Ethiopia’s Tigray region contemplates elections in defiance of national unity

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s Tigray region plans to hold elections, its main party said, putting it on a collision course with the federal government and testing the country’s fragile unity.

In March, the Horn of Africa country postponed parliamentary and regional elections scheduled for August due to the new coronavirus outbreak. A new date has yet to be set, and parliament failed to come up with one at a meeting on Tuesday.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the region’s ruling party, acrimoniously parted ways with the national coalition of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) last year when its three other parties merged to form the new Party of Prosperity.

The TPLF said Monday night that it will continue the elections in Tigray despite the postponement of voting across the country.

“We are making preparations, including holding regional elections to safeguard the rights of our people from chaos,” said a TPLF statement. He did not mention a date for the vote.

The Ethiopian National Board of Elections said that TPLF did not submit a request for a vote and that no non-NEBE organization was mandated to hold any kind of election.

The EPRDF that seized power in 1991 was dominated by Tigray minorities, and kept bubbling tensions under control for decades by stifling virtually all dissent, including expressions of ethnic nationalism.

When Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took power in Africa’s second most populous country in 2018, he launched a series of reforms that allowed for greater freedoms in what was long one of the most repressive states in Africa.

But the reforms have made it possible for long-standing complaints to resurface against decades of harsh government rule and emboldened regional power corridors like the TPLF seeking to secure more power for their ethnic groups.

Jawar Mohammed, a prominent activist from the Abiy Oromo ethnic group, told Reuters that the Tigray dispute could destabilize the Horn of Africa.

“The federal and Tigray authorities are not reasonable. The Tigray regional council may decide to hold elections and have the power to conduct the elections, ”said Jawar.

The TPLF statement accused the Abiy Prosperity Party of not having a genuine interest in holding elections and that it was using the coronavirus pandemic as “an excuse to establish a one-man dictatorship.”

The PP rejected the accusation. “The TPLF position has no constitutional basis. They have no mandate to hold elections. They are trying to destabilize the country in an attempt to seize power,” said PP spokesman Awelu Abdi.

Ethiopia’s constitution establishes a maximum term of five years for the national government. Abiy’s term expires in September.

William Davison, senior analyst with the expert group of the International Crisis Group for Ethiopia, said the TPLF’s decision to proceed with the elections before the rest of the country can be politically explosive given the lack of legal clarity.

“(It threatens) to deepen Ethiopia’s political crisis, as the legality of regions that conduct surveys without federal permission is unclear and is in dispute,” he told Reuters.