Ethiopia- End of Ancien Regime

to affect the APC's frame of analysis. In the avid tract which is the government, the Agricultural Prices Commission was perhaps one of the few corners where unvarnished truths were in the habit of being spoken out. The integrity of analysis and expression which the A PC has demonstrated over the years could well have been emulated by, for example, the Planning Commission, It now seems that all is over bar the shouting. Evidently, the Agricultural Prices Commission has also become a victim of the pervasive defeatism; its latest report is a repudiation of all it had endeavoured to set up in the past. It suits the government to keep the Commission where it is, to use it when it serves its own purpose and to ignore it when it does not. But those who constitute the Commission owe it both to the nation and themselves not to play the government's game. At this juncture, they can serve the cause of both their conscience and their professional conviction by abdicating rather than by surrendering. At any given moment, there will be no dearth of lackeys to say what the government will want them to say. But why should the APC, of all bodies, contribute to this sorry spectacle?