The Unbearable Lightness of Pardon: Reflections on Birtukan’s Second Sailing Alemayehu Fentaw 10 October 2010 Addis Ababa “… if I grant forgiveness on condition that the other confess… then my forgiveness begins to let itself be contaminated by an economy, a calculation that corrupts it.” Jacques Derrida ************************************************************************* Looking at the blogosphere and papers, the re-release of Judge Birtukan Mideksa, leader of the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party, Ethiopia‟s largest opposition party, from prison on 6th of October 2010 has proven to be a no less potent topic for controversy than her re- incarceration on 29th of December 2008 among pundits and analysts. Although speculation was rife amidst pundits and analysts to the effect that Birtukan would be freed again from Qaliti prison any time soon this year, what contributed to the controversy is the manner in which her re-release was secured. Even if her re-release somehow was expected some way, no one expected that it would come the way it did up until Prime Minister Meles Zenawi hinted at the possibility of re-release and the only acceptable procedure that would secure her re- release from re-incarceration in his lecture at Columbia University on 22nd of September 2010. In what follows, I shall attempt to unmask the motives behind the selection of the procedure that secured her release again and its ramifications on her political career. In so doing, I shall trace the latest decision by the government to release Birtukan for a second time in just about two years since her re-incarceration back to a couple of posts on Aiga Forum in January and September 2010 and link it to the abovementioned hint made in public by the Prime Minister