Tedla Asfaw
On January 15 VOA Amharic had interviewed Ato Isayas from Fortune Magazine in Addis Ababa on the editorial they wrote about the hundreds of millions of dollars worth "gold" kept under the National Bank protection that was discovered to be fools gold.
The cheating has been going on for the last two years while the country was immersed in the political turmoil and the time was ripe to steal and loot and this made me believe that this is not ordinary crime may be "political crime".
The so called "investigation" now is focusing on individuals who got license to sale for the government and I do not believe we will get to the bottom of it in a country where there is no investigative journalism and the production, buying and selling is dominated by the government.
Do we not have technology to detect gold from other metals? Where is the control mechanism and why this happened after the 2005 election? These are legitimate questions which will be asked and an inquiry commission is a must at higher level even if it is not independent.
The Parliament should establish an inquiry commission and debate about it to find the truth. The people representatives from the Ethiopian gold region should talk to the people there and explain how resources from their region end up in thieves pocket instead of spending it on infrastructure development. Is it not that article 39 supposed to be, political and economical self determination ?
This is what we call it in Ethiopia "Ye Leba Gereger Le Kemagna Yamechale", "Thieves profit from anarchy" and I hope those Ethiopians who are good in investigation can jump on this big theft and expose all behind these day light robbery.
I thank the Fortune Magazine for bringing this out and press as much as they can to tell the whole story and no doubt this story will be picked by foreign medias including the Ethiopian Diaspora and it will not go away.
If you have a National Bank who can not tell gold from other metals and what does it say about the national establishments of the country, health,education and army etc and all the talk about "Limate", development remains empty rhetoric and people will lose hope in anything government does.
