Ethiopian woman who became a symbol of integration in Italy is ‘hammered to death

The Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democracy Front (EPRDF) controlled the federal government for 23 years following the establishment of the federation. The Front was a coalition of four parties representing Oromia, Amhara, SNNPRS, and Tigray. It was a coalition led by people who designed the constitution and the federal arrangement.

It created a status quo that allowed these four regions to decide and enforce rules on the other regions. The other five were led by what is referred to as ‘partner’ parties; almost always following the decisions made by the EPRDF. This institutionalized in a new federal setting the traditional center-to-periphery relations of dominance and discrimination.

The Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF) is the oldest and most powerful group in the EPRDF, representing Tigray, which constitutes around six percent of Ethiopia’s population. The late leader of TPLF/EPRDF, Meles Zenawi, once said that “Revolutionary Democracy, the ideology of the ruling Front, is not compatible to pastoralist lifestyles” in explaining why ruling parties of five other regions did not join the coalition.

Years later, the TPLF has become the final victim of the center-to-periphery relationship it has dictated institutionally in the previous decades. The political transition from TPLF-influenced EPRDF to the Oromo-influenced Prosperity Party (PP) in 2018 was, for example, a work of cooperation between the ruling EPRDF parties in Oromia and Amhara. The cooperation emerged from within the EPRDF and referred to as ‘Oromara’.[10] TPLF, unable to accept marginalization and peripheralization in the system it once dominated conceptually and practically, eventually embraced a violent confrontation with the PP-run federal government in November.