
Editorial | Jan 26,2019
December 7 , 2019
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) is due to receive the most prestigious recognition, a Nobel Peace Prize for his courage in pacifying two decades of tension with Eritrea. On Tuesday, he will receive the honour that will field him alongside 10 Nobel Laureates from Africa; from Anwar al-Sadat to Desmond Tutu and from Nelson Mandela to Ellen J. Sirleaf. Indeed, the first to receive such an honor outside of Europe and the Americas was Albert Luthuli, a leader of the ANC in South Africa, whose determination for the non-violent struggle had earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960.
The decision to select Abiy this year was made on the basis of hope he offered for consolidating the democratic opening in Ethiopia, besides his effort in making an arguable peace with Eritrea. While the jury is still out on the first, he will likely travel to Oslo, Norway, not happy with the recent behavior of the guys in Asmera, gossip observed.
The romance with Eritrea’s Issayas Afeworqi may have been short lived, considering the not-so-friendly rhetoric from his proxies, gossip says. Neither Issayas nor his government to date has offered words of congratulations to Abiy for the Nobel Peace Prize, of which they are the primary reasons for the award. That is more than something strange, claims gossip. Abiy too made a rather disparaging statement toward Eritrea’s leader when he met businesspeople who are natively from Tigray Regional State a couple of weeks ago, gossip disclosed.
Eritreans’ displeasure with their Ethiopian counterparts could be the reason why they failed to appear at the recently held summit for the heads of state of the IGAD countries, where they were highly expected, claims gossip. For a long time, Eritreans viewed IGAD as a foreign policy ploy for Ethiopia. For a reason though.
Ethiopia held the position of chair at the IGAD for over a decade. A regional bloc of sorts, much of the international drive to isolate Eritrea and impose sanctions on it have roots there; so much so that Eritrea’s leaders felt frustrated to leave it. It was hoped that they would submit an official request for resuming membership with IGAD; they did not.
The remaining crowd had argued, rather fiercely, over Abiy's nomination of his close friend and once staunch political allay, Worqneh Gebeyehu (PhD), as the new Secretary-General, replacing the Kenyan Mahmoud Maalim, who had served for a little over a decade. No other person appointed to run the Djibouti-based secretariat of IGAD was grilled as much as Worqneh, gossip disclosed.
It is due to the tension mounting between the leaders of the region where Abiy is cruising in trying to bargain on several fronts all at the same time, claims gossip. He had tried to win the support of Ismael O. Guelleh, promising to persuade Kenyans to withdraw their bid for the alternative membership of the UN Security Council, claims gossip. He tried to bring Somalia’s Abdullahi Mohammed, aka Farmaajo, to his fold, by weakening Farmaajo’s foes in Jubaland, but pushing Kenya to put its army on alert, claims gossip.
Foreign policy pundits are now worried that Ethiopia is losing ground, and not only in the broader African continent. They come to believe its standing among leaders of its immediate neighborhood is eroding fast, claims gossip. Leaders of Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Somaliland, South Sudan and Kenya appear to be viewing Ethiopia’s leader and his ambition for regional political integration at arms length, according to gossip. Sudan, whose new Prime Minister was a long-time resident of Addis Abeba, can be the exception, gossip claims. No wonder that it was a safe bet for all the countries to give Sudan the chairmanship of IGAD, over the contestation between Djibouti and Kenya, gossip says.
PUBLISHED ON
Dec 07,2019 [ VOL
20 , NO
1023]
Viewpoints | Apr 11,2020
Commentaries | Nov 16,2019
Radar | Jun 08,2019
Radar | Feb 23,2019
Commentaries | Sep 21,2019
Fortune News | 35501 Views | Jul 18,2020
Fortune News | 15997 Views | Oct 12,2019
Fortune News | 14921 Views | Mar 19,2020
Agenda | 14517 Views | Mar 16,2019
February 13 , 2021 . By TADESSE TSEGAYE
In Arada, I stopped over by a hotel in front of Cinema Empire. I sat alone inside wit...
January 30 , 2021 . By FASIKA TADESSE
The Council of Ministers approved a regulation that will establish the Liability &...
January 16 , 2021
It was a sunny day on September 12, 1974. A machine gun mounted on top of a tank was...
January 3 , 2021 . By ABDUREZAK LESMAN
Women wearing netela, a white cotton garment with woven coloured borders, and men in...
February 27 , 2021
That Ethio telecom would remain in the hands of the state was never a sure deal. A ra...
February 20 , 2021
The late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was in parliament in 2010, taking questions on h...
February 13 , 2021
What most spooked buyers owning a billion dollars of Ethiopia’s Eurobonds was not a...
February 6 , 2021
The feeling of helplessness; the confusion to understand what is unfolding; and the d...
February 27 , 2021
Yinager Dessie (PhD) (right), governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), awarded Abennet Gebremeskel (left), CEO of MIDROC Ethiopia, a...
February 27 , 2021 . By MAYA MISIKIR and NEJAT AHMED
A little over six-dozen companies are vying to buy 2,400 freight trucks with a credit facility from the C...
February 27 , 2021 . By MAYA MISIKIR
A steering committee led by the Ethiopian Investment Commission is under formation to streamline employme...
February 27 , 2021 . By FASIKA TADESSE
The Ethiopian Communications Authority (ECA) is set to launch the final and long-awaited request for prop...
Put your comments here