Former military general also made a surprising entrant
Melaku Fenta, the former director general of the Ethiopian Revenues and Custom Authority, who has been imprisoned for five years in what was widely seen as political manipulation coming from rival leadership clique of the governing party has come to join central committee member of the Amhara Democratic Party (ADP), one of the constituent parties of EPRDF. Melaku, 50, had spearheaded the country’s tax reforms and now has room to make a name for himself on the political stage.
The son of a farmer who had risen to serve in the country’s civil service for over 24 years starting from an expert level with the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs to becoming minister of the tax authority. He has been credited with, among other things, obliging party conglomerates, EFFORT and TIRET in the taxation system, something that put him at loggerheads with some powerful politicians. On May 2013, he along with two dozen people was thrown into prison on charges of illegal trading and tax evasion. He was locked in solitary confinement on several occasions, allowed only 15 minutes sunlight per day and was permitted limited visit, as he told the Reporter. His life was seen as that of an honest man caught up in the cogs of fate; his trial was a demonstration, in the words of a newspaper columnist, of not justice but of political power.
Melaku was finally freed on May following the decision by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Melaku’s march to get his life back by keeping himself busy, speaking at conferences and several media interviews about his time in prison and his reinstatement into the party’s leadership is seen as vindication against some members of the ruling party who jailed him, including Bereket Simon who was dismissed from the central committee membership of party and role in Tiret Corporate, an endowment fund under the party. “Melaku is a decisive figure. I have followed this man for many years, a patriot without fanaticism with a strong love of peace, honest who despises corruption. Truth triumph at last and now he is free and he has retaken his place at the top of Ethiopian politics,” Mesele Adane, a former Walta Information journalist who is now running promotion and printing company, Sora said.
Another unexpected entrant who was welcomed to the central committee is former military general Asaminew Tsige, who was arrested on May 2009, and reduced in rank and stripped his decoration for allegedly plotting to assassinate high-ranking government officials. He was freed nine years later on February 23 as part of the release of political prisoners by Abiy Ahmed’s administration and he was made to retire with all benefits, his titles reinstated. ADP’s decision to include him in the central committee is seen a defiance message to the old TPLF guards who threw him into prison and still continue to deride him. “I am eternally grateful for the people who been calling for my release. Now I am proud to serve them, listening to their plight and their concerns. The Amhara people have many unanswered questions,” Asaminew told an interviewer after the election.
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