What Government of Ethiopia and ethnic Oromo activist should do?
Government of Ethiopia given a political will have all means and power to circumvent the looming dangerous (political, economic, social or whatsoever) on minority groups in Ethiopia. Its intent in developing the master plan can be good but the manner and approach employed in the planning process definitely gave wrong welcome from low-ranking OPDO officials, larger middle income Oromo public and young Oromo university students. In a short-term therefore, government should reengage open and critical stakeholders’ dialogue to address the ethical dimensions of the master plan; make genuine consultation and draw an informed consent, and give adequate compensation for evicted farmers. The government must also apologize and hold responsibility for its brutality where dozens of mainly young Oromo university students were shot dead. The government must learn to bear domestic social capital costs of being transparent than spending millions of tax payers money in lobbying foreign firms and experts in undermining dissent voices to legitimize its half-baked development undertakings.
In a nation-building, resource governance and state’s structure of governance are mutually formative phenomenon. Ethnic Oromos’ sharp and abrupt protest against the master plan is a clear signal to absence of good governance, misconception of development, non-observance of development ethics, enforcement of irrelevant ethnic federalism and public leadership deficiency in Ethiopia. Therefore, in a long term Ethiopian technocrats need to work to revitalize and harmonize a mismatch between national resource governance and awkward ethnic federalism. The dangerous of ethnic federalism and sensitivity of resource governance must be given proper attention not later but today before it goes bad.
Though there were genuine causes the protest has been largely non-institutional, inconsistent, narrow in context and dependent. There is no unique justice to ethnic Oromo for that matter. Except few individuals who are state power owners, the population at large is victims of absence of Good Governance in Ethiopia. Fellow Ethiopians are better change partner than foreign embassies and institutions. Therefore, ethnic Oromo activists especially in the Diaspora who are basically behind an ethnocentric agitation should revise polarizing issues and animosity on particular social group; instead should tackle underlying causes beyond focusing on characterizing the regime and on behavior and attitude of governance in Ethiopia, and advisably bring issues forth in such a national context. To this end, the ethnic Oromo activists and protesters must openly denounce and distance themselves from hate, resentment and vengeance. Equally, the protest must objectively detach itself from any kind of affiliation or compromise to radical and anti-Ethiopia groups’, views/slogans/attitudes/actions/behaviors damaging peaceful co-existence/tolerance or solidarity of Ethiopians, and generally inhuman acts.
The author can be reach at biraanug@gmail.com, Facebook: Biraanu Gammachu
Source: Abugida