(Shishay Amare Gebremeskel)

Since the beginning of the armed struggle of the people of Tigrai lead by the rebel organization Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), several and historical General Assembly (GA) meetings have been held. As outcomes of the meetings, history tells us majority of key decisions lead to success of the struggle have been made as per the ideas being raised from the wide GA members. This history revealed us top decisions to be made exclusively by individual interests of high rank leaders are usually less productive or sometimes caustic. The members are ideally assumed to represent the wide people and are expected to speak real public interests.

All concerns of the politics should ultimately focus on: How the people could better be benefited? What kind of leadership team best apt the people to lead the overall transformation? It is by answering these questions that TPLF can reclaim the full-spirit support of its backbone (the people of Tigrai), which had been almost 100% up to the bad time (2001 riven). The upcoming congress may be great opportunity for TPLF to address the burning public interests by really homogenizing the leadership and the people thereby fixing basic development hindrances. “ገ እንትብሉኻ ዶ ትጋገ” Comments and ideas being raised by many concerned Tigrayans should critically be considered as most of them are ground realities.

Above all TPLF leadership should believe that almost no Tigrayan (negligible in percent) do work to demolish his/her own martyrs’ organization, instead they give consultancies and toil for its betterment and strength. They do it in a way to serve the people better today than yesterday. Thus, it is time for TPLF leadership to listen the people in a positive sense. It is the people who take care of the leadership, after all.

Hence, the organization and the Gov’t should serve the people as per the martyrdom of our fathers and mothers that could be expressed in terms of the following points.

1. Provide technology-based, sustainable and massive agricultural projects to claim food security and environmental rehabilitation. It is shame at this 21st century to be dependent on rain water and plan development programs depending on it, which leads to catastrophes of plans in case of rain absence.

2. Provide viable drinking water to our people using respective methods for both rural and urban residents.

3. Attract investments in manufacturing and services which can compute with EFFORT (Endowment Fund for Rehabilitation of Tigrai) factories and organizations in similar and/or new types.

4. Implement plans and work on building of visionary generation, focus on basic ethics and hard-work culture impositions.

5. Minimize unsafe migrations of youth to Arab countries and other places, by creating job opportunities focused on industrialization of the region.

6. Respect teachers, researchers, MDs and other experts and properly utilize their expertise. The major objective of the martyrdom was to create best intellectuals, serve the people wisely and insure development lead by them.

7. The people of Tigrai are brilliant and hardworking like any ‘change-demanding’ people. They deserve brilliant and hardworking leadership. The leader should really examine his/her capacity whether he/she can lead these strong people. (ኣብ ዘይምጥኖ ቦታ ክቅመጥ ዝስከፍ ማሕበረሰብ ‘ዩ ፈጢሩና: ሰባት ብስሕተት ኣብዘይቦታና ከቅምጡና ይኾኑ ‘ዮም: ሽዑ ግን ዓቅምና ንፈትሽ: ኣብ ዘይግብአና ቦታ ንሰከፍ: ንሊቃውንቲ ነቀድም: ንሳቶም ‘ዮም ንቅድሚት ዝወስዱና::)

8. The leadership of the organization and the Gov’t should have high level intellectual think tank groups for each key development arenas.

9. The leadership should make and demand reality reports of achievements and failures on ground so that it gets equivalent acknowledgement and corrective ideas, respectively, from the people. Good governance, fighting rent seeking and corruption are in fact major concerns.

10. To insure progressive development and make use of ideas of the people, Gov’t and the organization should check that independent media, freedom of speech, and all Human Rights are respected as per the constitution. Strong institutions stood for the people’s security and development are must to be realized.

11. TPLF members and cadres should be nominated based on work, academic background and political capacities, not by party loyalty and nepotism.

Hoping prosperous future for the people of Tigrai and Ethiopia with progressive leadership!

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*The author Shishay Amare Gebremeskel is a PhD Research scholar at the Dep’t of Mech. Engineering of IIT DELHI, India. He can be reached at  [email protected]