Tedla Asfaw
Ato Ayele Chamiso on his ten minutes interview with Ben of Ethiopiafirst on Jan. 18 said that he is ready to hand over the "golden ball " he caught, to the leader of Kinijt, Engineer Hailu, before it cleared the wall for the home run and made his Kinijt faction beat the Temesgen's faction on the "Kinijit Series" this week.
This golden ball is the Kinijit certificate which might help to function "legally" in Ethiopia but from the recent experience of Ato Gebru Asrat's Arena party, certificate does not mean too much in TPLF/EPRDF's Ethiopia.
Ato Ayele appealed to Kinijit factions led by Birtukan and Hailu to narrow their differences for the eventual ceremony of handling the golden ball and bring hope to the millions of Kinijit supporters and this is too little too late as we know recently Judge Birtukan on her interview with Capital ruled out working with Engineer Hailu.
Ato Ayele knows that very well and his call for narrowing differences is just tactical and he is going to organize a meeting and hand over the certificate to Engineer Hailu and he might be rewarded for doing that.
The question is what is after that? Will kinijit be allowed to mobilize its supporters to challenge the regime ? Can Kinijit call mass rally which surely will turn to anti TPLF/EPRDF and risk crack down which might land the leaders back to Kaliti ?
We are now back to situation way back before May 2005 where there were no free medias or debates on TV and hard to reach to the millions of Kinijt supporters. Kinijit will not be in any position to contest the coming spring local election without talking to its constituents.
Kinijit supporters loyalty to the Kinijit of 2005 will not be there and participation in the peaceful struggle has been dealt a serious blow thanks to the infighting of the leadership since September and that is a big problem .
The easy part is to get the certificate of recognition and no one knows what that certificate is going to bring for the struggle because TPLF/EPRDF is not ready to play by the rules of free and fair election and that can only be achieved through the coordinated mass protest by those with Kinijit certificate and without certificate taking a huge risk by the leaders and the people.
I am not sure Judge Birtukan Medekssa and Engineer Hailu can coordinate such action and maybe one is working to undermine the other and come out as a winner by siding with the unelected regime and time will tell us which is the people's Kinijit, is it the one with certificate or without certificate?
