New Ethiopian PM apologises

FORGIVING: ABIY AHMED ALSO EXTENDS OLIVE BRANCH TO NEIGHBOURING ERITREA

Reaches out to opposition politicians, many jailed by his predecessor.

Addis Ababa

Ethiopia’s new Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, has apologised to people harmed in recent political unrest – and reached out both to the political opposition and long-time rival Eritrea at his swearing-in yesterday.

Ahmed is the first ethnic Oromo to be selected by the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) as prime minister in its 27 years of rule.

In a parliamentary session, Ahmed formally replaced Hailemariam Desalegn, whose surprise resignation in February came after more than two years of protests led by the Oromo.

“Ethiopians living abroad and Ethiopians living here, we need to forgive each other from the bottom of our hearts,” Ahmed said in a speech after he was sworn in.

Ahmed, 42, a former minister of science and technology, takes the reins of one of Africa’s fastest-growing and most-populous economies amid hopes that he will change the EPRDF’s authoritarian style of governing.

More than 1 100 people are being held without trial under a state of emergency declared after Desalegn’s resignation.

They include dissidents who had been freed just months earlier in a mass prisoner amnesty ordered by Desalegn.

While he made no mention of the emergency decree in his speech, Ahmed reached out to the country’s opposition politicians, many of whom were incarcerated during Desalegn’s time. “We will not be seeing you as enemies, but be seeing you as brothers.”

Unrest among the Oromos started in late 2015 over a government development plan they decried as unfair. It soon spread to the country’s second-largest ethnicity, the Amhara.

The protests resulted in hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands of arrests and only stopped after Ethiopia was placed under emergency rule for 10 months from October 2016.

Referring to people who were hurt or jailed, he said “I apologise from the bottom of my heart”. He also extended an olive branch to Eritrea, Ethiopia’s one-time province turned arch-enemy after a two-year war. –

Picture: AFP HANDOVER. Abiy Ahmed, left, newly elected prime minister of Ethiopia, with predecessor Hailemariam Dessalegn at parliament in Addis Ababa following his swearing in ceremony yesterday.