Potemkin Party Officials (speech at 12th Tana Forum by Director of NSA) are invoking “increasing Red Sea militarization… and its consequences on maritime security” to argue for a “seat on the table for its stabilization”.

The unhealthy obsession/irony is too palpable to merit elaboration.

This regime has been embroiled in, and has become the principal incubator, of the multiple and perennial internal conflicts that have gripped Ethiopia (Tigray, Amhara, Somali Regions etc.) for most of its relatively short incumbency.

It continues to host a military base in the Beni-Shangul Gumuz Region in western Ethiopia for UAE sponsored military training camp; main conduit for mercenaries; and for launching Drone attacks against the Sudan.

For more than three years now, it has declared an unprovoked war of aggression against Eritrea under the mantra of “sovereign access to the sea” and projection of “naval power” in the sovereign territorial waters of its neighbour.

Its destabilizing act against Somalia is another dimension of its delusional pursuit of “regional grandeur” and insatiable appetite for the status of a “surrogate mini-hegemon” under the beck and call of other regional hegemons.

This charade has to stop before it entails further regional chaos and turmoil!

Time to tell the aspirant “mini-hegemon” to shed these hollow pipedreams and grapple with its intractable domestic agendas. Time to openly pronounce – as the saying goes – that “the Emperor has no clothes”.