Abiy Ahmed: A blood-thirsty Pol Pot of our time

By Berhane Kahsay
Tigrai Online, Dec. 15, 2018

This imbecile who is an accidental prime minister should be removed by any means necessary before he causes further damage.

Jawar and his sidekick Professor Ezekiel appear to be hell bent on exacerbating the exceedingly volatile situation currently unfolding in Ethiopia. With the exception of Tigrai, the remaining parts of the country are experiencing conflicts of one form or another leading to devastations of mammoth proportion. So far, 3 million citizens have been dislocated from their homesteads. The conflict between Gedeo and Guji communities alone, nearly a million people have been dislodged and 300 killed according to USAID’s announcement of 12 December 2018. It also made it clear that the food aid programme will not continue because of security risks affecting 140,000 recipients.      

All the deaths and uncontrollable mayhems sweeping the nation have their genesis to the coming of Abiy eight months ago with the backing of Jawar, who is funded and coached by Egypt. The Arab Republic’s agenda has always been to scrap the construction of GERD. And its other sinister motive is to backslide Ethiopia to its previous status of basket case of Africa---- the aim being to eliminate the issue of equitable utilization of the Nile Waters form becoming an agenda for negotiations for good. In fact, Egypt now seems to be confident enough to raise the bar higher and make Ethiopia its satellite state with the backing of Jawar and Abiy.    

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Haji Jawar is directly responsible for the turmoil that has been engulfing the nation since April 2018, but to avoid being held accountable; he has shifted liability to the TPLF. And at every opportunity, the ‘mencha man’ has been incessantly accusing the formidable outfit for everything and anything under the sun. In order to rebut Jawar’s malicious allegations, it would help to analyse all the events leading to the crowing of Abiy, and the present circumstances prevailing in the country.

At present, Ethiopia is enduring chronic shortage of foreign exchange, and this to do with the severe reduction in foreign direct investment (FDI) coming to the country.  Overseas investors have been reluctant to do business in Ethiopia because of the destructions of foreign owned factories in Oromia region in 2016/2017 which was orchestrated by Jawar from his command centre in Seattle. Some that came under attack during the turbulence include Dangote’s cement factory in Mugher where its manager Mr Deep Kamara was killed in addition to the incineration of trucks and machineries belonging to the company. It is to be recalled the Nigerian billionaire established his plant with an outlay of 600 million US dollars. According to Fana Broadcasting, 11 other companies ranging from textile to flower farms had been damaged affecting 40,000 jobs.

The hard currency crunch is further compounded by the dip in the production of exportable commodities which was caused by the country wide political uncertainties cultivated by Jawar and co. Due to the deficiency of foreign exchange, the construction industry and related sectors which employ hundreds and thousands of citizens is almost at a standstill. It is just a matter of time before this important part of the economy crashes triggering huge increases in the number of people out of work. The situation in Ethiopia is moving from bad to worse as a result of the ill-thought-out measures taken by Abiy in cahoots with Jawar Mohammed.

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Ethio-Somali was invaded and the seating regional governor was removed and replaced by another leader who was hand-picked by Abiy. This unconstitutional intervention has enraged the populace and the region appears to be in utter turmoil. It will not be too long before it becomes completely ungovernable creating an opportunity for Al-Shebab to penetrate the metropolis and, cause chaos and bloodshed.  Various reports indicate that there have been large numbers of fatalities and displacements of similar proportions to those that were uprooted during the border conflict with Oromia.

Tragedy is also unfolding in the border between Benshangul and Oromia where a number of deaths from both sides have been disclosed. Bensahangul high officials were killed and in retaliation nearly 30 Oromo Police Officers were murdered. Jawar was quick of the mark to blame ex-TPLF Generals which was a blatant lie as confirmed by Abbo Dawd who reminded  ODP to put its house in order instead of searching for excuses to avoid accountability for its failures. Jawar is well aware Abiy is losing control, but he foolishly believes that accusing the TPLF with trumped-up misdemeanours would help his protégé to maintain his power. The writing is on the wall; his demise is inevitable; it is a question of when not if.  

Lately, the President of Somali faced a vote of no confidence for undermining the constitution by signing a secret deal to unite his country with Ethiopia and Eritrea. Of course as usual jawar pointed the finger at the TPLF ignoring the fact that it was Somalia parliamentarians who instigated the motion as they believed President Farmajo had no mandate to make sovereignty of their nation an agenda when he met up with Abiy and Esayass in Ethiopia recently. Abiy’s constituency is also in chaos; large parts of his region is not controlled by ODP and Lemma is not able to address the demands of the people he administers.

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Another member of ‘Team Lemma’, Gedu Andargachew, is equally having a tough time with the gallant fighters of Qemant. His Security Chief, Brigadier General Asminew Tsige, was sweating and breathing heavily when he appeared as a guest speaker in Gonder recently. From his body language and visible anger, it was not too difficult to deduce that the former prisoner of war (POW) is losing the fight against the valour Qemant and like Jawar; he is blaming Woyane for sustaining defeats at successive encounters.

Jawar and his boy in Menelik Palace are squarely to blame for the political, social and economic catastrophes the country has been confronted with since the plagiarist ‘King’ came to power eight months ago. Transferring culpability elsewhere has had its day and it is now time for Abiy to accept his incompetence and tender his resignation immediately. If he doesn’t, the country is likely to face the fate of Yugoslavia which the TPLF prevented when it assumed power in 1991. It is now time for TPLF and OLF to join hands and save the country from oblivion.