OLF's power illusion driven disaster, the case of Jijirama!

 

By Rundassa Ashete Hunde
 

Much of what has gone wrong with the OLF since 1998 can be traced to the distorted picture of the power each Oromo organization members entertained in their hearts. Their mental fog, the rationally unjustifiable priority they assigned to the liberation objective to be countered only by accepting the unity of Ethiopia seems to have been, at-least in part, a product of their emotional attachment to power in empire Ethiopia.

Such an emotional attachment to power however is not different from those servants of the Amhara rulers who maintained this very attitude. The continued division within the Jijiramaa and the Shanee OLF groupings appear to exhibit behavior that is consistent with symptoms associated with Abyssinian Gondar, Tigri and Gojam infightings exhibited in their feudal superficial charm delusions. Some of the symptoms and traits reflected by some Oromo liberation organization leaders ranges from unreliability, frequent lying, deceitful and manipulative behavior, lack of remorse or shame, poor judgment and failure to learn from experience
Loss of insight, unresponsiveness, an inflated self-worth, an ability to rationalize their behavior, a desire for complete power and a need to dominate others.

What happened to the Jijirama OLF?

It has been four years since a group of people organized themselves as the Jijirama OLF and many of us have expected some positive result from the group. Though many avoided to talk about the internal crises of this group for the obvious reason, so many stories have been told about Jijrama whose members now end up splitting into three or four sub group starting from those who left the organization being dissatisfied for the reasons I don't want to air here. The second and the third teams were either forced out of the organization, or left it the same way the Jijirama itself left the other OLF team.

Today 99% of Jijirama's members do not support Gen. Galchu because they either strongly objected to his association with the Ginbot 7 party or they oppose to Gen. Galchu's leadership style. For now, many of them are replaced by a former OPDO members and OPDO like power hungry individuals.

For example, Qaasim abba Nasha took over Hasan Husein's position while Nuuroo Dadafo replacing Lenco Bati followed by Amin Jundi who is named the general secretary of Jen. Glachu's OLF. Similarly, Taha is the head of organizational matters and Ibrahim Mummee occupies some similar high ranking position. One also must remember that all these men are the central committee members of Jijirama.

All these divisions and power sharing said to be caused by the rejectionist attitudes to reconcile with other OLF factions when the idea behind the rejection is is rooted in hunger for power temptation that drove these men out of the other OLF wing to begin with. Even though no one ever thought that Gen. Galchu left his position with OPDO for power, it is not too hard not to believe that the General lacks principle after clearly understanding the entire situation today.

When Gen. Galchu led 400 Oromian worriers into Asmara, millions of Oromians rejoiced his decision of separating himself from the enemy. Today however, our culture of irrationality has so insisted upon him and hence he suffered from our usual dichotomy that seems it is impossible to get rid of it, no matter we've dreamed of change. Sadly, we often simplified the importance of respecting the rule of law because we are tempted to come to power, not to change the plight of our nation but to build ourself worth and fame. Most importantly, It seemed to our liberation organization leaders that there is no other way around when it comes to dealing with organizational matters but braking every logic and rationality.

 

Back in 1998, millions who wanted to jump in the liberation struggle wagon been met with rejection every time they try to join the OLF, not because the OLF didn't need them but the leaders either hated them for being critical of them or because they are afraid to lose power to such individuals . Eventually when the OLF got split into two segments, many felt that the OLF wing known as Shanee Gumii is open to diversity and thus accepting every Oromo, yet, that belief was short lived. As time went by and our liberation process was cornered by internal and external factors, the struggle for power got intensified even-though it seemed readily soluble but falsely so. In not following the the rule of law, every involved group continued falling into hopeless divisions and same cul de sac.

 

Mean time, few Oromian intellectuals criticized themselves and their leaders thinking in the same language and rationale shared across the board. They analyzed situations between individual leaders and the Oromo society in more and more subtle ways, only to realize that we intuitively and instinctively stumbled on the truth as to the fact that our problems are rooted in lack of education. However, most Oromo intellectuals struggled with their own moral plane when they failed to realize that the evil existed in their own ignorance and continued to believe that our problem was just a skirmish amongst ourselves rather than a battle with an inveterate adversary, our love for power.

 

Many Oromo intellectuals felt that their knowledge is clean of any fault, when they actually were so frightened by the word "CHANGE" because they knew that change requires struggling with oneself in order to unmask their deepest dark secrete of love affair with power. As a result, today we find it impossible to resolve our superficial understanding of the meaning of organization and society at large. The depth of our self-deceit then exceeded by the depth to which any scholar can save us today.

For this reason, the failure of the Oromo people, as a nation, to achieve liberation cannot be blamed wholly on the Amharas and the Tigreans oppression. Our blame of the Habash therefore is the excuse, the crutch, the piteous and finally pathetic defense of the Oromo unable to willing face reality. In other times and other places, sturdy, creative and self reliant nations have curved out their own destiny, they have compelled acceptance on their own merit; they have demonstrated those qualities of leadership and resourcefulness and disciplined ambition that in the end can not ever be denied. But we the Oromians, as a nation, have done none of this.

 

so, here we are with our greatest difficulty to be humble enough to put ourselves in the position to save ourselves from greed of power, a position that may mean losing the self-concern of the struggle within ourselves, and looking outward to be concerned with others and their struggles.

Further more, we the Oromians failed to look back into our own history and learn from it. We often forget that our problems started when the Abyssinians confronted us by separating us in our secluded localities at different times so that we can't stand together as a nation and defend our families and our Biyya. Few may have been aware of histories long reaching effect and warned that power greed, tribalism, localism and borrowed religious identities will let us down once again. However, our fear of separating ourselves from greed and artificial self worth took away our courage to confront our personal weakness by understanding the effects of Abyssinians war in Anole and Calanqoo where Oromo women's breast were cut off and men's arms were mutilated in savagery acts. Regardless of what we can learn from history, most of us remained fearful of ourselves, the fear of oneself that should have been conquered to bring discipline to ourselves.

As it stands now, Oromians threat to the Abyssinians dominance over the Oromo nation is emphatically eliminated, leaving the Oromo nation to suffer the consequences of our own confusion.

 

Yet, with all the irritation at best and torment at worse of being divided against oneself, we need to remember that our suffering is not separated from our own ignorance. It should not be so difficult to notice that our destruction is no longer caused by external force but by our individuality which appears to be the most important of all things to us. We must admit our weakness and mistakes to ourselves in order to grow out of our ego driven narrow thinking. Opposition is healthy when we are not divided against ourselves, but we may find ourselves in opposition to someone else and discover the need to modify ourselves accordingly. It is better to conquer oneself in terms of reconciliation with someone else.

History is telling us that, since recorded history, power greed has caused more death and destruction than any other cause. Power greed has caused the deaths of millions and incomprehensible amounts of collateral damage. Many cities of many counties were left in total ruin and countless have lost their children who were wounded or crippled for life and who knows how many million are left homeless and starving, raped, tortured and imprisoned by power loving Tigrean rules in Oromia today.
 

As of now, none of the Oromo liberation organizations seem learning from history, and thus here we are repeating it. We should have at least learned from the conflict that took the lives of thousands who died during the Islamiyaa Oromiyaa and the OLF in eastern part of our country Oromia.

 

Rundassa Ashete Hunde