For Opponents, WHO Director General Nominee <PERSON> Represents Ethiopia’s Repressive Government · Global Voices
Dr. <PERSON>, Minister of Health, Ethiopia, speaking at the London Summit on Family Planning in 2012. Photo by Flickr user UK DFID. CC BY-SA 2.0
Some Ethiopians are fiercely campaigning against <PERSON>, Ethiopia’s candidate to replace <PERSON> <PERSON>, as director general of World Health Organization, just a few weeks before member states are set to vote on the final three candidates.
<PERSON>, a former Ethiopian foreign and health minister, along with Pakistan’s <PERSON> and the UK’s <PERSON> are the three director-general nominees who made the cut from a larger pool of candidates in January.
<PERSON>, who is running a well-funded campaign, is considered as a prime contender in the race. His candidacy was endorsed by the African Union, and just last week he picked up an endorsement of <PERSON>, the UK’s former international development secretary.
However, he is facing unrelenting opposition from his own citizens.
Ethiopians who feel marginalized by their country's government are campaigning hard against him online, arguing he should not be elected because he represents the interests of Ethiopia’s autocratic ruling elites and not the people.
The irony is beyond tragic. The person who is responsible for the crimes against humanity in #Ethiopia is running for #WHODG! #NoTedros4WHO
— <PERSON>@kiruskyy) April 28, 2017
They have set up online petition pages against <PERSON> and produced a documentary film detailing what they consider to be his failures and his alleged mismanagement of funds while he was Ethiopia’s health minister.
<PERSON> presided and participated in the biggest financial corruption scandal of misusing Global fund in Ethiopia. #NoTedros4WHO
— Amsalu (@AmsaluKassaw) April 28, 2017
They have organized Twitter campaigns under a hashtag #NoTedros4WHO to organize conversations surrounding the topic. To make his Ethiopian government profile at the top of the public’s consciousness, his opponents have share detailed research that accuses <PERSON> of inefficiencies, misreporting, and exaggerations of his achievements when he used to serve in Ethiopia.
One of the images that have circulated against <PERSON>, showing his face with an X over it next to the two other candidates. Shared by Twitter user <PERSON>, amid fears that the campaign might diminish his chances, government groups are also running a parallel campaign supporting his candidacy. They have downplayed the opposition as unpatriotic, mean-spirited and trivial jealousy.
Since April 2014, a popular protest movement in Ethiopia has challenged the government, which has responded brutally. 960
According to Human Rights Watch, at least 800 people have died, and thousands of political opponents and hundreds of dissidents have been imprisoned and tortured. Since October 2016, authorities have imposed some of the world’s toughest censorship laws after it declared a state of emergency.
The role of ethnic politics
Some of <PERSON>’ detractors say they oppose his candidacy because of his alleged incompetence. But a big part of what drives the fierce opposition to <PERSON> is the logic of ethnic politics.
<PERSON> holds a Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham in community health. He studied biology at Asmera University before he completed a master’s degree in immunology of infectious diseases in London.
When people hear his name, as qualified as he may be, his opponents associate him with a repressive Ethiopian government that has killed people, jailed thousands of political opponents, and imprisoned and tortured dissidents.
His meteoric rise to power started soon after he finished his Ph.D. in 1999 when he was tasked to lead the Tigray region’s health department. After two short years in Tigray, he was promoted to Ethiopia’s minister for health by the late prime minister <PERSON>, a Tigrayan himself. In 2012 when <PERSON> died, <PERSON> became Ethiopia’s foreign minister.
Tigray is one of the nine regional states that are federated based on ethnolinguistic compositions.
Over the past 26 years, the Tigrayan elites have taken center stage in Ethiopia’s political affairs, largely due to their control of the military, security and the economy of Ethiopia. Though accounting for only 6% of Ethiopia’s population, all senior positions of country’s military and security and the most meaningful positions in state institutions are packed by Tigrayan elites. This has always been a sore point with the elites of the Oromo and Amhara ethnicities, who together comprise 65% of Ethiopia’s population. 409