Market Corrections Are Harsh – A Companion To Borkena’s News Report 

By Teshome Abebe

Succinct Point: Abiy’s self-serving narrative collapses under the weight     of his own record. 

In the recent Amhara Media Corporation interview, Abiy reduces diaspora opposition—once his most enthusiastic base after 2018—to three tidy categories: people who wrongly thought they “owned the change,” YouTube grifters chasing clicks, and a residual group with somehow “reasonable” but inadequately addressed concerns. This is not analysis. It is a deflection from a legitimacy crisis he engineered.

The diaspora’s turn against him is a market correction in political opinion. Early support rested on concrete promises of national unity, an end to ethnic federalism’s divisive machinery, economic opening, and an end to repression. Those promises were tested against results: large-scale conflicts in Amhara, Oromia, and previously Tigray; tens of thousands of civilian deaths; road travel between the capital and much of Oromia becoming high-risk; and a security environment that never stabilized. When the product failed to match the marketing, the market—free of domestic censorship and coercion—repriced the asset downward. That is not ownership entitlement or content monetization. It is called accountability.

The “chameleon effect” is equally obvious. Speeches that once radiated medemer, national reconciliation, and multi-ethnic harmony shift, when convenient, into ethnic particularism, securitized rhetoric, or selective historical grievances. Agreements and contracts follow the same pattern: the other party is effectively rewarded for violation while the government extracts political or military advantage from the resulting chaos. Civic and official honor erode under this style of rule. Institutions that should embody restraint, consistency, and public trust instead mirror the leader’s improvisational, personalist approach. Childish misrule is not hyperbole when policy lurches produce predictable human and economic wreckage while the official line treats criticism as either bad faith or ignorance.

Diaspora information capacity is not a conspiracy; it is technological reality. High-speed connectivity, encrypted channels, satellite imagery, citizen documentation, and multilingual networks allow rapid, multi-sourced reporting that outruns state narratives. Claims that once could be contained inside Ethiopia now face simultaneous scrutiny in multiple languages and jurisdictions. Pretending this is merely “YouTube business” insults both the technology and the people using it to document war, displacement, and economic collapse.

On the Amhara question the record is damning. A former state minister of peace, Taye Dendea, has publicly alleged that Abiy told him, in private conversation, words to the effect of “I’m going to destroy Amhara” , “I am destroying them,” and that the Tigray conflict was deliberately engineered in ways that spilled destruction onto Amhara areas. These are contested, explosive allegations from an insider later arrested; they are not isolated. Parallel documentation from human-rights monitors and diaspora organizations describes systematic targeting of Amhara civilians, property, and institutions under the current administration. When a leader’s own former subordinate attributes genocidal intent, and when the ground reality matches a pattern of destruction, the diaspora’s alarm is not manufactured. It is rational self-preservation and national conscience.

Governance failure is visible in the economy as well. The devaluation of the birr, whatever technocratic rationale was offered, wiped out the already meager savings of ordinary citizens and accelerated the erosion of purchasing power. Layer onto that the political project critics label Oromuma—the prioritization of Oromo control over state assets, key institutions, and decision-making—and the result is not inclusive nation-building. It is a zero-sum ethnic capture dressed as reform. Citizens experience it as partial destruction of economic life and civic equality.

The diaspora does not oppose Abiy because it “miscalculated ownership” or seeks trivial online revenue. It opposes him because the distance of exile grants a clearer view of the gap between 2018 rhetoric and subsequent practice: broken security, ethnicized power, economic predation on the poor, institutionalized dishonor, and statements and policies that treat large segments of the population as obstacles to be managed or worse. Market corrections are harsh. So is reality. Abiy’s three-group taxonomy is an attempt to reframe that reality as pathology in the critics rather than failure in the ruler. It will not hold.

Teshome Abebe, PH.D. a former Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at two institutions, is Professor of Economics and Faculty Laureate.

Editor’s Note: Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com  

__

Join our Telegram Channel: t.me/borkena

Like borkena on Facebook

To submit a press release, send the submission to info@borkena.com

Add your business to Ethiopian Business Listing / Ethiopian Business Directory  

Join the conversation. Follow us on X (formerly Twitter)  @zborkena to get the latest Ethiopian news updates regularly.