He has every right like all of us to critique the elections, the political process and the players. However, in doing so I can not fathom why he still finds it necessary to use categorical fabrications, guesses and innuendo. After being in politics for so long, why does he need to bring himself so low unless he has run out of issues and tactics to justify his continuing exile and hollow rhetoric.

We don’t really know and have no need to know, but yes Hailu Shawel is probably Amhara, Berhanu Nega is gurage, Hailu Araya is Tigre, Lidetu Ayalew is Welloye, Kemal Bedri is Oromo…etc. Even if they were all Amhara, what evidence, documentation, statements or personal knowledge can Ato Leenco attribute his baseless and hateful vitriol “the CUD which sometimes explicitly and more consistently implicitly restricts being an authentic Ethiopian national to being an Amharic-speaker” or worse “critics of the CUD suspect it of intending to favour the individual democratic rights of Amharic-speakers over those of non-speakers” or even more ludicrous “Emphasizing individual democratic rights is the CUD’s point of departure and its ultimate aim is abrogating the present federal system along with the exercise of group rights it supposedly reflects. As has already been stated, however, abrogating these collective rights would inevitably lead to respecting the individual democratic rights of Amharic-speakers more than those of non-speakers”.

Which god annointed Ato Leenco with divine powers to look behind the minds of all Amharic speakers and find their ‘true’ agenda of ‘Amhara domination’ and denying the ‘rights’ of everyone else ?. Which god annointed him with the patronizing mind to cast Dr Araya or Ato Bedri into working for the domination or oppression of their own ethnic groups. Is it the god of hateful clannish minds that has annointed him and similarly small minded defunct politicans of a bloody era like himself to cast people in that manner, get the lives of generations destroyed in the process as they comfortably watch from abroad ? Is it that god that tells them day in day out to ensure that they should never let their guards down from labeling everyone who is not their clone, with whatever negative label that may stick until they are wiped off the face of the earth ? Is it the same god that also commands them to ensure in the process that the Ethiopian people live in perennial turmoil awaiting the Leencos of this world to reign and bring about ‘liberation’ ?

Liberation from what ? Liberation from not being ruled over by Ato Leenco?

Ato Leenco, I implore you to denounce your hate religion and worship at the altar of truth, honesty and brotherhood and free yourself from the terrible and crushing grip of living an inept lie. You have belonged to all sorts of ‘liberation fronts’ but you are in your personal prison of hate. If you worship at the altar of honesty and brotherhood, the first thing you will do is instead of deceitfuly aligning the “explicit and implicit” aims of the CUD or anyone else to the hate target that YOU want it to be, you will listen, read, inquire in earnest, engage in honest discussion with the right sources whom you know are quite accessible.

If you worship at that altar, you will give other people a chance at least as much of a chance as you want to be given to express your true will without being pre-labled and summarily excluded, and THEN judge them. If you worship at that altar, you will not endlessly attempt to incite hate by implying or rather openly adovcating the lie that the CUD will stomp on the ‘collective rights’ of everyone especially Oromos..etc, anymore than the CUD did not incite hate nor ‘implied’ that if Leenco or Junedin Sado make Addis their headquarters, they will hurt or dominate all Amharas. If you worship at that altar, you will read the honorable response by Berhanu Nega when asked his views on the ‘provocative’ return of Oromia’s capital to Addis “we accept them with open arms, Addis is their home as much as all Ethiopians, in fact we need more headquarters, and businesses to develop the economy and the tax base…”. Does that sound to you like it came from a domineering and Oromo hating Amhara ?.

If you worship at that altar Ato Lencco, you will not make the most mindless and insulting statement to Oromos and non Amharic speakers. I quote you again “abrogating collective rights would inevitably lead to respecting the individual democratic rights of Amharic-speakers more than those of non-speakers”. In the name of all that is sane, why ? Can a field be more level than when everyone’s individual rights are respected ? If everyone’s indiviual rights are respected, why would Amharic speakers come out tops ? Do you really believe the rest are somehow retarded ? How much more demented can anyone’s thoughts be ?

If you worship at the altar of honesty, you will ask the millions of non Amharic speaking and yes Oromo Ethiopians who came out en masse and filled Addis to it’s brim on May 8th to express their FREE support to the CUD, why they support the CUD ? or the millions of Oromos in Addis, Eteya and all over the country who freely voted for CUD where ever there was no hate preaching and intimidation or willful or tactical vote to the UEDF. I know you will never ask these questions because of your pathological fear that you will confirm your worst nightmare, i.e. people want individual rights more than collective rights, people don’t ‘hate’ others because they don’t speak their language, people in Ethiopia today don’t feel oppressed by other ethnics but by the powers to be.

But if you were to muster the dream courage, for once in your life and ask those questions, you will be postively shocked by their answer when one of them tells you that “it is because you were not there to threaten me, voting is about freedom, I was not free to choose which ethinc group I was born into, but I am free to choose who should represent my interests in the annals of policy and govt, and that representative appeals to me due to his vision and magnanimity regardless of the ethnicity he was born into, which by the way is only across the stream from where both our children drink, not from across the mountains and oceans from a distant unknown enemy nation”. I assure you that you will find the same answer from the Amharic speaker in Adama or Eteya who voted for a known or unknown Oromo speaker.

This is what the god of truth, courage and honesty preaches Ato lencco. Not vitriol, not hate, not second guessing, not lying and not a zero sum game where everyone has to loose so you can gain. That, is the destructive path that you and your fellow generational irrationals of all stripes have been following for 40 years and only have death, misery and hell on earth to show for it – if not for yourselves, for the people you claim to represent.

People have moved on Ato Lencco. There has been a loud and clear voice telling you and your cohorts ‘you are STUCK’, ‘stuck in hate”, ‘stuck in history’, ‘stuck in monoploy of untruth’, ‘stuck in everything that is wrong with our country’. Everyone has been a tenant of the govt for 31 years in our country, no one least of all the starving Amhara or elite has the means or the will to ‘group oppress’. Oromos in Ethiopia use their language in administration, write in latin, learn in afaan Oromo, even sometimes get to exclude others from queues in Oromia if they are not Oromo. True they are not ruled by you or your cohorts, but by a dictatorial regime that is ruthless to all just like the previous one. There is nothing they don’t have that everyone else has including perpetual misery.

The CUD gives them a choice, an honest option to build their country respecting their ethnic cultures and languages but without the hate, without the exclusion, without the trappings, without the ‘bantustans’ and without drumming up differences and irrelevant pre history.
What about preaching brotherhood for a change Ato Leenco ? What about looking into the future ? Can you attempt that ? With the exception of the tiny minority who worship with you at the altar of hate, people are inherently future looking. It is time you follow them, take their command for change, their free vote to appoint, not to be appointed upon, which if you listen to yourself, not anyone else, but yourself, you will find out is what you have been preaching and talking DOWN to people for generations. A people who have a clear concience and who know who will unshackle them from poverty, disease & death, if only given the chance to vote freely, free of all shackles including ‘collective’ ethnic shackles. They say again, I didn’t choose to be born Oromo, Amhara or gurage..but I certainly choose to get misty eyed everytime I see my tri color as long as it is held by an Ethiopian be it Keninisa or Shewarega.

Pity you.

Gedeon Sharew
Toronto, Canada