‘Game over’? Abiy Ahmed, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front and Ethiopia’s political crisis

Abstract

On 15 February 2018, Hailemariam Desalegn, Ethiopia’s beleaguered prime minister, resigned. Bowing to pressure from within his own party,1 the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), Hailemariam declared that he hoped to facilitate an end to ‘unrest and political crisis’ in the country by leaving the national stage.2 If Hailemariam’s departure had taken observers by surprise, however, what was to follow would defy all predictions. His successor, Abiy Ahmed—whose elevation was unanticipated even by many within the EPRDF Politburo itself3—has, since his April 2018 inauguration, presided over a dramatic set of iconoclastic policy shifts. Perhaps most high profile amongst these has been the securing of a rapprochement with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s most bitter regional nemesis since the outbreak of a border war in May 1998. It is in the domestic sphere, however, where Abiy’s reform agenda—or, at least, its stated ambitions—has been most radical. In particular, Abiy has sought to distance himself from the past 27 years of EPRDF rule (or, at least, core dimensions of it), condemning his immediate predecessors within weeks of coming to office as overseers of ‘terrorist acts…and using force just to stay in power’ and announcing a range of plans to overturn longstanding EPRDF positions on, for example, the role of the state in the economy and multiparty politics.4 Leader of the recently-renamed Oromo Democratic Party (ODP—formerly the Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation (OPDO)) within the four-member EPRDF coalition, Abiy has also looked to underline the ‘new broom’ character of his movement by rebuking the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the onetime senior partner within the EPRDF, and rolling back their influence and place within the Ethiopian polity.5