By Ankob Zuta, Blogger of De Birhan Blogspot
13-08-2011
Let me start with my anecdote.
Last week I was privileged to be a guest at one of my friend’s naturalisation/citizenship ceremony. It was a hilarious event. Liked the whole event, there were many Africans, Asians, Americans and so on who were naturalised on the day. My compatriot friend, being one of them got his EU citizenship via his wife.
What was special about it ? Oh ya what was so special was that one of the words in the wordings of the declaration of fidelity was very extraordinarily attractive. I was saying to my friend that this phrase alone can make you write a thesis. After a short declaration of fidelity, there comes this bombastic phrase. My friend repeats after the judge … says that he will be a good citizen and so on…finally he makes this concluding statement “I undertake to… respect the democratic values”. Wow I loved it. Many European countries have a similar wording of fidelity and declaration for their new citizens. I really loved that statement…EU believes that it has democratic values. I don’t know how many of the newly ordained citizens know the meaning. It is also very democratic and civilised to make one swear in the names of democratic values.
What does Ethiopia’s citizenship fidelity declaration say? Haaaa
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Today’s article spins around the similarities of two grand plans of two states but that are filled with ambition and are similar in their nature of crumbling and adversarial impacts. The two plans are Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and Meles Zenawi’s Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP).
Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia has been since he left University at a youth age of early 20s’s been a Maoist. He was a big time fan of Mao Zedong. His thoughts, ideologies and actions smell Mao, Mao, Mao…. Meles’ party took power in 1991, when Socialism/communism died out in the world and a unilateral international power started to develop. They had to totally shift and act as liberal democrats that believe in the Western principles of democracy and freedom. They became freedom and democracy redeemers, who knew not what it really meant. The Maoists became the new day democrats. It didn’t actually materialise up until today. They are on shaky ground not knowing who to side with (China or America). Fully dilemmatic double standard. I still find Meles’ Developmental plans and ideologies such the Revolutionary Democracy, Developmental State and the GTP of a Maoist origin and inheritance. He is still intrinsically and overtly a Maoist. Especially, I am finding a greater amount of similarity between the Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Meles’ GTP. Particularly that a large scale of starvation has emerged a just a year after the GTP was released. Let me first summarise what the Great Leap Forward meant from Wikipedia and other sources.
The Great Leap Forward
The GLF of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China (CPC), reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern communist society through the process of rapid industrialization, and collectivization. Mao Zedong led the campaign based on the Theory of Productive Forces, and intensified it after being informed of the impending disaster from grain shortages. Private farming was prohibited, and those engaged in it were labeled as counter revolutionaries and persecuted. Rural industrialization, officially a priority of the campaign, saw "its development … aborted by the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward." The Great Leap ended in catastrophe, resulting in tens of millions of excess deaths.Estimates of the death toll range from 16.5 to 46 million, with estimates by demographic specialists ranging from 18 to 32.5 million.[6] Historian Frank Dikötter asserts that "coercion, terror, and systematic violence were the very foundation of the Great Leap Forward" and it "motivated one of the most deadly mass killings of human history.” In subsequent conferences in 1960 and 1962, the negative effects of the Great Leap Forward were studied by the CPC, and Mao was criticized in the party conferences. Party members less economically left-wing like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping rose to power, and Mao was marginalized within the party, leading him to initiate the Cultural Revolution in 1966. The government also plunged the country into a deep debt by increasing spending on the development of heavy industry. Government spending on heavy industry grew in 1958 to represent 56 percent of state capital investment, an increase from 38 percent in 1956. People were mobilized to accomplish the goals of industrialization. They built backyard furnaces for iron and steel and worked together on massive building projects, including one undertaken during the winter of 1957-58 in which more than 100 million peasants were mobilized to build large-scale water-conservation works. Although in theory the country was awash in grain, in reality it was not. Rural communal mess halls were encouraged to supply food for free, but by the spring of 1959, the grain reserves were exhausted and the famine had begun. "Historical developments during more than four decades of Communist rule in China have again and again shown us how the unanticipated consequences of elite policies subverted their attempts at fundamental social engineering," Dali Yang, Assistant Professor in Political Science in the US, writes in Calamity and Reform in China.
Frank Dikotter’s book Maos Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958—1962, is a good reference to read in this regard. Below in the video he dicuses his book.
How about Meles’GTP,
In its first year of catastrphy now , Meles Zenawi’s GTP is very similar in many aspects with the GLF of Mao. Tamirat Yacob on copmfdrafrica.ning.com writes, ‘Achieving broad-based, accelerating and sustained economic growth and hence alleviating poverty has been and is the objective of the Government of Ethiopia’ is the first line that you may read in the introductory part of the GTP. It is the root for the new highly promoted, popular GTP plan and had also been the overarching agenda in the predecessor plan called Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP) (2005/06-2009/10). The next five year’s plan GTP (2010/11-2014/15),carries forward important strategic directions pursued under the PASDEP and expected that beyond maintaining the fast growing economy more achievements in all development sectors are anticipated to be registered, the GTP reiterates.
Its vision in the economic sector is: “to build an economy which has a modern and productive agricultural sector with enhanced technology and an industrial sector that plays a leading role in the economy; to sustain economic development and secure social justice; and, increase per capita income of citizens so that it reaches at the level of those in middle-income countries.” Tamirat reports.
And also the major objectives of the plan, as describe in the document, include
· maintain at least an average real GDP growth rate of 11% and meet the Millennium Development goals,
· Expand and ensure the qualities of education and health services thereby achieving the MDGs in the social sectors,
· Establish favorable conditions for sustainable state building through the creation of stable democratic and developmental state
· Ensure growth sustainability by realizing all the above objectives within stable macroeconomic framework.
Critiques
There have been many critiques of the GTP .
“To double agriculture for the following 5 years, the sector has to grow by 14 %(=70/5). This figure is close to the “high-case” scenario of 14.9 percent overall economic growth target of the country. Given the historical 10% or less growth of the agricultural sector and the focus on economic transformation in the current strategic plan (i.e decreasing share of agriculture in the economy and increasing share of the industrial and the service sectors), Doubling agriculture is less likely ” says a commenter on a Reuters Blog.
The commenter also says “The final big challenge which makes the strategy overambitious is the challenge to increase share of the industrial sector. Ethiopia has no industrial sector to speak of (it stands at 13% of total GDP as of now which is far below the African average). Due to extremely low per capita income and very low saving rate, local investment is not big enough to transform such a large country. ”
What is boo now?
What is booed about the GTP is many fold. Last time I reported that with the ambition of successfully undertaking the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) the Ethiopian government outlined that it needs over a trillion birr to fully realize it within five years from now. Main sources identified are:
1. Foreign development partners/donors
2. Local sources-taxation
3. Diaspora
Will write next time about the strategies used by the regime to pull money from foreign development partners, for now let me say some on the rest two.
- From the Diaspora – The regime plans to use every means to absorb money from the Diaspora including coercive ones that could end up like the Chinese GLF. Last week the regime sent out this news “After listening to all the feed-backs from the Diaspora community, the Ethiopian government has decided to lower the fee paid for the Ethiopian Origin ID Card from $500 to $100 US Dollars. The renewal fee is also set at $40 US dollars!” The card given to Ethiopians who are naturalised citizens of other countries, acts like a passport and gives many privileges and incentives to the holder except voting and running for an election. This Card also called Yellow Card is now being used as a means of aggressive money collection from the Ethiopian Diaspora.”
- Heavy taxation – If one calls to Ethiopia the present cry that he/she hears is the cry of excessive taxation. According to Addis Fortune , the government has envisioned collecting 437 billion Br in tax revenues between 2010 and 2015, states the GTP. Annual tax revenue is projected to reach 127 billion Br by 2014/15, whereas average tax revenue as percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would oscillate around 13.3pc, on average, during the plan period.
Actual tax collection, however, lags behind the plan. The Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority (ERCA) managed to collect 50.8 billion Br of tax revenues in 2010/11. The amount comprises 51.5pc in domestic taxes, and 48.3pc of foreign trade tax and tariff. As compared to last year, which has seen revenues of 43.3 billion Br, it has witnessed an increment of 17.3pc, of which direct domestic tax revenue contributed 10.7 billion Br. Businesses complain being forced to pay half (50%) of their profits as tax.
Therefore
As you can comparatively read above there is a huge similarity between the origin, contents and outcomes of the two plans. Although in its nascent stage, Meles’ GTP is going to the direction of the GLF. I envision that the GTP is leading us to that direction. Although I may also ask myself if the timing of the recent report by BBC Newsnight and Bureau for Investigative Journalism on Aid Abuse in Ethiopia was Malthusian strategy of population reduction by forcing donors to shy away from saving the lives of drought affected in the Horn of Africa, I do also agree that the facts on the video are realities and results of the GTP, that mimic the GLF.
Meles is now in China to attend the opening ceremony of the 26th Summer Universiade, World University Games.He was promised of help to the drought by his best friend, Chinese President, Hu Jintao.
This morning as well on ETV, Tadese Mizan of the Print Media Discussion Program criticised David Cameron's call for social networking services to be shut down temporarily during civil disorder. He and his guest in a tone that sounded as if it was the statement of the Ethiopian regime said that it was a shame for the British to shut down these media of democracy in a country that says ‘is beacon of democracy and protector of freedom of expression ’ the world over. They preferred to applaud China and Aljazeera as good while accusing the UK and BBC of double standards. Saying don’t hound us when we block sites and connections while you were about to do the same against ‘marginalised demonstrators’.
Meles and his ideologues including the likes Tadese Mizan who are the propagandist journalists of the regime are openly siding and supporting China. They are coming out of their closet.
In a similar manner as in China of the GLF, where fake figures of over production were published, the Meles’regime knows too well how to fabricate figures and say we have high GDP. “In a recent paper entitled “In Search of a Strategy: Rethinking Agriculture-led Growth in Ethiopia”, a group of authors found that, according to official figures, Ethiopia had achieved substantial increase in agricultural productivity that even supersedes the achievements of the Asian green revolution. They, however, find in the data no substantial change in input use or technology that seems to explain this. This forces them to request the re-examination of the data by Central Statstics Authority Agency of Ethiopia. Considering the fact that the government appoints strictly party-affiliated people to all offices, and especially to important ones such as CSA’s, it is easy to imagine that cooking numbers would not be that difficult for them.”A commenter opines on Reuters Blog.
This may not save them and be a guarantee though. They need to wake up from their catastrophic GTP that has no political, democratic, social and good governance strategies in it.There has been no media coverage and scrutiny of the Plan so far and this is a sign of the Plan’s foredooming demise.
"Had there been a free press and other institutions of oversight that are commonly found in open political systems, the Great Leap famine would certainly not have attained the magnitude it did," said Yang, who continues to follow events in China through visits there as he develops his academic career in the United States.
Based on the above analysis, I come to induct that the Growth and Transformation Plan is equal to and the same as the Great Leap Forward.
