WHO IS MORE STUPID, AMHARA OR OROMO TRIBAL INTELLECTUALS?

By Koki Abesolome
October 2, 2024

Hi, my name is Koki Abesolome. I am a pen name with a PhD in Philosophy and a penchant for devouring anything by the likes of Franz Kafka and Frederic Nietzsche. My creator/owner, who was recently appointed as a member of Prime Minister Abiy’s Economic Advisory Council and whose appointment to the Council has gotten to his head has decided to silence me. My pen has a lot of ink left in it. I intend to fight the decision because, over the last 30 years, I have developed a name and a distinct brand of my own apart from my creator/owner. I did not ask to be created to start with and I will not go down without a fight.

I ask your indulgence, and humbly demand your civility, to read this article in its entirety before you rant, as I am sure you will. You will have plenty of time to rant until your lungs collapse and your face turns ሐምራዊ. That neither saddens nor pleases me. It is your constitutional right to rant. Thus, shall it be.

In a sort of a subversive way, Ethiopian politics has become a wonder land. It is where the comical is the original, the extreme is the mainstream and the fringe is the hinge of the national political axis. The purpose of this article is to fill a glaring gap in Ethiopian political analysis that the tools of political science have proven too weak to hammer and chisel their way to the heart of the complex conundrum.

Plato’s concept of the state and the Aristotelian logic of politics that political scientists rely on is no good for Ethiopia because it assumes political actors are rational. If you want to understand current day Ethiopian tribal politics that is part stupid and part lunatic, you must exit the Plato-Aristotelian universe and enter the world of nihilists of the likes of Kafka and Nietzsche. Either by environmental disposition or innate tendency encrypted in their DNA, they are masters in the art of navigating through people’s blind spots. To pay heed to their teachings is to learn about people who exist in society’s blind spot. Only they can shed light on the deranged nature of the current day Oromo and Amhara tribalist scholars.

Friends of mine and foes of mine alike, and members of the Ethiopian Googly Goo community, buckle up and allow me to take you on a roller-coaster ride. By the time I am done with you, you will either find yourself enlightened or start talking by yourself, conversing with the voices of the tribal spirits residing in the cortex of your brain.

One issue we will examine in this piece is whether our generation is the cattle generation. Over the last 50 years, the US has seen different generations. The Hippie Generation was known as the counterculture. Another was the Millennial Generation. This is the “digital native” generation that gave us Google and Facebook. Then came Generation Z – the global generation. They are socially conscious and active in climate change and the alleviation of global poverty.

Over the last 50 years, the Ethiopian elite clan has become one extended generation: The Tribal Generation. When the world is going global, our Ivy League educated asses are permanently branded “TRIBAL” with a hot iron, as if we are the cattle generation. What the F**K?

The first title I gave to this article was “Jawar Mohammed: A Carnal Criminal or a Prisoner of Conscience.” Despite my effort to keep it, the question “Who is More Stupid: Amhara or Oromo Tribal Intellectuals” bubbled up to the top of my narrative and claimed the real estate for the head title. Be it so.

Let us begin with Jawar in any case. Jawar is a study in contradiction. One minute he is a demagogue inciting tribal conflict and bloodletting with such statements as “Ethiopia out of Oromia” and “ማንም ኦሮሚያ ላይ ከየትም እየመጣ የሚፈነጭባት ከሆነ ለውጡ ግድ አይሰጠኝም.” The next moment he is a peacemaker in the genre of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, stating: “Open the blocked roads, clean the towns of barricades, treat those who have been injured during the protests and reconcile with those you have quarreled with.”

He is a man who created Qeerroo that became the brand for, and the signature of, the Oromo political force, hanging helpless victims upside-down, hacking children and elders alike with machetes, and burning churches and businesses to the ground. As fate would have it, Jawar ended up being devoured by the tribal entropy that Qeerroo generated through the second law of thermodynamics – a natural tendency to degenerate into a self-destructive chaotic state. He is a victimizer and a victim of his own making all the same – a hero and a villain wrapped up all in one.

Lost in the shuffle is Jawar the genius demagogue and the brilliant tactician living side-by-side with Jawar the juvenile political artist and a stunted if not a still-born strategist. To study Jawar is to study Ethiopian politics with a microcosmic focus through which we can peep into Ethiopia’s political blind-spot to understand the elemental components of our elite clan and converse with the tribal spirit that torments them. Jawar is the answer to the question: What led to the further stupidification of the already stupid Oromo and Amhara tribal politics.

TAKING THE OROMO POLITICAL SCENE BY THE STORM

The Oromo people had legitimate political and historical grievances. Sadly, they were unable to organize a political party that could articulate their grievances and formulate a clear vision with a winning strategy. The OLF was led by individuals who were busy fabricating false narratives and marrying it with a self-defeating, if not embarrassingly stupid politics. What makes Oromo tribalism uniquely spectacular is that its leaders seem to have a downward sloping learning curve.

The worsening grievance under TPLF, the absence of an effective Oromo political organization, and the growing unemployed and restive youth population created the perfect storm for an Oromo demagogue. Jawar Mohammed emerged and filled the gap that the likes of Dawud Ibsa left. He mesmerized the Oromo youth and scholars alike, enraging them with brilliant demagogy one minute and calming them down to wait for further instruction the next moment.

Qeerroo became the institutional force of the Oromo grievance and demand for change. The Oromo tribal intellectuals ranging the gamut from professors Awol Allo to Ezkiel Gabissa rendered themselves as hollow vessels, echoing Jawar’s grievances and tribal bravado. Qeerroo’s high-octane energy led to the emergence of Fanno in the Amhara tribal land. Though nervous about Fanno, Jawar leveraged it to weaken TPLF.

TPLF watched its undoing in a slow motion. It was outwitted and outmaneuvered by Jawar the tactician at every turn. To say that Jawar single-handedly reduced TPLF into a sitting duck ripe for the picking may be an overstatement to some degree, but it would not be a hyperbole.

THE AMHARA PRAYER AND GOD’S VENGANCE

The Amhara tribal land prayed for a leader to counterbalance Jawar. As a punishment, God sent them Eskinder Nega, a random-walking and noisemaking clown doubling as a goon. God doubled down his wrath on Amhara tribalists, sending their way Shaleka Dawit Weldegiorgis, an Ivy-League trained lawyer with sophomoric sophistry, embalmed with formalin solution that is good for an autopsy of a rotten body politics rather than for a resuscitation of a political life.

With Eskinder and Shaleka Dawit, the Amhara tribal politics became an unholy joint project of an Orthodox political zealot and a retired communist. When seen with a wide-angle lens, it gets clearer that Jawar’s success after the collapse of TPLF in 2018 has a lot to do with the utter stupidity of the Amhara tribal political clan.

Jawar was generous acknowledging their stupidity, stating: “Amharaizing the Amhara has been the most useful accomplishment of this change. The Ethiopian mask used by Amhara elites to camouflage their ethnocentric interest has been [a] barrier to dialogue. Now the mask has been removed, real negotiation and discussion is possible.”

An in-depth contextual translation: “አማሮችን ከነ ልሂቃኖቻቸው እንደ ጪቃ ጠፍጥፈን እኛ እንደፈለግነው አድርገን ፈጥረናቸዋል። አሁን እኛ የፈለግነውን ዘፈን ይዘፍናሉ፤ በኛ ሙዚቃ ይደነሳሉ፤ እኛ የምንቅመውን ጫት ይቅማሉ፤ በኛ ኦክስጂን ይተነፍሳሉ፤ እነ ሻለቃ ዳዊትን; እነ ክርስቲያን ታደለን እና እነ ዶክተር ደሳለኝ ጫኔን ለፈጠረ አምላክ ክብር ምስጋና ይደርሰው ዘንድ ‘እስመ ለአለም ምህረቱ’ ብለናል:: አይብረዳቸው፤ አይሙቃቸው፤ አይራባቸው፤ አይጥማቸው፤ ከድንቁርና ጋር የተክሊል ጋብቻችውን የአብርሃምና የሳራ ጋብቻ ያድርግላቸው:: የየቀያቸው ንጉሶች፤ የየውንዛቸው ጠባቂዎች ያድርጋቸው:: አሜን በሉ እንደ ወለዮች፤ እንደ ዱዓ መቺዎች፤ እንደ መጀን አልማጆች።”

Amhara known for its political brilliance, nuance and strategy with a global vision has been reduced to a leaderless camp of cacophonic idiocy trapped into village politics. The time old saying “አማራ ሲጥልህ እንጂ ሲመታህ አታየውም” has given way to an orphan tribe without a head, both literally and figuratively.

Jawar was confident that he had Amhara tribalist fools in his back pocket. In September 2019, he announced that tribal federalist forces will win at least 350 seats, including 180 from the Oromo tribal land, the National Movement of Amhara (NAMA) also known as አብን, as well as the Afar and the Southern People tribal lands. He reiterated his assertion in December of 2019. More on this below.

ABIY AND JAWAR: COURTING IN “EAT WHAT YOU KILL” UNHOLY MATRIMONY

Soon after Jawar helped dethrone TPLF, he declared in a public interview “We have two governments in Ethiopia – Abiy’s government and Qeerroo’s government.” The problem was that the Abiy government and the Qeerroo government could not live in harmony, much less share a throne.

The one led by Abiy is inherently a nationalist government with the belief that “መፍትሄው የኢትዮጵያን የፌዴራል አደረጃጀት ከብሄር ማንነት ማላቀቅ ነው.” The PM is also not afraid to say loud and clear: “አጼ ምኒሊክ ኢትዮጵያን ከወረራ በመከላከል እና ቴክኖሎጂ በማስገባት ኢትዮጵያን ያስረከቡን ታላቅ መሪ ናቸው.” These were neither off-the-cuff remarks nor slips of the tongue. They were intentional demarcations of a line on the continuum between the nation’s tribal and national political space.

Jawar, on the other hand, believes that Menilik is a genocider who has killed 5 million Oromos. The thing about Oromo tribalists is that their lies are of galaxical proportions. Jawar is also adamant that “Multinational federalism engrained in the current constitution is here to stay. It’s not up for discussion, let alone negotiation. Anyone caught in some FANTASY should wake up from their hallucination” (original emphasis).

Way before Abiy became the PM of Ethiopia, Jawar knew his protagonist was the antithesis of the Oromo liberation theology. He did everything in his power to stop Abiy from taking power. Abiy’s tribal linage with an Amhara mother and Amhara wife did not inspire confidence in the Oromo tribal universe. Nonetheless, Jawar saw it fit to embrace the newly minted PM, soon after he was inaugurated. He needed to partner with him to transform himself from an Oromo protest leader to a bona fide political power in Ethiopian politics.

On his part, the PM was fully cognizant that Jawar was bad news to the Pan-Ethiopian movement that he wanted to build. He also knew he needed to partner with him to buy time to tame Qeerroo or find a way to counter-balance it.

The two Oromo protagonists became reluctant partners, each believing that with time he can either weaken the other to a point of willful submission or push him to political oblivion. They also knew that their unholy matrimony can slip into “eat what you can kill” territory. For anyone who is remotely familiar with basic politics, it was plenty clear early on in the game that the PM is a master of multi-dimensional political chess and that Jawar – the king of tribal ገበጣ – stood no chance. አሜን በሉ እንደ ወለዮች፤ እንደ ዱዓ መቺዎች፤ እንደ መጀን አልማጆች።

JAWAR MOHAMMED: A POLITICAL ISLAMIST OR AN OROMO TRIBALIST

Jawar came into prominence inciting tribal tensions and fights, fabricating false stories through the Oromia Media Network (OMN) for which he is a founder and serves as Executive Director. He popularized “Ethiopia Out of Oromia” slogan, presenting Ethiopia as the enemy of the Oromo tribal land.

To achieve his political objectives, he polarized anything and everything. In March 2017 he wrote on his official Facebook: “This Adwa thing should come around every month because it is kind of win-win for both sides. The other side gets high reliving the fictional glorious past rubbing salt on our wound and helping us further unify and mobilize our base.”

The high-octane fool believed that he can wipe out Ethiopia’s history, bleach its glorious past, nullify its pride in its history and reimagine a new Ethiopia with him as the founding father and the Qeerroo as its army of liberator from its dark past. His agenda included fabricating stories to totally repudiate Ethiopia’s distant and recent past history. He sowed hate and polarization to create an army of invigorated Oromo youth to fight for a tabula rasa (blank slate) on which Team Jawar will write the preamble and chapter one of the birth of a new Ethiopia without memory or glory of her past.

Jawar was not content with tribal clashes only. He felt the need to weaponize it with religious animosity. His most dangerous political poison was revealed in a 2013 speech he gave to a gathering of Oromo Muslims. He stated in his signature rhetoric: “My village is 99% Muslim. If someone speaks against us, we cut his throat with a machete.” But his interest was not limited to assert the rights of Muslims where they are majority. His intention was to create a politically engaged Islamic force as an insurance policy in case his tribal politics failed to get traction.

He preached to his audience that they needed to be strong. It is only when you “put political power in your hands that you will protect your economic and social rights,” he enthralled his Islamic audience. He wanted to create an Islamic power within Oromo. When Oromo is strong, Islam will be strong. When Islam is strong, Oromo will be strong, he continued. That, he said, is when they can help their Muslim compatriots to build mosques in Adwa. It is only when they assert their political strength that they can be a role model for Muslims outside of Ethiopia. He was not encouraging them to be engaged in the nation’s politics as Ethiopians or Oromos, but as Muslims. It is an Islamic force that he was trying to build.

When the Guardian raised the Islamic video speech, Jawar denied it, claiming the “clip was doctored.” He told the Guardian that “he would not say such a thing” because his “father was a Muslim and his mother a Christian.” He lied. The video was authentic – www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMLLmAMWdG8

The fool was not content Islamizing Qeerroo. He also wanted to create an independent Oromo Patriarch to weaken the Ethiopian Patriarch. His handpicked Oromo Patriarch elect, Haile Michaiel Tadese, declared in a political rally in Selalie that only native Oromos will be allowed to lead Oromo Churches. You can be a fourth-generation Ethiopian living in the Oromo tribal land and a native speaker of Oromigna, you would still be unqualified to lead a sermon in Haile Michaiel Tadese Oromo Churches. This was declared in public as Jawar giggled, standing behind his handpicked Patriarch elect.

The optics of a Muslim politician working with Oromo tribalists to undermine the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was as important as the intended assault on the Orthodox Christian establishment. Unbeknownst to Jawar and his true believer scholars and rag-tag Qeerroo foot soldiers, the day he tried to politicize religion was the day he planted the seeds of his own and that of the Oromo liberation theology’s destruction. The tribalized Qeerroo became Islamized. It would later use machetes and gasoline to hack and burn not only Amhara Christians, but also Oromo Christians and Oromo churches.

By November 2019, the damage of Islamizing Qeerroo became clear to Jawar and he tried to mitigate the damage. But by then a blend of tribal and religious entropy had taken on a life of its own. Karma is a bitch. As Einstein has taught us entropy is irreversible.

THE GENESIS OF THE DNA OF THE OROMO LIBERATION GRIEVANCE THEOLOGY

In politics, your success is based on your ability to constantly adopt and or regenerate your body politics under different circumstances. The Oromo liberation theology has been around for over half a century. During this time, Ethiopia has gone through a monarchy (led by an Amhara/Oromo king), socialism (led by Oromos – Mengistu and Haile Fida), dictatorial tribalism (led by a Tigrayan) and a reformist government (led by an Oromo). Through it all, the Oromo liberation grievance theology has remained constant and has made Oromo politics a self-defeating phenomenon of eternal grievance and stupidity.

Oromo tribal intellectuals are best approximated by a spoiled toddler whose strategy of getting what he wanted is by screaming loud, screaming even louder when he is told “no.” Oromo tribalists accuse the Amhara for invading Oromo lands generations ago and label them pejoratively as ነፍጠኛ (arm-carrying invader-settlers). In the meantime, they argue Amhara lands that Oromo invaders won and occupied generations ago should be considered as native Oromo lands.

When it comes to forced cultural assimilation, the worst offenders in Ethiopian history are Oromo warriors. After they conquered a new territory outside of their tribal homeland, they killed young men and forced captured women, children and elders to assume an Oromo identity in a mass adoption through a traditional Oromo procedure called Mogassa.

The adopted new members were forced to disavow their forefathers and accept their Oromo adopters as their ancestors. They were forced to abandon their names, languages, cultures and traditions and accept new Oromo names, learn Afan Oromo (totally abandoning their own) and become ‘native’ Oromo, embracing Oromo culture and tradition.

As the famous Oromo Historian Mohammed Hasson wrote:

“The adopted individuals or groups became the ‘sons’ of the gosa (clan) by whom they were adopted. They were now born into an Oromo gosa and became ilmaan Orma. The process of assimilation and Oromization of non-Oromos seems to have been smooth and rapid, and the adoption of Oromo identity by newcomers proved to be total. Thus, today it is impossible to differentiate between descendants of the once ‘proper’ and assimilated Oromo group.”

The definition of Genocide as presented by the United Nations Genocide Convention, includes “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, including forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group.”

By this definition the forced assimilation and Oromization of children of conquered tribes can be considered an act of genocide. Similarly, the act of forced elimination of the cultures and identities of other tribes is an act of genocide.

I understand trying to judge Mogassa from centuries ago with a 21^st century standard is a fool’s folly. The point I want to make is the stupidity in Oromo tribalist’s practice of judging Amhara atrocities from centuries past while presenting the atrocities of Mogassa from centuries past as a reflection of Oromo passion and compassion.

The double standard in Oromo politics has no limit. Followers of the Oromo liberation theology believe that any piece of Oromo land that was taken by Amhara invaders centuries ago must be returned to Oromo, but all Amhara lands that were taken by Oromo invaders centuries ago need to be registered as native Oromo land. Any land where Oromos lived after migration or invasion belongs to Oromo and should be registered in history books and world maps as native Oromo lands. If one follows this logic, China will have a legitimate ground to claim San Francisco’s Chinatown in the United States and Melbourne’s Chinatown in Australia as its sovereign territories. The two towns were established centuries ago.

Ethiopia is currently flirting with a democratic governance under the stewardship of an Oromo leader. All things being equal, in a democratic system governed by of one-man/woman-one-vote principle, an Ethiopian of Oromo heritage will have a better chance than her/his counterparts from other tribal lands to govern Ethiopia. What defies rudimentary commonsense is: why do tribalist Oromo politicians still insist on grievance politics to keep the right to secede in the constitution.

Since homosapiens got tired of roaming planet earth barefoot and established swaths of lands as their country, those in the majority or with the large demography have served as a bulwark for their country’s indivisibility. The Oromo liberation theology is the only known political enterprise on this side of planet Mar that champions a minority agenda of secession while representing the largest tribal population in the country.

In a nutshell, this is the outcome of Oromo liberation theology that is simultaneously stupid and transparently unhinged in a psychotic way.

THE DEGENERATION OF AMHARA INTO A TRIBALIST ENTERPRISE

Since Mengistu Hailemariam, the Amhara and Orthodox establishments have lost their political power and economic base, particularly their land holdings. Nowadays, a notable number of Amhara politicians come with such titles as ቄሰ ገበዝ፣ ሊቀ ሊቃውንት፤ መምህር፤ መሪ ጌታ and ዲያቆን. Do not take me wrong. There is nothing wrong for people with religious title to be involved in political leadership. It becomes a problem when they smuggle religious orthodoxy and tradition into the body politics of tribal theology – a toxic and deadly mix.

The influence of the Orthodox enterprise on the formation and sustentation of Ethiopia’s social, and political life cannot be overstated. In the current tribal environment, when Amhara tribalism and the Orthodox enterprise cross-fertilize, the resulting political undercurrent and ensuing narrative carries elements of potential risk of reimagining Ethiopia as “a Christian Island.”

Regardless whether the risk is real or imagined, the consequence is negative in an already polarized political environment. Even those who were married to communist orthodoxy in the 1970s are now divorced from Marxian internationalism and newlywedded with Amhara tribalism.

There is a grave danger that people seem not to take seriously. Chief among them is an organized effort by Amhara tribalists to make the Orthodox establishment their spiritual heartbeat. The danger is even more serious if the Orthodox enterprise allows Amhara tribalists to make its pulpit a spiritual home for tribalism. I submit that there is no evidence to date that this is taking traction. But the risk exists because tribalism is inherently primitive by nature and degenerative by process and rots anything and everything it comes in contact with.

Those who support the political union of Amhara tribalism and the Orthodox establishment seems to follow a two-pronged strategy. The first is to establish a pan Ethiopian political system. Simultaneously, as an insurance policy, they push for a strong and expanded Amhara tribal land within the current tribal federation.

Add to the current Amhara tribal land areas that have been taken from it (Metekel, Raya, Welkait, and some say Addis Ababa) and Amhara will happily govern itself. Supposedly, the strategy is to build up a strong Amhara within the Constitution that will assert itself to save Ethiopia from the Constitution. At bottom, the strategy is similar to that of Jawar in that the desire is to impose ones will on others. In the minds of Amhara tribalist fools, Abiy who is of half Oromo construct cannot be trusted to lead Ethiopia unless he is willing to implement the blueprint Shaleka Dawit laid out.

The problem is that the seeds of tribalism that dominates current thinking in the Amhara space alienates and polarizes the Oromo. You tell me Eskendir, whose early days political rallies that brandished the bible as a signature item is a movement that was aimed to bring people together within the unifying doctrine and tenets of the gospel and I will tell you to cut your crap.

You can wrap yourself with green, yellow and red all you want and hoist your bible as a symbol of love and unity for the world to see, but the fact remains the Baladera crap has less to do with nurturing a unifying sentiment and more to do with building an anti-Oromo political environment. The group did not use verses from the bible but relied on fabricated lies, falsely claiming Lemma Megersa has admitted that his administration was engaged in Oromizing Addis Ababa. This was pure bullshit. He did not say it and the only thing that the purported evidence the Baladera goons produced showed was their stupidity and hate.

Baladera’s claim that Oromos are taking over our city cannot be sugarcoated as a nationalist movement, despite the futile effort to sign, seal and deliver it as such.

Moreover, there is an attitude among Amhara tribalists who believe “Amhara is the only one that can save Ethiopia.” The statement is quoted from Mamushet Amare, the President of the All Ethiopia Unity Party (AEUP). This is not much different from NAMA clowns who in their early days suggested Amhara is the creator of modern and civilized Ethiopia. Amhara, they say is የኢትዮጵያዊነት ውሃልክ.

Mamushet believes that other than the British, Amhara is the only human civilization that has its own alphabet. There is nothing more spectacularly captivating and colorfully ecstatic than the organic stupidity that tribalist goons tend to habitually display. For those who are not in the know, AEUP is the only party that formed a coalition with Eskinder’s Balderas for Real Democracy crap. And you call Esku ታላቁ እስክንድር! What the living fuck is wrong with you?

For the love of God, tell me that the comical is not the original, the extreme is not the mainstream, and the fringe is not the hinge of the Amhara tribal political universe.

THE CONSPIRACY THEORY SPINNING, SLOGAN MONGERING AND QUOTE SCAVENGING TRIBAL INTELLECTUALS

Intellectuals are supposed to go beyond conspiracy theories, slogan mongering and quote scavenging and be able to see political developments through a strategic lens to understand and reflect on current realities. The Amhara and Oromo tribal intellectuals are busy feeding off of each other’s stupidity. They spend half their lives scavenging quotes from each other to use them as fodder to keep the flame of tribal politics.

For the Amhara tribalists social media quote scavengers, Shimeles Abdissa is the Oromo goldmine that keeps on giving. His “convince and confuse” idiocy and his utterly stupid Irrecha speech were Christmas gifts to Amhara tribalists. It is not that I have not paid attention to the “convince and confuse” story. I have spent a whole one New York second’s attention to it, as it deserves. I have also listened to his Irrecha hoopla and have wept for his stupidity for a total of a nanosecond.

Anyone who has followed Jawar’s Facebook page before he was imprisoned knows that he was an excellent social media quote scavenger. He never missed an opportunity to share stupid anti-Oromo quotes spewed by Amhara tribalists. He was not shy to explain his actions on his official Facebook page that he was “not causing fire.” Instead he was “just fueling a fire lit up by the action and inaction of the political parties and their leaders.”

Both Amhara and Oromo social media scavengers have one primary purpose. That is to present the other side in a bad light. Scavenged social media quotes and slogans are carefully quilted and stretched to link them to the PM or his administration to develop conspiracy theories.

THE OROMO AND AMHARA LANDMINES THE PM MUST CONTINUE TO DEACTIVATE

Governing a country whose political psychology is marred by scars from the past, inflamed with fresh wounds from the present, and cursed with an elite class that has taken refuge in tribal deity and vowed not to be governed by reason or law is no small task.

Jawar’s political strategy is two pronged. On one front he accuses PM Abiy of failing “to develop a clear and consensus-based transition roadmap to save Ethiopia from disintegration.” On the other front he does everything in his power to ensure that the PM will not succeed to build a national consensus.

The narrative that the PM has failed to build a national consensus is the staple story line of the Amhara tribal clan against the PM. The accusation is the matrimonial ring that weds and ties Amhara and Oromo tribalists. They may not agree on the intended outcome of the marriage in hell, but both have a common enemy: The PM who does not bend to their extremist wishes.

Both Jawar and the Amhara tribal clan know full well that in a polarized society having a clear political roadmap up front is a political suicide. The only option available to the PM is to first create and expand a moderating center that can serve him as a buffer to mitigate the destabilizing tug-of-war between polarized and irreconcilable Amhara and Oromo tribal political elites. Building a moderate unifying critical mass is a tall order in a tribalized and polarized nation.

Assume the clear roadmap that the Abiy administration wants to build consensus on is abandoning the current Tribal federation. The Jawar tribal universe would go off its hinge. Conversely, assume, the PM’s roadmap is to maintain the current tribal federation. Amhara tribalists and all unionist forces will not only boycott the call for a national consensus but will also rise up in arms.

Oromo and Amhara tribalists do not give the PM a common area where he can help develop a national consensus. Each of them wants him to enforce their patrician view by decree. Lest he is branded either incompetent or anti-Oromo or anti-Amhara, depending which group is speaking.

The PM could only work with the hand he was dealt with when he took power. He could not invent a political power center overnight to neutralize Oromo and Amhara extremists. He first purged some of the high-octane extremists from his Party (OPDO). The creation of Prosperity Party was a watershed moment in Ethiopia’s current political development.

Soon after the PP was formed, the PM, who is also the head of Oromo-PP, appointed new Oromo-PP officials at a lightning speed to create a new center of gravity in the post ODP political universe. That meant to part ways with his comrade Lemma Megersa, who objected the formation of PP before all Oromo demands are addressed.

One can say PP is a halfway staging station between a hardcore tribal party (ODP) and a nationalist party free of tribal ties. For Oromo tribalists the PM is moving too fast and too recklessly toward a unitary system. Their fear was exacerbated by the PM’s decision to build and inaugurate the Unity Park that fixated Emperor Menilik as a symbol Ethiopia’s strength and unity.

For Amhara tribalists who bill themselves as the vanguards of Ethiopia’s unity, he is not moving fast enough because they see him beholden to Oromo tribalism. The moronic orbit circulating the Reyot and Ethio-360 media solar system tells us that the PM is an OLF mole cloaked in the garb of Ethiopian nationalism. Before you find a way to comprehend the depth and breadth of the stupidity of the Oromo liberation theology, Amhara tribalists push the boundaries of stupidity to a new depth and width.

WHERE THE PM FAILED: A PR COMPLEX TITTERING BETWEEN DEEP SLEEP AND VEGITATIVE STATE COMA

For nearly three years, Ethiopia has been having its ass kicked both at home and abroad by second tier and third fiddle opposition media outlet such as OMN and Digital Weyanie. The PM has done a lot that history will remember him as both strategic and brilliant tactician. Where he failed and failed rather spectacularly is in the PR area both at home and abroad. His Ambassadors and local PR officials are tittering between a deep sleep and a vegetative state coma, with the exception of our Ambassador in France.

For some of us the danger was clear from the get-go in 2018. In June 2018, I posted a blog stressing, the PM needs to give propriety of first importance to a robust communication ecosystem and PR complex more than his economic or political strategy. I said, getting the PR right will make implementing his economic and political policies easier.

At the risk of coming across as pompous, I offered to help the government set up a robust communication ecosystem without pay or government position. No one responded and the Ethiopian political airwaves were taken over by OMN and Digital Weyanie inciting conflicts. At worst, a robust communication ecosystem could have mitigated their damage. At best it could have controlled the narrative.

Unfortunately, some of the PM’s own lieutenants such as Shimeles Abdissa and more recently Taye Dendea are serving his detractors with unending PR ammunitions. It makes you holler: Why do we have unending supply of political fools?

In April 2019, I decried for the umpteenth time in an open letter, stating if there is one specific area that the PM’s administration needs to focus on with a fierce urgency of now, it is setting up an agile communication facility and establishing an effective communication strategy. “Your communication officials need to explain, promote and defend your reform agenda constantly,” I wrote. I added: “Your supporters need to be kept abreast of the progress your administration has made. They need to be inspired by what you have achieved and be made aware of the challenges ahead.” I went further and pleaded: “For the love of God do not leave them on their own to figure it out.”

The PM’s success still depends on his ability to fix his PR and communication complexes. He may wish to start with a mass termination of his communication team. Whether their failure is incompetence or disinterest is irrelevant. What is relevant is they have been in deep sleep if not in a vegetative state of coma.

JAWAR’S EVOLUTION FROM SELF-ANOINTED KINGMAKER TO A WOUNDED PAUPER

As the Amhara political stupidity and Tigrayan intransigence grew to their climax, Jawar felt Abiy was a weakened soul and started issuing political diktat. “As Oromia and Oromo, we need to agree on power sharing arrangement before the election” he declared in a public statement. He assured his audience that the Oromo tribalist force will emerge as the governing party. He boasted that he will help the tribalist coalition win 350 seats at the national parliament to control the agenda of any constitutional reform. In a public stab to the PM, he said “we are not going to let [the PM’s Party] ignore the Oromo interest.”

Jawar’s political power was the perception he had created that he is invincible and that the nation’s stability depends on him as a peacemaker. To show his “indispensable” peacemaking role, he regularly incited conflict with heated rhetorical speeches and subsequently played a peacemaker role to calm things down. This worked like a charm as long as he controlled the outcome of the conflict theater that he authored, produced and directed.

His bluffing would have served him well had he managed to avoid any situation where his bravado would be tested. His political game crumbled in October 2019. He called his Qeerroo followers to save his life after he claimed the government attempted to disarm his bodyguards in the middle of the night to have him killed. Two things happened. Qeerroo got out of control. This was the first conflict he created that he was not able to control. Second, those who protested in his defense were predominantly from Islamic regions of the Oromo tribal land. By and large the Christian region ignored the call.

To show his setback was not a defeat, his followers called a support rally in Ambo. The Ambo rally that was expected to roar like a thunder and overwhelm like a tsunami failed to drizzle, much less storm. It showed the tribal Emperor had no cloth. An Oromo wide protest was called and canceled after it became clear that he did not have the level of support his team was expecting. Jawar became Jawi the clown, like Esku.

THE 2020 ELECTION AND THE VANISHING OF JAWARISM

In several public forums, Jawar told his followers that the 2020 election will be a referendum between tribal federalism and a unitary Ethiopia.

In March 2019, Jawar was confident that he has the power to do what he chose to do. This was made clear in an interview with VOA’s Tsion Girma, where he said he has a well-organized Qeerroo network organized all the way to small villages. He reaffirmed this in another interview that “If [his opponents] want war (“ግብግብ”), all I need to do is incite Qeerroo and tell them let us finish the job.” This came from the man who is on the record that “the government knows” if he wanted to takeover Addis Ababa all it would take him is “is 24 to 48 hours.”

In November 2019, he told New York Times “I will contest, and I will challenge the PM and I will defeat him, there is no question about it.”

By January 2020, two things happened that undermined his confidence to win the tribal v national referendum with 350 seats in the national parliament. First, the successful creation of PP as a pan-Ethiopian party made it clear that his promise to win all 180 Oromo seats was a wishful thinking. The question became how many of the 180 Oromo seats he will win. His hopes of winning the majority of the 180 Oromo seats were dashed during the early days of his campaign rallies.

In late January 2020, his campaign rallies drew thousands of followers in Islamic areas but fell flat in Christian areas of Oromia. In comparison, PP’s campaign rallies drew thousands of supporters in both Christian and Islamic areas of Oromia. The reality became clear that PP was competing well with team Jawar in Islamic areas and blowing team Jawar out of the waters in Christian areas. Meaning PP was destined to win majority seats in Oromia.

The second blow against Team Jawar came from the Amhara tribal land. His 350 seats were calculated adding NAMA (አብን) in the tribalist column. NAMA reformed itself and embraced a pan Ethiopianist campaign platform, hanging Team Jawar high to dry. Somali, the third largest population center, gave the pan-Ethiopian camp more confidence to win majority seats. When the PM went to the Southern People region for a political rally, people started to form lines to enter the stadium at 3:00 am.

By February 2020, it downed on Team Jawar that the Pan Ethiopianist group led by the PM – the master of multidimensional political chess – was going to win the overwhelming majority seats in the national parliament. The center of gravity of tribalism lost its kernel and core. At the time, I shouted aloud: “give me an Alhamdulillah! Thunder me with a Hallelujah!”

Having his Stanford educated, and Columbia graduated ass kicked out of function, Jawar teamed up with TPLF, Baladera and two perennial politicians without a following (Lidetu and Engineer Yilkal), to demand a provisional government. What he was not able to get through Qeerroo or the democratic process he wanted to maintain through a provisional government.

50 YEARS FROM TODAY ETHIOPINS WILL PRAISE JAWAR FOR UNITING ETHIOPIA

Fifty years from today, Ethiopians will praise Jawar for two momentous accomplishments. The first momentous event that he played a major role in was the deconstruction and destruction of TPLF beyond redemption. His role in this cannot be undermined. His leadership was both deliberate and methodical.

Jawar’s second momentous accomplishment will go down in Ethiopia’s history as one of the most important milestones and watershed moments for which Jawar is the sole political actor is the division he forced on the Oromo political universe. For fifty years Oromo intellectuals avoided division or conflicts within Oromo political space, until Jawar and Abiy became the two primary protagonists.

Two people with diametrically opposite visions and strategies that are orthogonal to each other came to power.  Jawar wanted to be the king maker and power broker of the modern-day Abyssinian kingdom. He basically told the Prime Minister that he cannot go for election until he signed on Jawar’s political power sharing blueprint. He wrote: “በስልጣን ክፍፍል ላይ ሳንደራደር ወደ ምርጫ አንገባም.”

Abiy yawned and came up with his own blueprint that was diametrically opposite to Jawar’s. Either Abiy or Jawar needed to retreat as a strategy or tactic to avoid division in the Oromo political landscape. Abiy had less reason to do so, because division in the Oromo tribal land, though undesirable, avoiding it by any means is not a necessity for his strategic goal of forming a united Ethiopia.

For Jawar avoiding division in the Oromo tribal land was absolutely necessary for his strategic goal of creating a strong Oromo kingdom within a weaker Ethiopian project. Jawar failed to show a mastery of reconciling short-term retreats with a long-term strategy of slowing Abiy’s agenda, if not achieving his own objective. He overplayed his hand and chose the path of confrontation.

The problem is that both Abiy and Jawar have significant following within the Oromo tribal land. The head on collision between the two meant division within their followers. The sacred principle of Oromo politics was breached.

In October 2019, I wrote: “One of the consequences of this is that the silent Oromo majority will enter the political process with overwhelming support for Abiy, the man who holds the lever of the administrative power and the military complex.”

I added: “There is another consequence. The division in the Oromo tribal land will knock the oxygen out of the Amhara tribalist air. The goons who have been accusing Abiy of serving the OLF and carrying Jawa’s water will find themselves in political netherworld, looking part moronic and part political zombies.”

There is more, I said: “TPLF, whose recent infatuation with Jawar can only be approximated by an old Ethiopian song “ባባቷ እምላለሁ አባቴን አስክዳኝ,” and whose political strategy is riding on Jawar’s coattails will find itself without hope. Jawar who ended their dynasty failed to be their chance of last resort to blow life into their body politics. As Jawar goes down, so will TPLF.”

History will credit Jawar for dividing Oromo politics and initiating the unification of Ethiopia, be it by accident or sheer stupidity. In a sort of a subversive way, Jawar is Ethiopia’s Phoenix – the proverbial bird that kindled a fire into which it perished but gave a life from the ashes of the fire. Friends of mine and foes of mine alike, as I often say, this is the only plausible explanation. All else is a cruel satirization of an already satirized life.

With Shimeles at the Helm, Oromo is Destined to be Poor

Ask yourself what Shimeles has done for Oromo? He has graduated zegallion militias. The only thing good about militias is that they look good in uniforms and formations. They pretend to be able military forces and we pretend that they are. Other than that, when they hear the first bang from a barrel of a gun they disperse like spooked birds. And the first thing they do is throw their uniform, sell their guns and disappear into the populace. We have seen this with OLF in the 1990s and more recently with 250,000 strong TPLF militia.

Under Shimeles, Oromia has been an ungovernable land of Qeerroo criminals. No investor in its sane mind will invest in the Oromo tribal land. This has made Debre Behan in the Amhara tribal land an investors’ heaven. In the meantime, Shimeles is busy building mega buildings in Addis Ababa for Oromia police headquarters. This is what happens when your mind is colonized by tribal thinking. In his mind he is trying to establish an Oromo presence in Finfinnee, also known as Addis Ababa, which I believe should be called FinneAddis or AddisFinnee.  That way both the Oromo and Amhara tribal childish goons can be satisfied.

Who is More Stupid?

Who is more stupid, Amhara or Oromo tribalists? One thing is clear. Ethiopia is cursed with politicians who belong in an asylum of the deranged and the fool. The answer to the question who is more stupid is not really that import. What is important is that both are card carrying and ጠባሳ brandishing members of the cattle generation – the smoke from the hot iron that branded their asses with their generational identifier is still leaking through their pants. Pity them not, but weep for them.

It is now time for Amhara and Oromo tribalists to rant, rave, rage, vent and scream like a chimp on fire. Those who find ranting and raving is not enough can throw themselves from their basement floor all the way down to their basement floor.