A false narrative to make Ethiopians trust Isaias Afewerki

By Dilwenberu Nega
Tigrai Online, Ethiopian News, April 28, 2016

We have long known President Isaias Aferwerki’s deep and brooding resentment toward Ethiopia in general and the EPRDF government in particular as well as his relentless efforts to destabilise Ethiopia by training, arming and dispatching a ragtag army of disgruntled Ethiopian opposition groups. But what we had never imagined was that he would take leave of his senses by handpicking a former senior official of Derg-WPE to be the narrator of a false narrative aimed at convincing a growing number of Ethiopian Eri-sceptics that Isaias Afewerki has Ethiopia’s bet interest at heart.

We also have long known Derg-WPE’s preeminent champagne socialist, Kassa Kebede, is happy to sell his soul for cash – with principles thrown in free (if he ever had any). But what we had never imagined was that his unquenchable thirst for money would turn him into a toady of an Ethiophobic President Isaias Afewerki.

At last week’s “Yesamentu Engida” on so-called ESAT, Kassa Kebede was caught in the act of trying to shove Isaias Afewerki down our throat. He was narrating to his former comrade-at-arms, yellow journalist Sisaye Agena, how “President Isaias Afewerki had the best interest of Ethiopia and Ethiopians at heart; how Isaias was proud of his Ethiopian pedigree and, most laughable of all, what a strong advocate of Ethiopian unity Isaias is.”

It is an insult to our intelligent, is it not, to be lectured by Kassa Kebede about Isaias Afewerki’s ‘unifying’ credentials. Need we be reminded by anyone, let alone by a quisling, that it was none other than Isaias Afewerki, stupefied by Ethiophobia, who led a 30year war against “Ethiopian colonialism?” Was it not Isaias Afewerki who had vituperated Amharas by calling them “asinine?” Was it not Isaias himself who in 1998 had predicted that Ethiopia’s current ethnic federalism was a sure-fire formula that would turn Ethiopia into an ethnic inferno?

Judge for yourself then where Ethiopia - which celebrates and not suffocates diversities – is today. By contrast bemoan at Eritrea whose people have become victims of a most brutal tyrant whose bestiality has out-Herod-Herod. This then is the “Redeemer of Ethiopia” that Kassa Kebede flaunts about in public.

Convincing Ethiopians Isaias Afewerki has their best interests at heart would be like convincing Israelis that Otto Adolf Eichmann had the Jews best interests at heart when he perpetrated rebarbative acts on Jews during the 2^nd World War. Or put it this way: who says that the Lucifer of Eritrea would metamorphose into Archangel Gabriel of Ethiopia?

We also have long known the reasons behind Isaias Afewerki’s anger, indignation, resentment and rage toward EPRDF, but little did we anticipate that Isaias Afeweki will have keen power of calculation and unhesitating audacity to portray himself to Ethiopians as an advocate of Ethiopian unity. Unlike Eritrea under PFDJ, Ethiopia under EPRDF, is endowed with a democratically elected listening government fit to address the needs, demands and e challenges of a fast-changing and diverse society with its economy grown by leaps and bounds making it one of the world’s fastest growing economies. By contrast, Eritrea under PFDJ, is on the cusp of becoming a failed state, not to say, a basket case with the youth of Eritrea hardest hit by Isaias Afewerki’s iron-fist rule.

Oh! Yeah! this brutal guy is suppose to bring unity and democracy to Ethiopia. Look, he is gunning down his own people in a broad day light in the middle of the capital Asmara.