Development first crowd proven wrong again

Take Inderaw Mohammed Siraj, a 60-year-old Ethiopian opposition candidate who lost a finger after being beaten by ruling-party cadres in 2008. Last year, he says, he was kicked out of a food-aid program funded by the U.S., the World Bank, and the European Union when a local official from his village in a remote corner of northeast Ethiopia told him: “We will not feed opposition members.”

With virtually no opposition representation in Parliament, the independent press and local human-rights groups now closed or under attack, and the prospect of his children begging for food, he has realized life would be easier if he gave up politics.

I have no doubt that the development firsters will go away anytime soon, but it’s good to have examples of why they are wrong – especially from Ethiopia because this country is often one of their main examples.