FITSUM GETACHEW
Monday, November 30, 2020 there was an extraordinary session of the House of People’s Representatives where the premier was anticipated to explain to MPs the latest moves his government had taken in the wake of the November 4 assault on the Northern Command of the National Defence Forces.
Clearly, it was the best venue to explain the decisions and measures taken by the government before and after what was declared to be the end of the military element in the ‘law enforcement campaign’.
The premier was expected to explain the dynamics of the decisions and the details of what had happened in the three week campaign. As Commander-In-Chief he was the right person to do it. Among the questions presented were: why on earth was the government turning a blind eye when the TPLF clique in Mekelle was openly bracing for a war? What did the government do when there were clearly hostile declarations from Mekelle? The MPs also criticized the government of being ‘’lenient in all the illegal endeavours the TPLF leadership had been involved in.
In responding to all these attacks and criticisms the premier made candid and stunning admissions of what kind of government he had inherited as reformist and what exactly were the forces in play after TPLF’s retreat to Mekelle.
He outlined the obstacles and resistance he and his government had to face and it was a matter of time for him to consolidate his position and weaken the grip on real power of a government totally dominated by a few individuals and their cohorts.
In short, the crux of the explanation lay in the capacity of the government to act concretely and that needed reliable force. He explained how the armed forces and the security apparatus needed profound reform so that it would come out of the influence of a clique and that the very sovereignty of the nation was at risk.
Things were not looking very promising he said as he had to defend the reform at the expense of the entrenched power of the old guards. When he introduced certain measures that reduced their influence they were confident that they would continue to exert control from Mekelle.
That was when they adopted the policy of sowing seeds of hate and inter ethnic conflict in various regions except in Tigray. He told parliament that they were cause for 113 cases of violence with massive losses of life and destruction. This was intended to cynically show how they were indispensable!
The premier then admitted that he understood the frustration of the people in the face of all those provocations but he had to continue with the reforms and defend them. When things were looking like getting out of hand, he told parliament that he had warned them of consequences which they understood as weakness. Finally, the last straw that broke the back of the camel resulted to be the unfortunate and infamous attack on the Northern Command.
It was clearly a declaration of war, with what they called “a pre-emptive strike just as a lightening!” It was as if they were waging the war against an alien force and yet they had committed the most heinous of crimes as it was carried out in a cowardly and treasonous manner against totally unarmed comrades in arms! The premier said it reminded him of the Japanese Pearl Harbour attack of 1941 against the US; only that it was done by foreign forces in that case!
Besides, what was later on carried out against the corpses of the soldiers exposed their true nature, a humiliation to the armed forces. The sad records say Ethiopians killed fellow citizens and more specifically fellow comrades in arms who were on duty protecting the nation from potential alien attacks, defending the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the nation! What enraged even the local community was the fact that these soldiers were part of the community taking part in all sorts of development ventures such as building schools, helping in harvesting of crops and contributing to the fight against locust invasions!
When one adds the subsequent reports of the harrowing massacre of hundreds of innocent civilians at Mai Kadra one completes the image of a leadership that is totally inhuman and desperate! Observers said in forty five years of its existence TPLF has confirmed to everyone who had doubts about its true nature with the summary of actions it took during the past few weeks. If there were reservations as to the true nature of TPLF it was clearly portrayed from how it undertook the measures of the past days and how it conceived and understood the history of our country.
Many people in Tigray and even in Ethiopia at large may have been hoodwinked by the continuous one sided propaganda that has been coming out from the various media outlets deliberately established by the junta. The ridiculous assertion we always hear that TPLF is synonymous with the ethnic Tigrean people must have contributed to the current state of affairs.
The premier noted there was no logic in the assertion that without the rule of TPLF dominated EPRDF, the country would disintegrate! This was a clear denial of the forces at play in the country and a result of the ignorance and arrogance of the clique, he said. Ethiopia was not such a fragile state that had to rely on the wish of a few arrogant and ignorant members of a group that was formed some five decades ago while the existence of the country dated thousands of years!
The erroneous understanding of the history of Ethiopia must have been the source of what this clique tried to do. The entire history of the country has been shaped and decided by a spirit of patriotism that led it to preserve its integrity and sovereignty.
History recalls us that this has been tried by forces that came from various locations but that in all circumstances Ethiopian sons and daughters did not spare their lives to heroically defend their land. They never hesitated to stand up in unison to defend their dignity and honour!
Thousands had perished in all sorts of expeditions not excluding their top leaders. This is something that this venomous group must have missed or failed to learn. The premier said the bond between being Ethiopian and not submitting to any attack is so strong that until the last citizen remains alive there would not be peace for any invader.
To take Ethiopian territory for good, there would be need to exterminate all Ethiopians from the face of the earth, he exclaimed! A huge applause accompanied this statement.
Hence, the November 4 attack was by every criterion a betrayal of the sovereignty and integrity of the country. The conception of an unrealistic come back to Addis defeating the Ethiopian people showed how distant these forces are from the reality on the ground. It showed how deep rooted their arrogance and ignorance was.
This also witnessed their total contempt for the Ethiopian people and its leaders and even the people they claim to represent! Besides it reveals clearly how ignorant they are about the geopolitics of the times and how intoxicated they are with their own ideas heeding only the ideas of their cohorts and accomplices tied to them financially.
That was why we were given various international reports of a huge well-armed and experienced force that would even threaten the stability of the horn of Africa. This was promoted by the various TPLF sponsored and financed so called International conflict analysts or journalists.
Clearly, if they were not bought outright by the huge financial links they had formed abroad, they must have absorbed all of the one sided propaganda material aired by an organized group of spokespersons. Armed with the most unlikely of fabricated facts, these propagandists were presenting the TPLF clique as a legal body that was fighting for its existence while the federal government was composed of ‘illegal and dictatorial’ leaders. That was why these foreign forces were insisting on ‘negotiations’.
While the federal government continued to stress that it was a totally internal matter and that it should be settled internally, their argument was that there would be a ‘humanitarian crisis’ and they would need to stop the campaign and sit for negotiations.
The premier reiterated his government’s firm stance on the issue that he was doing whatever any other government would do if attacked and that there was no room for foreign interference. He however appealed to them that ‘if they wanted to help us in the way we want, the help could be welcome’; but he reminded them that Ethiopians were not a novice to the international arena and accepted no instructions.
He underlined that Ethiopia existed as an independent nation for centuries and it would be presumptuous to try to give it lessons of diplomacy from certain nations that were formed only recently! The premier outlined the various diplomatic successes the country had recorded across the decades and that Ethiopia could not surrender its right to settle its internal matters using its own laws.
He reiterated the position of his government that the campaign would end as soon as the criminal elements within the TPLF were brought to justice. The reassertion of the rule of law was out of any negotiation schemes. It must be implemented at all cost. Period.
The Ethiopian Herald December 6/2020
