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No Qualms toward the Draft Proclamation:
Unadulterated Food Sharing Instinct is Apolitical
Adal Isaw adalisaw@yahoo.com
July 16, 2008
So much has been said about the food shortage problem of Ethiopia, and not surprisingly, conflicting assessments and accounts of the problem have been pervading numerous news outlets. Nothing seems morally repugnant more so than politicizing the problem of food shortage of any magnitude. Deflating, inflating, and negating such a problem is purely political and it is regrettable. For most of us Ethiopians and friendly citizens of other nations though, the greatest intention in our hearts is not mired with politicking but rather with intent to ameliorate the problem itself and itself only
There is nothing political about the unadulterated natural food sharing instinct that we all humans are endowed with. What is political is the choice that we make to go about solving such a food shortage problem by putting our natural food sharing instinct at the back burner. We have a choice, and the choice that we have to make at this juncture is within the humblest nature of our humanity, to detest and throw away the politicking of food shortage problem in exchange for caring and loving hearts.
Show Ethiopia your true hearts not your tears; tears it has that it wants to wipe with caring hands of her children. Let your heart come back to her, not your actless agonizing murmur of politics. At this very moment in time, Ethiopia needs no passion of the kind in the aftermath of winning a sport game or a political election. It needs a passion- the realistic duty bound and responsible participation of its children to keep her a sovereign mother that she is for millenniums to come. Everything else is political-a string or a condition set in lieu of an impending support of food and politics. And, it’s for this reason that I have goose bumps every time an ‘expert’ on foreign aid mumbles sounding as though he is the only savoir of a people.
Unfortunately, ‘experts’ of many NGOs of the world mumble and have not born out of unadulterated food sharing instinct. As a result, their scope and understanding of the food shortage problem in the world is so blurred and self-aggrandizing that, some of them may even impede a country from achieving food security in a short period of time for the sole purpose of staying in business.
Ethiopia’s food shortage problem is not a detached and singular worldly phenomenon; rather, it’s an entangled part and parcel of an international issue of politics and economics on food production, pricing, and distribution. Food shortage problem cannot be solved by production alone, unless adequate infrastructure parallels the distribution of what is being produced amply. Moreover, food shortage problem cannot be solved in any meaningful way, for as long as people inhabiting the earth are incapable of paying the inflated price tag that the holder of the food is asking.
Inflation can be as culpable as protracted drought in bringing millions of people to their knees in hunger. In fact, it is now apparent that, one of the single most important factor to determine the existence of food shortage or lack there of is income or purchasing power of the consuming public. For example, despite the booming economic development that India is registering day in and day out, still, more than half of the hunger stricken populous of the world composes the nation of India for one obvious reason-half a billion Indians are still making so much less to buy the needed food to overtake hunger. Ethiopia is not that different in this respect, although EPRDF is working arduously to correct an economic and market system that allocates wealth in uneven manner. And, unfortunately, no matter how good an NGO’s venture is, NGOs are incapable of fundamentally changing the course of food shortage in each and every country, till a revamp of the world economic order takes place for good.
The deep-seated cause of food shortage problem of the world at large is born out of an asymmetric political and economic relationship that still pervades the international arena of market interaction.
Countries in the South were relatively food self-sufficient before they were colonized by the west. Colonization or interactions with industrialized nations via trade, aid, and investment in least developed countries by Western banks and industries”immiserized” local economies. Those developing nations that overcame poverty and hunger, such as South Korea and Taiwan, were given huge amounts of aid because they were of strategic interest to the Western powers.
David N. Balaam & Michael Veseth
Introduction to International Political Economy
(New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. In., 1996). p. 386-387.
It is this part of the obvious which is always overlooked by many when either an NGO or a seemingly interested and very powerful state immerses itself into the politics of food.
States are literally powerless in exporting their food items, political ideologies, and also their own culture had it not for several institutions who stand to bear the brunt of exporting these finished and unfinished products and ideas for profit. With the exception of few NGOs, many other NGOs are formed for such purposes of exporting ideologies and market ideas without adhering to unadulterated food sharing instinct. Unadulterated food sharing instinct is apolitical and renders to no activism of the sort that is being acted on to change the constitution of what is otherwise a sovereign nation. Furthermore, unadulterated food sharing instinct has no string attached to it and takes no side either in favor or against any political system.
It has been obvious for some time now that, in struggling ‘under developed nation,’ where the power of the state is feeble compare to many multinationals, many NGOs are inclined to act in manners like states and at times more like multinational corporations. In fact, in countries like ours, even a transient diplomat, like Anna Gomez of the west, may become bold and denigrating to undermine the rule of the land and the simple protocol of diplomacy. To share food is one thing; to boss around what is otherwise a sovereign state is the other THING that we Ethiopians are well known to confront head on and WIN big. Ethiopia is not a political and ideological playground for those NGOs who want to share their resources with a coiled string attached to it.
The only true stakeholders of Ethiopia are only Ethiopians. Defying this truth however, we now have many bold faced claims of interest in the affairs of Ethiopia from numerous NGOs, states of differing powers, multinationals, civil societies, and many more organizations. And, by deduction, it is within the national security interest of Ethiopia for our government to ask the obvious and verify the validity of all these bold claims of interest. Where do all these entities come from? Where do they get their money? And under what condition and for what explicit reason are they getting it? Who if ever is to control all these entities if their stated interest is in dire conflict with the interest of the Ethiopian peoples at large?
If the interest of any of these entities is to provide food and food only, then, verifying is not that hard a thing to do. However, if the bold interest of these entities is to engage in money laundering, corruption, and also in political activism as though they are the opposition party of Ethiopia, then, it is a must that our government should put an end to such illicit political activism, money laundering, and corruption by enacting the Draft Proclamation for local NGOs into law. If the bold interest of these entities is premised on purely unadulterated food sharing instinct, they have nothing to hide and would have no qualms with the draft proclamation what so ever.
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