None dares to comment on the past mistakes so as to correct and brighten the future

From Ulluuqaa to oromia@ayyaantuu.com | October 12, 2013

Thank you everybody! I have read some of the comments and replies. They are very nice for the fact that they could engage a lot of Oromo elites. However the breadth and depth of these comments are the same as those in the early 1990s for many reasons. I couldn’t see any enlightenment and dynamism in their contents. None dares to comment on the past mistakes so as to correct and brighten the future. From hosts of weaknesses and mistakes of Oromo elites of which all emanating from ignorance, I prioritize three of them.

1) Deliberately avoiding commonalities and prompting points of difference among each other.

This is the most incapacitating psychology of Oromo elites or the so called “leaders”. They are like advertising agency for the fact that advertising agencies deliberately promote a point of difference of a business firm and ignore points of commonness. This is to say, when it wants to advertise a bank; all competitors’ banks might have good service, fast transfer of money, sound reliability, a lot of branches worldwide, etc. But the job of an advertising agency is to find the point of difference of its client and to intensively promote it.

One can also characterize the psychology of these “leaders” to the psychology of a leader of a troop of gorillas (or kodama jaldeessaa). A leader of a troop wants to kill every newly born male when it gets matured. The matured male gorilla should escape from the troop and make its own troop by attracting females from the old one.

Both psychologies (the psyco of troop leader and that of ads agency) emanate from the same outlook. That is, these “leaders” extremely focus on the goal of the Oromo struggle but not on the strategy and tactics of the struggle. The more they meditate about the goal the more it seems to them they are close to achieving it. The more they see the victory at close distance from their meditation point of view the more they forget the millions of obstacles on the way and the more they wish to just grab all the prestige, benefits and fames that might come with the victory.

Great leaders seem to highly focus on strategy and tactics so as to make simple, easy and smooth way to their goal. That is why they learn from past mistakes, they restlessly make dialogues with key stakeholders, they embrace proactive and supportive ideas, overcome the million obstacles on the way etc.

No one can estimate the cost paid by the Oromo people due to the above mentioned psychology of the elites. The disunity and fierce war without any difference between OLF and IFLO, the cold war between OLF and ONC etc arises from such psychology. Even the extreme focus on polarization rather than neutralization is the result of such psychology. The theory Gobanaism which improperly over stated is nothing but extreme focus on polarization which is vitally useful to strengthen the enemy’s camp, indeed without which the enemy is handicapped in Oromo land. When I was “a kid” (sixteen years ago),I made a simple research that might neutralize the fierceness of the so called Gobanaism and propose to one of OLF “leader”. Unfortunately that “leader” had no capacity to even understand the theory.

So in the future, the truly Ilma Orma elites must work on points of parity and not on points of difference. We all have million points of commonality but only one or two points of difference with some.

2) Not knowing self and the “enemies”.

What Oromo is and is not in Ethiopia? Perfectly finding the right answer to this question helps the Oromo elites to know self and know the “enemy” as well. Many elites marginalize themselves and narrow the scope of Oromumma to only those Afan Oromo speakers and even some elites have big doubt on those Oromo who speak mixed Afan Oromo about their truly Ilma Orma. Oromumma without Rayyumma,Jarsumma, Wallumma, etc is not full. Today the Rayya hardly speak Afan Oromo so as many Walloes and Jarsoes. If long ago the road map to Bilisumma of Oromumma was designed in such a way to include Rayyumma and other non Afan Oromo speakers Oromo, Tsadqan and Ayelom were not fire against it. Oromumma must be defined in such a broad manner to have broad and robust force. What Oromo is in Ethiopia is therefore, it can be Afan Oromo speaking, Amharic speaking, Tigrigna speaking, Guragigna speaking, Somali speaking and other southern people’s language speaking. This is very difficult to some Oromo elites to understand and believe this fact as a practicable theory. However the date will come in the near future that everybody will believe it.

The second problem under the category of this weakness is not knowing the “enemy” and over estimating and exaggerating the capacity of their enemies. What is the capacity of those “enemies” in the absence of Rayyumma, Wallumma etc along their side and at the same time the problem of deliberately avoiding points of parity & promoting the difference among each other is solved? They will become helpless children that must not be attacked but must be cared for. However, you must strongly tell them the reality that there is no as such Ethiopian nationalism for the fact that no Ethiopian national in real sense in today’s Ethiopia. The name Ethiopia is simply to mean the ancient vast continent of Cush (Africa). Today’s Ethiopian nationalism is simply ghostly nationalism. In fact to strengthen and establish new democratic Ethiopia it must be founded on Oromo nationalism because Oromumma is everything in Ethiopia. Tell those helpless & problem children that their fear and hatred from Oromo nationalism is nothing but phobia.

3) Parochialism.

Weak and ignorant leaders cannot speak loudly in front of the crowd to align the youth, the women, the poor, the rich, the farmers, the intelligentsia, etc along their side in a mass. Because they neither have clear vision nor articulate their reason in a proper manner and they neither have confidence. Ironically they want to have lots of supporters or followers. Henceforth they cannot attract rational supporters; they strive to attract emotional supporters. The strong weapon to attract emotional supporters is to use region, religion, music and other weak lobbying mechanisms which ultimately dismantle the unity and dwindle the power of the nation. This is what incapacitated the Oromo people in the last twenty or forty years. So my last advice to Oromo elites is not to consider weak and ignorant personnel as an Oromo leader.

Bye! Ulluqa, the sole liberal Diaspora.

=>ayyaantuu