On a U.S. tour with his Amharic book, Freedom and Justice in Ethiopia, former Tigray People’s Liberation Front leader and Ethiopian defense minister Si’ye Abraha talked about going to jail under a system he helped to create.
“I am a politician and not a legal expert,” says Si’ye, “and so I wrote my book based on my personal experience passing through the legal process.It is my observations as a politician looking at its political impacts.”
Si’ye spoke in Washington, D.C. and signed copies of his book about being author and victim of the Ethiopian legal system. He told his audience and an Amharic reporter about the dramatic events that changed his life when Birtukan Medeksa, a young judge now serving a life sentence in Ethiopia, dropped state charges against Si’ye and set him free. But the Ethiopian parliament passed a new law that retroactively put him back in jail for seven years.
Now a candidate for parliament for United for Democracy and Justice, the party still chaired by Birtukan, Si’ye says that laws are designed to fulfill political intentions and interests.
In summarizing the book for his Washington audience, Si’ye said he believes that the country would fare better if the government he served had taken corrective measures.His book, he says, is really for the politicians to read.
Candidates in Oromiya Propose Ethiopia’s Second Language
Parliamentary candidates disagree on whether the language of Oromiya can achieve the status of Amharic as a new ‘Federal working’ language.
A coalition of eight opposition parties, the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Unity Forum, has proposed in campaign debates that Afan Oromo be adopted as a second federal working language of Ethiopia.
However, one of Oromiya’s political parties in a coalition with the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front opposed the proposal being raised by opposition candidates from Oromiya. The Oromo People’s Democratic Organization says that Afan Oromo, which was established as the language two decades ago, hasn’t sufficiently developed to serve as a national working language for the Republic Federal Democratic of Ethiopia.
One OPDO official, Mesfin Assefa, worries that such a move would create disastrous violence among nations and nationalities in the country.
Lidetu Ayalew, leader of the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Unity Forum, or Medrek, supports the idea that Ethiopia could function with two national languages, but said he hasn’t decided which language should become the second national language. However, he added that given the large number of Afan Oromo speakers and the current socio-political situation in the country, Amharic and Afan Oromo would have a good chance of garnering the needed support. (Jalene Gemeda)
