President Issais Afewerki’s Speech Amharic Narration Part 2

English Translation: on May 24, 2007, 18:47 Dear Compatriots, Honourable Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, For the last 16 years, we have been striving, with unrelenting resolve and without faltering in our steps, to ensure steady economic growth in order to raise and ameliorate the living standards and lifestyle of our people. Not to do so would have rendered our independence, for which we yearned for more than two generations and paid heavy sacrifices in the political and armed struggles that we waged, symbolic indeed. It was not easy to initially lay, from scratch, the foundations of a devastated economy. To resurrect those foundations after the new cycle of destruction wrought by Ethiopia ‘s recent invasion, exacerbated by incessant hostilities, further amplified the hurdles that we had to overcome. This is too obvious to merit elaboration. Yet, because we toiled, tirelessly, indomitably, and unperturbedly, our accomplishments thus far are beyond comparison indeed. We had no qualms to recognize humanitarian assistance as a transient imperative, indeed even as our right, during austere times until we find relief and recoup the opportunities denied to us for generations. It was this realization that prompted us to solicit humanitarian aid in the first place. However, this was misconstrued as a weakness to foster an attitude of: “Let us bind the hands with which you work and eat, and, let us spoon-feed you” with all its attendant pressures. Thus, when practical and effective …
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