Gelemso - Notable Administrators

Notable Administrators

• Dejene Gizaw - The municipal mayor of Gelemso acknowledged for the foundation he laid in the modesty of the town in 1960s.
• Fitawrari Tesfaye Wondimagenyehu - The first governor of Habro Awraja.
• Colonel Tedla Ayele - Second Governor of the Habro Awraja, acknowledged for establishment of the police department of the province and many other institutions at Awraja level.
• Mekonnen Maru - Noted for his ruthless campaigns of murder and looting during the Ethiopian Red Terror. He was tried for genocide by the Harari Region's High Court and sentenced to life imprisonment.
• Allagaw Gulle- Acknowledged for stopping the Red Terror.
• Alemu Belachew- party chief of Habro awraja, called first Secretary of ESEPA or WPE for Habro Awraja.
• Alemu Mengesha - party chief of Habro Awraja after Alemu Belachew, admired by many for his simple life and justiful approach, but hated by others for some of his terrifying campaigns.
• Selamu Tegenye - administrative head of Habro Awraja while Alemu Belachew was the first secretary of Habro Awraja WPE. He is usually referred by the residents as the most notorious administrator in history of Gelemso, especially for the brutal measures he had taken on peasants in Boke and Darolebu districts in 1980s, where he labeled them extermists who shelter sccessions (by this, he was referring to OLF, the strongest opposition movement in West Harerghe at that time) and massacred them. The urban people of all sorts (Muslim, Christian, Oromo or Amhara) also remember Selamu as a merciless man to the youth for his showy acts and intensive brutality especially when was applying the mandatory national military service program (commonly called Beherawi). He was promoted later, but died in November 1989 in a helicopter crash at Dengego, with Gebreyes Weldehanna, secretary of WPE all over the former Hararghe Kiflehager, Major General Birhanu Jembere, the commander of the 1st Division of Revolutionary Army of Ethiopia (commonly called Misrak Ezz), and colonel Qajella Gemeda, chief of the then Harerghe Region Police Department.
• Birhanu Bekama Butta - witnessed by many people as highly responsible administrator for the current features of the town. The town had got 24-hour electric power service while he was a mayor, and he laid down the master plan of the town too. Even, some of the most important constructions executed under the current regime were what he had planned in the 1980s.
• Aleye Umare - Noted as long time administrator in history of the town. Almost all of the public constructions undertaken in the current regime were completed in his leadership. After the Dergue was deposed from power, the town did not get an able mayor, so that the Woreda administrators usually intervene in the municipal activities.