50 Year Old Uganda and Ethiopia Host of OAU/AU for 50 Years

Public figures in Uganda follow their conscience; Ethiopia is littered with officials and public figures who even take blind orders from a corpse.

Ethiopia and Uganda are east African countries.

(UGANDA) - Uganda is a 50 year old independent African country unlike Ethiopia that has been hosting the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and African Union (AU) for five decades while enjoying her own thousands of years of “independent” history.

Ironically, Ethiopia has no independent institution which is equally inhabited by independent minded people who refuse to be bullied by the establishment.

While Ethiopian Kangaroo Courts condemn dissidents to long term imprisonment, Ugandan courts dismiss politically motivated charges to the extent of scraping draconian or anachronistic legislations as unconstitutional.

While the so-called Ethiopian parliament always rushes to endorse the whim of the dictatorship by ejecting MPs of the ruling party who dare to show dissent as well as lifting their immunity like it was done to Seye Abraha & Co. and recently to Junedin Sadoo who fled to Kenya, no such thing is possible with the parliament of this tiny country that’s been hosting me for the past six years.

A case in point is the dismissal of the request of the ruling party by the speaker of the parliament, Honorable Rebecca Kadaga, herself member of the ruling party. The ruling party chaired by President Museveni expelled four members of its own who were also elected as MPs.

It requested too that parliament do the same by ejecting the “rebel” MPs from the august house. Unfortunately, the Honorable lady speaker said, no joke is possible in the parliament she presides, and therefore decided to retain the MPs as per the wishes of their constituents.

While public figures in the 50 year old Uganda follow their conscience and exercise their authority independently notwithstanding some setbacks, Ethiopia the host of a 50 year old OAU by contrast, is littered with officials and public figures who even take blind orders from a corpse.

An Ethiopian Social and Political Commentator Exiled in Uganda. Email: kiflukam@yahoo.com

Kiflu Hussain is an attorney based in Uganda. He says his passion for writing came from reading, and that it’s inevitable that the more one reads, the more one develops the urge to write. Kiflu has published articles in Ethiopia on the English Reporter, then a weekly newspaper along with a few Amharic articles on the defunct Addis Zena. It was after he and his family found refuge in Uganda, that he began contributing writings to the local papers and various websites such as Daily Monitor, Uganda Record, The New Vision, Ethioquestnews, Garowe Online, WardheerNews etc.

The reason for this is clear. Ethiopia, despite being a seat of the African Union had never produced a regime that allows even the minimum space for dialogue that other people in Africa enjoy so naturally. So Kiflu's ending up as a refugee in Uganda is a blessing in disguise for it accorded him with the opportunity to write. He says at the same time he learned, unfortunately, that his refugee status would be what showed how deep the hypocrisy of the “international community” goes. We at Salem-News.com are honored to carry this gentleman's work and we hope that in the process, western people may come to appreciate the struggle of refugees throughout the world.

You can write to Kiflu at this address: E-mail;kiflukam@yahoo.com