Mereja.Forum

this guy knew the Abyssinia treacherous politics well. he said "ሰውዬው (አብይ) የ10 ዓመት ብሎ እቅድ እየለቀቀብህ፤ ወንበር አካባቢ ምን ታደርጋለህ?"

ይህን ጸሃፊ ገምተህ የተገመትክ ልበለዉ?

I took the time to listen to the narrative. I have no interest in taking on Jawar now when he is facing some judicial process. I only wish him a fair trial for the charges he is facing even if I parted ways when he was still a student at Stanford University, saying ምከረዉ ምከረዉ እምቢ ካለ መከራ ይምከረዉ።

No, I did not go to Stanford University. However, I have met a Professor of Industrial Engineering who graduated from Stanford University before he became an Assistant Professor. I have also met and shaken hands with Jawar on at least two occasions when he was still a student at Stanford University. It is possible, not proven, that I could have gone there to work if I were a willing viceroy.

I suspect that he was a participant on ManaBuna Forum and may have engaged me in online discussions to criticize my views on that forum. I suspect that he was also a participant on this forum, who was critical of my views even when I made very simple and basic logic that could be easily understood by any layperson who has gone to any school. I still remember that participant's denial of that very simple and basic logic. That participant kept asserting that I was the same person as another participant on this forum even after the other participant stated that he is not the same person.

I still remember when he called me one day in rage when he was still a student or a recent graduate about a meeting scheduling of an elderly man that neither he nor I had any control over. I could have returned his rage in rage. However, I was calm enough to explain to him that I did not know about the scheduling he called about in rage and handed over my phone to the man who was sitting next to me. That rage seemed to be the intra-Oromo competition at the time that I had no interest in. He didn't even have the decency to apologize for his rage. I have had the impression that political science teaches about being decent, polite, and about polity, before defining politics as a science.

I still remember when he wrote on ManaBuna Forum trying to belittle the thesis of Professor Merera Gudina in Minneapolis that the latter presented at an annual conference. His public criticism was after a brief encounter with the Professor after the meeting and doing interview on the road along with another student.

When we were discussing on ManaBuna Forum, one of my threads was "Who Initiated the Nile Basin Initiative?" I suppose that there was a meaningful dispossion of ideas about the Nile under that thread. It was more than a dozen years ago. I did not come across his writings about the Nile and I still wonder what new things he may have written that wasn't discussed under that thread.

I still fail to understand why he was simply against ideas just for the sake of opposing ideas that didn't fit his group thinking at that time. I still remember a participant, possibly him, accusing me of over education. No, I am not over educated. I am a student for life who can't even define the term over education or doesn't know if such a thing exists. That was the first time and only time I read somebody spell it out just like that.

Yes, I observed his writings as coming from a student with a potential for a deeper knowledge. However, after noticing that kind of erratic behaviour, I decided in good faith to give him words to stay focused on deepening his knowledge and become a more mature intellect. By then, I had been making cursory observations about the intra-Oromo debate starting around 1991 when I was a college student in Ethiopia.

My cursory observation has been that the debate had two phases, one from 1991 to 2004 when a decision was made to move the then regional Oromo state's capital from Addis Ababa to Adama and since then. History is likely to make a point that the period around 2004 may be one of the times, if not the most significant time, that changed the balance of the debate. Jawar and all of his supporters are bound to answer to history what everyone of them did before then, around then, and after then before they can claim much credit for the changes that may have happened after the shift of the debate.

My good faith offer was met, at least in my opinion, with an incapacity to listen. Upon that personal observation, I decided to part ways after telling him diplomatically that he appeard to know better than me (አነ ጫለ ከን ቤክቱ ፈካታ።) I have never looked back. Just before I left him, he brought up the name of another man that I know, saying that he is a brilliant man who was excluded from decision making, his words, not mine, and then he held back. My instinct to part ways sooner surprised me for two reasons, that he was later talking about another man that I know and that he evidently said nothing about what he thought might be wrong.

This is the same guy that I later heard in the media saying he made a calculator for Ethiopia'e internal politics in recent times. I have no idea how many mathematical equations he has ever solved in his life to be talking about a calculator.

I know that the graduate of Stanford University who became a Professor of Industrial Engineering has solved many equations, knew how to interpret Alan Greenspan's market calculations in his class on Operations Research. It was in his class that I presented for the first time my research thesis. Not only did he understand it well, he went out of his way to explain to his other graduate students about its novelity. I still remember that moment because it gave me more confidence in the proof of concept of my reseach thesis. I also still remember that professor saying during one of his lectures that some people with certain characteristics do not go too far. I am positive that when he said it, he didn't have in mind this other junior Stanford University alumnus.

I am scribbling all these not because I don't wish Jawar a fair trial for the charges he is facing but because the writter of the narrative gives young students a fallacious narrative if my scribbles here have any grain of truth. Yes, Jawar could have been an excellent teacher. However, there is a vast gap between the qualities of leaders and teachers, at least in my view. Leaders necessarily need to have more original ideas than others whereas teachers only need to be able to correctly relay to students the information that they can read in text books written by others. Of course, when they advance to becoming Professors, they start to profess and write text books.

Leaders necessarily need to understand well enough the rights of others more than they realize their own rights. A genuine leader has the capacity to say I disagree with what you say but I will defend to death your right to say it. Has this boy demonstrated that capacity? Well, that is too much to expect from many.

I was waiting to hear news that he has also flipped on his position about the current federal structure in Ethiopia, like he has done on varios other issues. Now, I am not waiting to hear that flipping given the situation that he is in. However, I wonder if the writer knows if Jawar has a deep understnading of why the current federalism structure is more beneficial than other structures even for the people on whose behalf Jawar claims to speak. I hope that is the book that the writer of the narrative turns the pages of and reports definitively why Jawar is convinced one way or another without waiting for an opportune time to flip position on that matter as well. If it helps him get started, some in Jawar's own region have long ago raised a statehood for their region, if I remember correctly. So, the writer can only report why either side's view is more convincing analytically if he can decipher one side of the analysis from the faculty of the man that he wrote about in this narrative, which I couldn't tell is coming from የድሮ አራዳ or የዘመኑ ልሂቅ።