In December 1975, the Derg secretly created what became known as the Provisional Office for Mass Organizational Affairs (POMOA), and Haile Fida was made its chairman.

Relying on the revolutionary alliance of the proletariat, the peasantry and the progressive petit-bourgeoisie, the trinity of feudalism, imperialism and bureaucratic capitalism would be destroyed and eventually a People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia established.

Along with disaffected zamecha members who had abandoned their assigned tasks in the countryside and found their way back home, the opposition had come to support the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP), greatly increasing its numbers and influence.

August 1975, he joined Sisay Hapte, chairman of the Derg's Political Affairs Committee, in negotiating with six Arab countries over the increasing problems with Eritrea.

On 10 July 1976, a coup to remove Mengistu failed, and Sisay Hapte, who had been the Derg's chief liaison with the civilian Left, was executed three days later along with over 17 accomplices.

[12] Haile Fida remained in prison for some time, until at last he was executed; the circumstances of his conditions are unclear, but Andargachew Tiruneh states that he was killed two years after his arrest, in 1979.