News Brief From Western Gharri Region, Ethiopia February 01, 2006 By Gur Gharri GSG News Contributor 

According to information received from Moyale, Ethiopia, the Somali state speaker of people’s representative Mr. Ali Mohamed Kunaye has arrived in Moyale. He held a community town hall meeting for a selected few. Mr. Kunaye made what people believed to be his last public address on January 30, 2006. In the aftermath, the meeting participants said that they went there to hear him deliver words of hope and promise, rather, Mr. Kunaye delivered the most disgusting and made up incriminating stories.

They were stunned hearing a confused, and desperate man who lost focus, rather than talking about people’s problems and rendering a solution, he began by attacking one of the Gharri’s honored and distinguished ex veteran and others living abroad of being O.L.F members and anti government and labeled them as anti peace elements. However, there is no such an organization exist. He knows it and does the government. It is nothing more than a speech made by a broken and desperate man.

Mr. Ali Mohamed Kunaye and his entourage came to visit all four Districts and its sub locations in the Liban Zone to determine the magnitudes of famine and the people that are affected by it. However, the speaker declared that it is unsafe for him and his delegates to travel to those districts and its sub locations or Kebeles, due to the fact that his own constituents did not welcome him and blamed him for the disappearing food rations. They see him as a man who is behind the stolen food rations that ended up in many merchants’ supermarkets. Therefore, he said the inhabitants of those kebeles, do not want him to see them or beg food on their behave or names. Because he is the only beneficiary of the donated food rations. 

Our informants stated that Mr. Kunaye has not acted like a leader and statesman rather he behaved, like street thug and began intimidating some and blaming others for what he has done. Therefore, he started name-calling, and accusing the Gharri people of being anti peace elements and O.L. F. members whose aims are to over throw the government and are ready to strike in three directions, including Dolo, Qaddaduma, and Sololo areas. But he failed to provide any evidence or sources of his ill thought allegations.

GSG has learned that Mr. Kunaye was so daunted by his own fears; he and his delegates did not passed beyond the hotel where they landed and they left Moyale after just staying for couple of days. they literally ran away out of Moyale without saying good bye to their supporters.