borkena
November 27, 2019
Members of the ruling coalition, EPRDF, has become a controversial issue for several weeks now.
It is becoming as if it is a showdown between Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) on the one hand and the rest of coalition members and support parties on the other.
TPLF says there is no political and legal ground to form a new party in the name of merging coalition members. The executive committee and central committee of the party has passed decision unanimously “opposing” the merger. Party congress is yet to decide on it. TPLF has even said that “People [ in Tigray] have also the right to decide on it.” Until then the organization is exploiting all opportunities to express its opposition.
Key members of the bigger parties in the coalition, these are parties soon to loose their ethnic based identities, rather seem to think that TPLF has no political or moral ground to criticize the merger.
In an interview with Addis Media Network, Ethiopia’s foreign minister, Gedu Andargachew refutes TPLF position.
“EPRDF has done well in the economic and social areas but had limitations with regards to democracy,” he said.
And the party, he said, has agreed to democratize and change itself during evaluative meetings in the past. And it has also pledged to change. The merger, for Gedu, is in line with past party decision.
Apart from relation with the public, the relation between EPRDF and what it calls support parties was not based on equality and democracy. For example, five ethnic based parties governing their respective ethnic based regional states were only considered as “agar” (support parties) and did not have the right to be part of important decision making process at the national level. Prosperity party, the party to be formed after merger, will end that situation.
For Gedu Andargachew, to oppose the merger agenda is to be at odds with democracy.
Watch his interview below.
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