1. November 12, 2017, marked the second anniversary of the ongoing Oromo Protests that started on November 12, 2015. Although this eventful day was passed without much event, it is one of the days’ the Oromo people and the rest of the Ethiopian people will remember and celebrate in the years to come as the day that changed the course of Ethiopia’s history.
2. Some days have more significance than the others. In recent Ethiopian history, particularly over the last 27 years of TPLF/EPRDF rule, Ethiopians were made to remember two days. The first one is Yekatit 11, the day the TPLF was created 42 years ago by few Tigrean youth to start the civil. The second day is May 20, 1991, the day the TPLF/EPRDF rebels took the state power in Ethiopia. Nothing merry is left off these two days except misery, torture, killings, dispossession, and poverty. Ethiopians are ready to forget them for good and move on.
3. The memories of certain days are not that short lived. For the generation of our forefathers, who fought the European colonial powers and defended the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the Ethiopia (minus Ethiopia’s coastal province of Eritrea, much of which was lost to the Italians during the reign of Emperor Yohannes’s rule of Northern Ethiopia culminating in the creation of the Italian Colony in 1890), the battle of Adwa of March 2, 1896 was the historical watershed! Adwa cemented the inalienable and sacrosanct independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ethiopia. Negotiating today’s borders of Ethiopia with the colonial powers of the day, the British, the French and the Italians were also one of the greatest accomplishments of the generation of our forefathers leaving the present generation of Ethiopians with the challenge of defending what our forefathers passed on unto us, and passing on to the next generations. Here it is important to note the two leading Oromo leaders and heroes who established the Ethiopia we know today. Ras Mekonin Gudisa, the father of Emperor Haile-Selassie, is a celebrated Oromo statesman who, among other things, commanded the Ethiopian Defense Force at the Battle of Adwa, negotiated the treaties demarcating the boundaries of Ethiopia with all of its neighbors, and established diplomatic relations between the United States and Ethiopia. Similarly, Ras Gobana Dachee, a celebrated Oromo hero and military commander, is the one who established the present boundaries of Ethiopia by stopping and defending against the British, the Italians and the French encroachments on Ethiopian territories and its people from multiple directions except part of the Borana Oromo who remained in Kenya due to early British occupation of Kenya and the untimely death of this famous and formidable warrior.
4. Although the Oromo protests that started on November 12, 2015, was not as momentous as the Battle of Adwa, the comparisons between the battle of Adwa and the Oromo Protests are fitting for two main reasons. First, the same way the battle of Adwa was fought to preserve the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ethiopia; the ongoing Oromo protests is a popular resistance movement to restore political power and popular sovereignty back into the hand of the Ethiopian people from the TPLF/EPRDF rebel forces who unlawful usurped political power and abused it for the last 26 years, and defend these rights from being usurped again by any other similar group that might arise in the future. Second, as the Oromo people and Oromo leaders, heroes and heroines of the Battle of Adwa were the major actors and leaders who mobilized all Ethiopians to defend the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of their country; so are the Oromo protests where the Oromo people are the main actors and leaders in the battle to restore the political power and popular sovereignty back into the hands of the Ethiopian people from the jaws of the TPLF/EPRDF. Adwa established the independence, the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ethiopia as a country. The Oromo Protests are meant to establish the sovereignty and political power of the Ethiopian people, the natural and the only repository of political power and political will in Ethiopia, by establishing a democratic constitutional system of governance of the people by the people for the people under rule of law, not rule of one group or rule of individual dictatorship.
5. Given this historic and important ongoing popular movement to restore political power and political sovereignty into the hands of the Ethiopian people that started on November 12, 2015, the purpose of this talking point is to initiate a national conversation on the next chapter of how to transition the Oromo Protests into national protests by building on the victories of the last two years. The Oromo protests started as a demand for policy reform on land, language, urban policy, and self-rule (including the release of political cross-cutting) of the Oromo people. The TPLF/EPRDF’s refusal or inability to address any of the demands of the Oromo people over the last two years has now transitioned the Oromo protests into a national movement to restore political power and political sovereignty back in the hands of the Ethiopian people to address those demands and other similar popular grievances by taking the political power instead of begging for one’s own rights from unlawful usurper and robber of power. The cross-cutting and national nature of the causes of Oromo protests, the vision and the determination to address these underlying causes and the strategy needs to be deployed will be the main focus of this post.
6. What are the victories and gains of the Oromo Protests over the last two years?
6.1. One of the most important and lasting victories of the Oromo protests is the reemergence of the Oromo people as single and unified political community that knows its national interests and determined to defend and protect those national interests in full force without any division along political, religious or regional lines; for the first time more than one hundred years after the Gadaa System collapsed. The Oromo protests not only made sure that the Oromo people are ready to self-rule in an unabridged and genuine federal system but also showed the determination of the Oromo people to lead Ethiopia as major shareholders and formidable defenders and protectors of Ethiopia’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity as has been the case for centuries.
6.2. The second most important victory of the Oromo Protests is the dismantling of the most vicious anti-Oromo propaganda of the TPLF/EPRDF that designated and falsely painted the Oromo people’s quest for equality, justice, fairness, democracy and self-rule in Ethiopia as separatist, secessionists, and even as Islamic terrorist movement(this might seem absurd to most Oromos’ but it is true) hell-bent on dismantling and disintegrating Ethiopia and the state institutions it is built on with the objective of destabilizing Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. Until the Oromo protests fully and completely dismantled this vicious propaganda, the majority of the Western Diplomats, including most major countries, were in cohort with this TPLF/EPRDF narratives. Not only that, the Oromo protests also dismantled the seed of suspicion, hatred and the ill-will that the TPLF/EPRDF built between the Oromo people and the rest of the Ethiopian people as the irreconcilable mortal enemies and threats to each other that only the TPLF/EPRDF is “capable of preventing to keep Ethiopia and Ethiopians together”, one of the key tool and fear factor the TPLF/EPRDF built as one of the building blocks of its policy of divide and rule. The Oromo protests proved that the Ethiopian people are assets for each other instead of being threats to each other; and the Oromo people, not the TPLF/EPRDF, are the guarantors and guardians of those thousands of years’ old social assets and Ethiopia’s national unity.
6.3. The Oromo people forced a segment of the OPDO to listen to the voices of the Oromo people and forced some to acknowledge that their political power and authority to govern Oromia emanates from the Oromo people, not the TPLF that created them in Tigray some 27 years ago. (This statement should be seriously qualified, in the sense that, still a substantial number of TPLF recruited OPDO scavengers and vultures are answerable to the TPLF than the Oromo people or the progressive elements within the OPDO (
#TeamLemma). In this connection, it is also important to note that the Oromo protests have dismantled the web of cadre structures and societal parasites, including the one to five security chains, and made useless the TPLF/EPRDF Marxist-Leninist “Democratic centralism” control structure where handful of TPLF/EPRDF Executive Committee and Central committee members abused and repressed one hundred million Ethiopians for the last 26 years.
6.4. The other major victory of the Oromo protests is the starting of the process of fundamental restructuring of the Ethiopian Security structures as defenders and law enforcement officers of the people not instruments of repression, violence, and torture in the hand of the TPLF/EPRDF. Two short years ago, the Ethiopian Military, Federal Police and National Intelligence including Oromia police were exclusively instruments of violence, torture and killing machines in the hand of the TPLF/EPRDF. In the last one year, Oromia police assumed its rightful place as law enforcement and peacekeeping officers of the society not the killing and torture machines of the TPLF/EPRDF. There are clear signs that Amhara and Oromo military, federal police and national intelligence officers are following the model of Oromo police in refusing to be tools to attack the people, forcing the TPLF/EPRDF commanders to rely on minority ethnic groups as attack force on the people as witnessed in recent killings in Ambo.
6.5. The Oromo protests
