OPride Correspondent| Germany
Senior Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) diplomat and the current head of the organization’s diplomatic front in Europe, Dr. Shigux Geleta, has reaffirmed OLF’s commitment to partnership and called for a united front against the TPLF dictatorship in Ethiopia.
Speaking at a Workshop Organized by Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE) from 28-29th October 2010, RISC, Reading in United Kingdom, Dr. Shigux praised SMNE for helping organizations with different political outlooks to engage in dialogue and discussed the effort OLF has been making in creating different forms of political partnership dating back to the formation of Transitional Government in Ethiopia, the 2000 Paris Conference and more recently in 2006 with the Formation of AFD (Alliance for Democracy).
He also discussed the nature of Ethiopian state, how TPLF managed to establish its political hegemony, the economy, Human Rights situation and the way forward. The most inspirational part of his presentation came when he made the argument against the biased understanding of OLF by some group of Pan-Ethiopianists who still juxtapose individual and collective rights upholding the first while they reject the latter.
He explained even if the notion of individual vs. group rights is seen as a liberal theory, there is no individual without certain basic social traits such as language, social customs, habits and ways of life. This means that by virtue of the fact that an individual is brought up by a certain family under a given social structure in a certain way; he is already a social animal.
The individuality of a person is inseparable from that social environment in which he/she is brought up. Therefore, an individual can never be considered an atom whose identity is immaterial irrespective of time and space. Had it not been the case, there would not be Ethipiawinet – a collective identity for Ethiopianists.
So for liberal Ethiopians, it would be self-contradictory to uphold Ethiopiawinet and deny the social character of an individual at the same time. As much as Ethiopiawinet is the social source of nourishment for the individual, the individuals are the perpetrators or the agents of Ethiopiawinet. So there is no way to mutually separate the individual from the social and vice versa. Read the full paper here.
What is more, his paper on Ethiopia’s “Current Political Affairs From OLF’s Perspective” presented at a forum organized by Horn Of African Solidarity Group on 22 of May 2010 in Frankfurt, Germany has aroused tremendous audience reaction across Europe. In the paper, Dr. Shigux explained the absurd reality on the ground in the Horn of Africa brought about mainly by TPLF’s dictatorship and called for a partnership to tackle the ever growing threats posed by the one man rule in Ethiopia. He also discussed the damages done by the regime currently on power to the democracy, land, people of Ethiopia and its environment.
IN conclusion he said, whatever factors contributed to the single-handed Meles’ party to exist on power, it will certainly fall sooner or later as a result of its own internal policy wrangles and the political reaction of the public at large.
Dr. Shigux added, its fall will be hastened, if all forces opposing the tyrannical system co-operate with one another on the bases of mutual respect, interest and equality. Read the full paper here.
