Fog and complications within OLF raises false hope in Gimboat 7

Dilwenberu Nega 4th January 2012- If folly were grief every OLF supporter would weep. That would be your honest verdict if you had the misfortune of reading blurred and confused statements that was churned out by two groups both claiming to be Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). That the OLF has been on a downhill spiral ever since it walked out from the Transitional Government is an open secret. So, too, has been its relegation to the league of despicable quislings in the service of the fountainhead of terrorism in the Horn of Africa – the one man rule of President Isais Afewerki of Eritrea. However, seldom has OLF’s puerility been exposed so conspicuously as with the issuance of its recent statements.

A closer look at the two statements – one issued by the Asmara-based and Shabia lapdog OLF leadership and the other ‘waxwork OLF’ (dummy) which is in essence working in cahoots with Gemboat 7’s in America to overthrow the legitimately elected government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi – reveals the magnitude of hubbub and confusion which have engulfed the OLF in recent months. The so-called statement from Asmara warned of the perils of using a political party’s nomenclature and logo willy-nilly and concludes by forecasting the elation of “enemies” as a result of the anticipated split within OLF. The statement that followed two days later from the renegade OLF in America, on the other hand, declared that it has now jettisoned its long cherished belief in an independent Oromia and vows to bring about regime change within Federal Democratic Ethiopia by, of course, circumventing democracy.

While its declaration of turning its back on OLF’s dearly held shibboleth is a welcome sign – provided that is the official position of the OLF and not Gemboat 7’s hat trick – its penchant for violence would be something that runs counter to the common good.

Do not let us be hoodwinked, therefore, by a bogus statement which does not even have a reference number, for we all are well aware, are we not, that cessation has very much remained the warp and woof of the OLF ever since its inception over three decades ago. And it would be unmitigated folly to assume that such a historical shibboleth of the OLF can effectively be abandoned by disgruntled elements of OLF who assume that siding with voracious Gemboat 7 would catapult them to power. I am reminded here by what that witty Oromo intellectual, Ato Yilma Deressa, once said to that equally witty and intellectual from Southern Ethiopia, Menassie Lemma, “OLF minus cessation is Israel minus Jerusalem.”

No doubt EPRDF will take time out, like the rest of us, to enjoy watching the ongoing mime and pantomime by an OLF gone berserk.