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Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has been embroiled in a bitter feud with the political party that used to dominate the country’s politics for decades, raising questions about its ability to hold Ethiopia together through a tense political transition.
On October 7, lawmakers in Ethiopia’s upper house of Parliament, known as the House of Federation (HoF), voted to withhold budget subsidies to the Tigray regional state in the north of the country.
The move by the HoF, which is dominated by Abiy’s allies, came two days after Tigray’s regional leaders, and Abiy’s political rivals, decided to withdraw their representatives at the federal level.
Tensions had already been mounting since September, when the Tigray region held an election challenging the decision of central authorities earlier this year to postpone all parliamentary and regional elections scheduled for August due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Abiy’s opponents said the postponement was a move by the prime minister to prolong his rule and he went ahead with the elections, in which the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the dominant political force in the Democratic Revolutionary Front of the Ethiopian People (EPRDF), a multi-ethnic four-party coalition that had ruled the country for nearly 30 years won a landslide victory.
The TPLF had already split from the EPRDF in 2019 when it refused to merge with the other three coalition parties into the newly formed Prosperity Party (PP) under Abiy.
The HoF, however, declared the September 9 vote invalid, stating that the new Tigray regional assembly will not be recognized by the federal government.
The latest moves, seen as part of a mutual delegitimization campaign, have sparked fears that political turmoil could escalate into a security crisis, the latest challenge to the federal system that unites Ethiopia’s more than 80 ethnic groups.
Wondimu Asaminew, a former diplomat and currently director of the Tigray Friendship Liaison Office based in Mekelle, the regional capital of Tigray, insists that the federal government in Addis Ababa is to blame for the current situation.
“Abiy’s team, from the beginning, had a strategy of trying to sideline, make irrelevant and even criminalize the TPLF,” Wondimu said.
Wondimu was referring to the tense relationship between the prime minister and the TPLF dating back to April 2018, when Abiy took office after weeks of secret deliberations within the EPRDF.
Upon taking office after months of anti-government protests, Abiy vowed to resolve the country’s deep ethnic and political divisions and change the repressive and violent image of the EPRDF. In the first months, he accelerated the political reforms initiated in the last days of his predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn. Political prisoners were released and opposition parties were able to operate, while Abiy even won a Nobel Prize for securing peace with neighboring Eritrea.
The reform process saw the TPLF, which had long dominated, bypassed, as the Oromo and Amhara political wings of the EPRDF moved to the center of the political stage, even as prominent Oromo figures in recent months have accused to Abiy, an ethnic Oromo, from being a poor advocate for Oromo interests and slipping into authoritarianism.
Ethnic Tigrayans make up about 6 percent of Ethiopia’s population, while the ethnic Amharas and Oromos combined comprise about 65 percent of Ethiopia’s total population.
While Abiy and TPLF’s relationship was strained from the start, the EPRDF’s merger with the PP sparked open hostility between the two sides, and the postponement of the national elections added fuel to the fire.
“Abiy was not ready to solve problems within the political and constitutional framework and instead resorted to expelling our officials and destroying the EPRDF,” Wondimu said.
‘Trust and mutual risky politics’
An Addis Ababa-based political analyst, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the dispute between Tigray and the federal government comes at the worst time for Ethiopia, which is already struggling to stem the spread of COVID- 19. and cope with a potentially devastating desert locust invasion.
“The two sides are caught in a cold war of attrition that could drag the whole country into a mess,” the analyst said. “In a climate of mutual risk, mistrust and confusion, this could lead to an armed conflict in which neither party intended to enter like what happened 22 years ago with the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.”
Nebiyu Sehul-Michael, the head of the PP office in the Tigray region, ruled out an armed conflict, but said the TPLF’s destructive political behavior needed a proportionate response from Addis Ababa.
“The withholding of the budget subsidy by the federal government is intended to significantly end the total anarchy and treasonous actions of TPLF,” Nebiyu said.
“The current relationship freeze came quite late due to open-mindedness and leniency from the federal government. Legal relations with the lower bodies and the administration can continue based on the federation, the constitution, as well as the proclamations and the procedures ”.
The region was to receive subsidies from the federal budget totaling about $ 280 million for the current fiscal year. It’s unclear how much of that funding will be affected by the HoF measure. The federal government has previously said it would channel the funds through lower-level government agencies in Tigray, bypassing the state legislature and executive, though questions remain about how this will work in practice.
Some said the move to cut budget subsidies would likely cause mutual economic pain.
“Tigray has a large tax base and a relatively strong manufacturing base. Furthermore, an economic siege by the federal government would probably be counterproductive, as it would create solidarity between the people and the government in the face of a perceived threat from the central government, ”said the analyst.
Officials in the Tigray region have already publicly indicated that they will retaliate by withholding tax revenues collected in their region from the federal government.
National dialogue, a way out of the crisis?
With both sides apparently holding their own, many in Ethiopia have called for the revival of the national dialogue to break the political deadlock.
Wondimu, while welcoming such an initiative, said it would not be global, and not just between the TPLF and the PP.
“We are still open to a comprehensive dialogue, illustrated in our call under the banner of the federalist forces,” Wondimu said.
Similarly, Nebiyu agreed that the national dialogue should occur, but accused the TPLF of spoiling the preliminary work necessary to make this happen.
“Discussions and other peaceful means are of the utmost importance in solving any controversial problem. But this is not easy in a political landscape that was marred by the destructive 27-year rule of the TPLF, ”he said.
Meanwhile, observers said that while both sides can in principle agree to enter a national dialogue, the terms they establish could torpedo it from the start.
“TPLF wants a comprehensive dialogue with other stakeholders, as the bilateral dialogue with PP would automatically make TPLF a minority party,” the analyst said.
“The PP could see a national dialogue as a strategy to buy time to win an election against a disorganized and repressed opposition that may be held in mid-2021.”
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