During his tenure Tafari presented himself as the public face of the ruling junta. According to the Ottaways, while at first he was "a neutral and powerless figure", in the end "he was too colorless, soft-spoken, and undemonstrative to be the figurehead of the revolution." However, according to Rene LaFort's account, Tafari offered some hints that he supported those opposed to Mengistu. One such hint was in July 1975, when in a public speech he made overtures to the civilian left—groups which included the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP) and MEISON—proposing a united front "of all the forces that rejected the "ancient regime", built from the base, that is from the mass organizations born of the great reforms"; LaFort points out that this was "a strategy which Mengistu Haile Mariam and his supporters opposed and would continue to oppose more and more resolutely." He repeated this message in a speech on the first anniversary of the deposition of Emperor Haile Selassie.