Ethiopia sack senior official over qualifying gaffe

The Ethiopian Football Federation sacked its general secretary on Monday after the African nation admitted fielding an ineligible player in a World Cup qualifier, a gaffe likely to cost the team three points.

In a raucous meeting, Ethiopian football’s governing body voted to sack Ashenafi Ejigu but rejected the resignation offer by vice president Berhanu Kebede, who had previously been blamed by the body for the mix-up.
Some members of the football association and journalists at the meeting called for the whole management to be sacked.
Sahilu Gebremariam, the federation’s president, said he was likely to submit his own resignation in an upcoming election for seats in the body’s executive committee.
“This was a massive blunder so we all should have resigned,” he told Reuters. “But we have responsibilities ahead so we voted to stay until September.”
Ethiopia’s 2-1 win over South Africa in Addis Ababa on June 16 had given them an unassailable five-point lead in their group and place in the final phase of African qualifiers for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
But hours later, world governing body FIFA said it was investigating allegations Ethiopia had played suspended midfielder Minyahile Beyene against Botswana on June 8.
Minyahile had been booked twice in previous matches and World Cup rules state a player who receives two cautions in the qualifying campaign must serve an automatic one-match ban.
He was shown a yellow card in the 1-1 draw with South Africa a year ago and again in a 1-0 win over Botswana in March.
Ethiopia, who have never qualified for the World Cup finals, are expected to be docked three points meaning a place in the final qualifying round will be up for grabs in Group A.

TIME OUT (Ambassador Imru Zelleke)

by Imru Zelleke (Ambassador)

The above title is not for me I am way past my time out, having lived through three generation, with a fourth beginning its journey. Hence, sharing some reflections on the past and the present may be timely. For the past eight decades our country has gone through a traumatic journey whose end is still to come. At this point in time I believe that we have reached a critical point, where the future of the nation is in question. Particularly, when external forces, including a large Ethiopian Diaspora, have assumed a major role in our national life. Globalization and rapid communications have shrunk the overall environment in which we exist transforming radically all previous paradigms.
For Ethiopia all these changes have not come peacefully and without pain; they occurred with extremely violent quakes and upheavals. First was the brutal Italian invasion that disaffected Ethiopia from its quasi pastoral middle age existence. The occupation of the country with a huge army equipped with modern arms, airplanes, thanks and poison gas; Italy’s large scale massacre of the people and of the burgeoning educated class, brought profound changes in all aspects of the country’s life. The post liberation period dedicated to re-establish the state on modern foundations had also its own problems, it required a radical transformation of thought and behavior of the leadership. Although the reconstruction and modernization of the governing system was successfully achieved, it failed to satisfy the overall developmental level the country had reached. Moreover, the changes that occurred in the last four decades during the revolutionary era, and that of the following Ethnocentric regime, have brought the country into the most virulent and vicious internal crisis in its history.
Governed subsequently by two predatory regimes, a. the first introducing an ill digested political ideology, b. the second adopting an ethnic based federal structure, with a monopolized central power in the hands of an ethnic cabal. Consequently the country has been reduced to the lowest standard of Human Development, in spite an enormous infusion of foreign financial and technical aid. The opposition to this lamentable and corrupt governance has been numerous but ineffective. Not for lack of good intentions or lack of heroic sacrifice, even though a whole generation lost its life and went into exile in the process. It is said “that the way to hell is paved with good intentions”, this might be the case with our country were many trials for good governance have failed, and we have fallen into such disgraceful conditions.