and optimism of the imprisoned political prisoner Birtukan Midekssa, Alemayehu G. Mariam stresses that Ethiopia's future is in the 'hands, hearts and minds of its people, not in the tea leaves read by the experts'. The battle for Ethiopia's future will be one between 'future-makers' and 'future-takers' Mariam contends, victory in which in the makers will defeat the takers' efforts to oversee a continuation of the past.

Despite earlier combative language involving 'walking out' of the Copenhagen climate conference, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's heading of the 'African delegation' in Copenhagen resulted in nothing more than mere 'servile on-looking', writes Alemayehu G. Mariam. Roundly criticised by representatives from organisations such as the G-77 and the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, Zenawi's 'leadership' simply facilitated developed nations in discarding Africa's needs in the battle to tackle climate change, Mariam stresses.

Following the forced closure of the Addis Neger newspaper, Alemayehu G. Mariam condemns the concerted assault on Ethiopia's free press perpetrated by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government. Saluting the commitment and success of the publication's staff and those working in the country's independent media as a whole, Mariam stresses that Ethiopians owe their compatriots in the free press a debt of eternal gratitude.