The Ethiopian government finds itself at a time when it needs to indulge in critical introspection.

Recent reports hitting the airwaves and the press bear out the veracity of this assertion.

Headlines such as "NBE swindled out of hundreds of millions of birr in gold scam", "More fake gold discovered in NBE", "Millions of birr found in homes of gold scam suspects" "Former ETC officials charged with causing billions of birr loss", "NBE rejects DBE's claim of 32m birr profit, says DBE lost 700 m birr" have shocked the public and become major topics of discussion.

These news reports alone give rise to two important questions. What is the sum of the money involved and which type of institutions are affected? The answer is simple; the sum runs into billions of birr and the institutions affected are governmental organizations.

How can the government be at the receiving end of fraud of this magnitude and be presented with false reports by the persons it appointed to its own institutions? Are these institutions truly governmental organizations or have they become "privatized"? If these institutions are run by cheats or incompetent personnel as to be plundered on this scale, they cannot even be regarded as government support organizations, let alone governmental organizations.

If these institutions cannot discharge the duties entrusted to them by the government, it would mean that neither the government nor the taxpayer public have a stake in them. In that case, who "owns" them? The answer would be individuals, who are mired in corruption. They have become institutions which drive a wedge between the government and the public.

The nuts and bolts are slowly becoming loose from the institutions established by the constitution and other legislations as government entities. The moment they become totally unstuck, the government will cease to operate as a machinery and collapse.

Erirtrea's Sha'ebia government has left no stone unturned and did everything within its power to topple the Ethiopian government. It attempted to do so through the wars it launched at Badme and the proxy wars it staged by masterminding opposition forces and militant extremists based in Mogadishu. Thanks to the heroic exploits of our defense forces, its evil intention was foiled.

Defending the nation is not limited to defending against territorial invasion; it also involves defending the integrity of institutions like banks. But this task cannot be undertaken by the defense forces as they cannot march against state banks like the regulatory National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) and the Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) or gold scammers.

The task is one of defending the country's vital economic interest which requires a strict anti-corruption legislation and a vigorous campaign towards this end.

The government must begin tightening its loose nuts and bolts. We are not advocating this with a view to extending its tenure. We have neither the responsibility nor the inclination to extend the EPRDF's grip on power. However, given that the weakening of strategic governmental institutions like the state-owned banks and the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) is bound to exacerbate the travails of the already weak national economy and pose a threat to essential service delivery, we feel we are duty-bound to urge the government to tighten its nuts and bolts. After all, the agenda is one which is of concern to the public at large.

Presently, the action of the government bureaucracy is forcing many people question its motive. Is it due to greed and corruption that the bureaucracy has become rotten or is it due to an entirely different reason? Is its action driven by a perceived political gain that results from causing public disgruntlement with the government?

It may be difficult to answer this question with a degree of precision. However, we can say with certainty that the government is sitting idle while the nuts and bolts which hold it together are coming loose. Consequently, the country's resources and assets are being plundered and squandered on an alarming scale.

If a machinery's nuts and bolts come loose it is not only them but the whole machinery which becomes disabled. That is why the machinery's safety demands that they be tightly put in place. And that is why we say the government needs to tighten its nuts and bolts if it is to function as a machinery which carries out its task properly.