The need for damage control - Gubirmans.com - August 26, 2008

By Ibsaa Guutama*

OLF is a secular political organization. It became a common household name for all citizens of Oromiyaa because of that policy, a policy that rallied them to struggle together for their lost honor and dignity. That is what made it a symbol of hope for liberation and resistance against injustice. It is to deny this role that anti-Oromummaa forces have come out with their axes to hack it down. Whistle blowers pointed cracks appearing within the leadership of OLF and the looming danger much earlier. Some even went further and requested the National Council (Shanee) to abandon the height it has occupied through conspiracy and call for a balanced Congress that could maintain organizational harmony and unity of purpose and also redirect the way ahead. But they were not listened to until incompetence and system infestation by infiltrators led to its total decay. Its change of strategy from independence to democratization of the empire, the empire that OLF was supposed to dismantle, further created more fissures within the nationalist camp. To save the name OLF from being erased from history, the group took responsibility and tried to uphold the honor of the fallen heroes and the nation. It declared that there is no two but only one OLF with the kaayyoo of liberation and that that was the OLF led by it. But Shanee clung to the name and even tried to prove its legitimacy by taking the other to alien court. But now all pretenses of changing tactics are gone, it is standing bare with its new anti-independence and anti-Oromo unity strategy. Read More.

*Ibsaa Guutama is a member of the generation that drew up the first political program of the OLF.