Yonas Biru, PhD
Three important political and economic developments in just as many days signal the rapid collapse of the Oromo-led government. The most important development is a legal one. The Ethiopian Lawyers’ Association filed a war crime complaint with the Ethiopian Federal Police Commission Crime Investigation. The accused are Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Defense Minister Abraham Belay Bereh, Field Marshal Berhanu Julla, General Abebaw Tadesse and Ato Temesgen Tiruneh. The complaint includes the use of drones and weapons of mass destruction against civilians in Amhara, Oromo, and Tigray tribal homelands.
This is the most significant development since the armed uprising of Fano. The Fano opened a crack in the proverbial floodgate. The Lawyer’s Association widened the crack, signaling the beginning of the end of the Boy King’s kingdom. What the Boy King is doing is no different from what got Putin indicted for war crime and crime against humanity. If there is a difference, it is a difference of degree not of kind as far as international law is concerned.
If there was a politically mature diaspora, it would have filed a similar complaint with the appropriate international court system and scale up its PR in Europe and America. Sadly, the Ethiopian diaspora consists of part tribalized and part zombified artifacts who are anti international intervention. Any proposal to leverage the international community encounters an avalanche of hoots of disdain from sleepwalking zombified hermits, led by a መተተኛ engineer in America and a ደብተራው professor in Sweden. አክስታችን ወንዝ እና አሜሪካ የማይጎትተው የለም ትል ነበር. That much I understand. What I do not understand is the Sweden phenomenon.
Tribalized Oromo intellectuals and their brethren hermitized Amhara intellectuals are in a rapid and heightened process of self-destruction. We need to confront this issue head-on to save Oromo intellectuals from the stupidity of Oromummaa and Ethiopia from Oromo intellectuals. Obviously, I am using the term intellectual in the most generous and most elastic sense of the term.
I apologize for digressing, but until Ethiopia finds a way to rein in its hermitized and tribalized intellectuals, the nation’s political wisdom and practice will continue to diverge, and its populace will never absolve itself from the vagaries of ignorance and the ensuing abject poverty, war, and self-destruction.
The other two developments are economic. First Pepsi ended its operations because of severe shortage of foreign exchange. One of the reasons that the Boy King visited Sheik Al Amoudi in Saudi Arabia was to plead with him to keep his business (Pepsi) open. The Sheik whose properties were claimed by corrupt officials in the Oromo tribal land was not receptive. The business is closed, leaving 8000 employees out of work.
In the meantime, the French telecom firm, Orange Telecom, withdrew its offer to purchase up to 45% stake of Ethio Telecom. The company stated: Current conditions in Ethiopia “do not allow for the rapid deployment of [its] strategy and the completion of a project that would create value for the company.”
The failure of the nation was magnified this week when a soccer MVP player was awarded a trophy. The award ceremony was orchestrated and covered in the news. The trophy was a gallon of cooking oil and half a bag of rice. If the narcissist and sociopathic Prime Minister lasts another year, the trophy will be a human skull. It is not without reason I have said in the past Political Oromummaa is a path to a primitive social order.
The nation is dissolving from inside out and the Oromo Boy King is talking shit about acquiring seaports and the diaspora is sleepwalking not knowing which century it is living in. My grandmother was only 50% right (at best) when she said: “God Protects the Blind and Ethiopia.” She may be right about the bind. If God had any intention to protect Ethiopia, he would not have hermitized and zombified its intellectuals.
Rumor is swirling that the Boy King wants to negotiate with Fano. I maintain Fano should not close the door for negotiation. But it must demand fool proof guarantee to make sure the Boy King will not continue to play God and his evangelical ጠንቇይfied fortunetellers and palm readers are kept out of the political landscape.
Above all, one demand that Fano must insist on is having an unfettered international investigation of war crime and crime against humanity. The investigation must be time bound and Fano and others must have a voice in the selection of international investigators. All those who were involved in war crime and crime against Humanity in Afar, Amhara, Tigray and Oromo Benishangul, Gambela, tribal lands must be held accountable.
በፍላጎትም ይሁን በስህተት ካጠፋሁ ይቅርታ
Remember: To Err is Human to Forgive is Divine.