Oromo OMFEU welcomes Ethiopian opposition alliance

June 6, 2006 — Oromo Movement for Federalism and Ethiopian Unity, right from the outset, would like to explicitly state that it gladly welcomes and fully supports the establishment of an Alliance for Freedom and Democracy (AFD) that was recently established by OLF,CUDP,ONLF, SLF and EPPF and expresses its readiness to cooperate in whatever means available to it, in order for the alliance to successfully achieve its objectives.

Ever since EPRDF snatched a freely expressed vote of Ethiopian people and unlawfully reinstated itself as an illegitimate governing party in our country, we have been trying to draw the attention of all opposition political forces towards offering our resenting and resolute people with newly negotiated practical political alternative. This alternative, in our opinion, is necessary obviously for the main reason of overcoming the effect of sinister “divide and rule” manipulations of the Woyanes.

The Woyane’s “divide and rule” strategy is mainly built on consciously sowing discord between major nations and nationalities of Ethiopia so that they undermine each other while Woyane is working hard to elongate the duration of its dominance by exploiting this same sad situation. We all have regrettably witnessed the degree to which these shortsighted and irresponsible manipulations were implemented over the last fifteen years gradually dragging the country to the brink of chaos and disintegration.

While various political groups have genuinely engaged themselves with the pursuance of their own respective political goals, Woyane has persistently been engaged in further deepening the mutual hatred and mistrust among various peoples of Ethiopia, so that it can emerge and depict itself as an indispensable neutral power that solely can avert a dangerous situation in which others may indulge in mutual destruction. It is a high time for all Ethiopians to carefully examine in retrospect the true culprit behind “the Bedenos”, “the Arba Gugu’s”, “the Measo’s”, “the Bench’s”, the Sidamas”,”the Gambella’s” so on and so forth..

For a close observer of Ethiopian political dynamics, it won’t be that intricate to decipher the crux of this unholy plot and how dangerously it surfaced itself in the aftermath of the May election. Though Woyane was totally rejected by a significant majority of Ethiopian peoples, opposition political groups, upto very recently, have terribly goofed in providing this same people with viable alternative that takes the diverse interests of all stakeholders into consideration and fill the gap to be vacated as a result of ousting Woyane. In short, each galloped in its own way and none achieved our cherished common destination.

It is in light of this dictates of political reality that we wholeheartedly support the measure taken by various political entities by way of establishing an Alliance for Freedom and Democracy. The formation of this alliance, in our opinion, has heralded the advent of a new brand of politicking that would primarily aim at substituting sentimentalism, aloofness and in-ward looking type of politicking with that of rational, realistic and inclusiveness through mutual accommodation of diverse perspectives.

All signatories to this Alliance, we hope have realized the fact that they have courageously shouldered the lofty responsibility of freeing their respective constituents from politics of hatred, mutual disrespect and mistrust and replace it with politics of national reconciliation that is strongly based on the recognition of the right of all as a legitimate stakeholders in determining the fate of our common home- Ethiopia.

We say again that the founders of this Alliance have taken a bold measure of shouldering a historic responsibility of freeing their respective constituents from preoccupying themselves with superficial, pretentious and semantic considerations to that of substantive, visionary, realistic and all accommodative panacea for the current ills of our country.

That is why we strongly believe that the initial phase of the alliance’s activity should primarily focus on getting one’s own respective constituency grasp the merit of this historic measure itself. It is historic not only by what it so far achieved but also by what it creates to achieve a win-win political solution for all of us during the time to come. Once such modest achievement of rallying one’s own constituency behind the outlined goals of the Alliance is scored, we see no reason why this newly created venue for constructive engagement could not enable all of us to realize our collectively cherished objective of democratizing our country.

In order for the newly established Alliance to move forward in the direction of its stated objectives, we believe that it requires from the leadership of all participating entities the commitment and determination to unhesitatingly lead one’s own respective constituency in the chosen direction of the Alliance and not to succumb to “naturally expected initial reaction of mutual mistrust’ by the respective constituents. Besides, all participating entities are eventually expected to unilaterally take programmatic and political adjustment measures of paradigm shift proportion that is commensurate with the terms and spirits of the Alliance, if the ideals of this alliance are to prevail over a number of anticipated challenges.

Finally, the infamous tradition of seizing political power with the help of external foes and then trying to depict oneself as a staunch enemy of these very “foes” should come to an end in our country once and for all. It is a common knowledge that during the second half of the preceding century, it was with the help of an invading expeditionary force of Great Britain that Dejazmatch Kassa converted himself from a local chieftain to that of the Emperor of Ethiopia. By the time he sought support from the rest of Ethiopians to withstand the Dervish threat; Ethiopians were not as united behind him as it should have been.

Likewise, Woyane, a force that was assisted to seize political power at a country level with the strategic support it got from “Shabia’ should not waste time and energy to barrage us with a volley of accusations that others have allied themselves with “Shabia’ as it does not have a high moral ground to say so. However, putting Woyane’s pretentious accusations aside, we would like to urge founders of this alliance, to take maximum caution not to create any loophole in which equally sinister forces like “Shabia’ sneaks to and adversely use it against the very interest of our country.

June 2006

For further information on visist: http://oduu.com/news/index.php?news_id=974