We are by now very familiar with all sorts of desperate moves Woyanne may resort to in its attempt to avert its impending demise. One of such despicable moves taken recently is the illegal re-arrest of W/t Bertukan Mideksa, leader of an opposition party, The Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ). "She denied that she requested for pardon" constitutes the underlying allegation.
It as an extremely redundant exercise to go back and try to scrutinize the legality and appropriateness of what she said on matters related to the pardon processes as this particular issue has never been a real reason behind her re-arrest nor did she err on this particular issue at any one time.
She rightly and authoritatively expressed the difference between pardons processes followed during their release and that of the general procedure put in place by law. At the best, this statement of hers can only be an interesting subject for political discourse or a good premise for technical legal debate. In no instance she denied the fact that she had signed the document requesting for pardon. The Shimagles were the ones who publicly mediated on this. Then, where does all this fuss come from?
In our opinion, there are two major sources to this phenomenon. For the first time ever, all major opposition political parties have started paying due attention to organizing and sorting out issues that in the past stood on their way of forging a viable alliance among themselves. On the other hand, again for the first time, Woyanne has become entrapped in the intricate web of crises thus becoming too prone to commit a chain of scandalous measures one after the other.
In matters particularly related to W/t Bertukan, Woyanne's notoriety for male chauvinistic posture appeared to have played an additional hand in her re-arrest.
We all know that Woyanne relied on women literally for half of its conscripts during what it calls "stage of armed struggle". These women are nowhere to be seen at present. They were just dumped. Few women that occasionally appear on national political platform are made to be known as wives of this or that official and not in their rightful capacity as partners in leadership. Woyanne's leadership that is infected with such an attitude is presumed to have already been incensed at a remarkable ascendance of a woman to the leadership of one of the opposition political parties. Hence, it tried to arrogantly coerce W/t Bertukan to go public and humiliate herself or even worse to commit political suicide. Had it not been for the existence this sick attitude, the Police Commissioner would not have been ordered to threaten her with three days ultimatum for her to make a public retraction on her legally and politically correct previous statements.
What clearly attests to the prevalence of such a disdainful politicking in the country at present is; none of the law enforcement agencies involved did bother to issue any statement meant for public consumption that explain how and why they consider W/t Bertukan's statements as breach of law until this time. The only one issued by the Ministry of Justice merely refers to agreed conditions of release and not how those conditions were violated by her statements.
Anyhow, the main point to realize here is that W/t Bertukan's re-arrest is not just the beginning of a new policy direction nor will it remain the only one. The same thing is true for earlier incarceration of UEDF, OFDM and OPC members. That is why we reiterate that her re-arrest is not an isolated incident but part of a larger crack down package that aims at all opposition political forces. By so doing, Woyanne's goal is to incapacitate them well ahead of the forthcoming national election as usual.
Therefore, any effort to tackle this situation needs to depart from the aforementioned understanding. The biggest disservice one can make to all those who languish on behalf of all us is to let oneself be distracted by such a deliberately placed hurdle from the very objectives for which realization the victims themselves are incurring that very cost.
Two and half years ago, we recall to have issued a statement under the title,"Alarming Development in Ethiopia." In this statement, we tried to alert citizens on why the newly appointed Minister of Health, even before he sufficiently get acquainted with his office environment, rushed to bother about the restructuring of the tiny Autopsy Unit found under Menelik Hospital. That seemingly insignificant measure nevertheless gave us a sound clue as to what sort of an appointee he is and with what priority at hand he has assumed his duty. But it is only after the famous artist Teddy Afro was indicted and everyone was able to witness the crucial role played by that unit in that verdict that some came to realize by what we meant then.
Likewise, we do not believe that something should always happen on each of us before we jointly acknowledge that it is actually happening. It has already been a while since the crack down has started. But we failed to realize what was there in the store for all of us at the initial stage when it started to happen on UEDF, OFDM and OPM and created an ideal situation for Woyanne to attack us all turn by turn. Such a setback, we believe, needs to urgently be overcome.
OROMO MOVEMENT FOR FEDERALISM AND ETHIOPIAN UNITY
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written by Fayyis, January 17, 2009
Now the formation of OFC (Oromo Federalist Congress) is the big step towards the right direction. I personally believe that there are genuine Oromos in OPDO striving to keep the hitherto gains of our Qabsoo. Let us encourage them and differentiate them from non-Oromo forces in OPDO, who mainly fight against our Qabsoo. The consolidation of the Oromo opposition under OFC is very timely and mandatory.
Now we need a similar step to be taken by Liberation Fronts (the 3 OLFs, COPLF, FIDO, FIO and UOPLF) to forge similar unity under the beloved and original name OLF. It is non sense to see so many liberation fronts fragmented even though they all do have the same KAAYYO aka Bilisummaa Saba Oromo and Walabummaa Biyya Oromo. I hope these rebel liberation groups learn from OFC and come together to forge only one strong OLF.
Then having genuine Oromos in OPDO (let's call them ODM = Oromo Democratic Movement) as a keeper of the status quo, having OFC as a strong opposition to promote our Qabsoo per ballot and forging only one strong OLF which struggles for our Bilisummaa and Walabummaa per bullet is the best we can achieve in our liberation journey. At the end, the cooperation and coordination of the struggle of ODM, OFC and OLF is the best instrument we can have against the Abesha Domination Forces. Thank you OFC for being an example of Tokkummaa for Bilisummaa!!
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whole World know that all activities by Wayane againist the opposition is a deperate act.What is short
on the other side is regrouping and action as a belock.That is the home work each and every opposition
have to solve.If not we go no where and the tyrant will keep on.Let us tolk in the same language and open
the chance for our respective people to say what they want to say.