After witnessing the week’s long public and spiritual holidays celebrated nationwide, Ethiopia has formed a new government in a fresher spirit with new beginnings on the fourth and last Monday of the fabulous month of September as per the Ethiopian calendar.
This was later consummated by a grand procession held at the heart of the Capital, Addis Ababa in an open space widely known as the Maskal Square, following the formation of the new government as per the constitution of the FDRE of Ethiopia. The Prosperity Party which won the 6th national elections last June in a landslide victory reelected Abiy Ahmed Ali (PhD) as its Prime Minister of the country.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s inaugural ceremony has been celebrated at the Meskel Sqaure attended by a large crowd of residents of Addis, other fellow participants from Africa and beyond.
When the Prime Minister arrived at the Meskel Square with accomplices, he was greeted with applause by celebrants who were waiting for him to arrive at the scene gathered from different parts of the capital.
The cheerful Prime Minister Abiy’s inauguration ceremony began with a national anthem of Ethiopia, attended by a number of African leaders, ambassadors, heads of international institutions and other invited guests.
It is worth recalling that Prime Minister Abiy’s speech before the House of Peoples’ Representatives on the day he was elected as Prime Minister three years ago was a historic speech that was appreciated by many Ethiopians.
Earlier in the morning, the Head of the State, President Sahle Work Zewde appeared at the parliament with the newly elected representatives and chaired the proceedings to choose Tagesse Chafo to be the Speaker of the House. Tagesse is the only member of the House nominated for speaker. Six members of the House did not vote, but were elected speaker by majority with 419 votes. Supreme Court President, Maeza Ashenafi officiated the swearing in ceremony new speaker.
In her opening speech for both the upper and lower houses, President Sahle-Work Zewude said that in order to develop the culture and tourism sector, Ethiopia will zero in on developing the revenues from the culture and tourism sector by developing available destinations and coming up with new destination areas.
The President stated that by developing conservation of heritages, improving service provision of the sector and developing available tourist destinations, Ethiopia plans to increase the income from the tourism sector. In addition, Ethiopia plans to develop new tourist destinations to attract more tourists.
According to the President, the projects started by the “Dine for Ethiopia”, Gorgora, Koisha and Wonchi tourist destination projects will be completed according to the plan. Parallel to that, President Sahle-Work stated, the country will plan to generate and diversify the tourism sector throughout the country.
President Sahle-work calls upon all regional states, zones, woreda and city administrations to draw lessons from the experiences from Addis Ababa’s tourist destination development activities especially in developing parks to ripple the exemplary activities throughout the country.
The democratically elected government, has tried to restructure the executive organ at all levels and has demonstrated country’s commitment to a new era of democracy though the road towards prosperity was rocky. We have seen it as a cornerstone for the strengthening of our national democracy and for the unity of nations, nationalities and peoples, the speaker told the parliamentarian.
He further stated that, overall; it was an opportunity for us, as a country, to achieve great victories that seemed to be overambitious. One of the signs of its victory is that we have gathered today in this conference hall to begin discussing the future of our country.
Speaker Tagesse has been in office since October 2019 as Speaker of the House .
BY HAFTU GEBREZGABIHER
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD OCTOBER 5/2021
