Tigray People’s Liberation Front to continue meeting

Apparently recovering from shock of what appeared be serious political resistance from “sister parties”, Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is poised to continue its internal meeting

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borkena
January 24, 2018

Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to continue meeting days after completing its seventh organizational congress which took place in Mekelle, Tigray.

The meeting is organized for TPLF members outside of Tigray and will take place in Addis Ababa, according to state media, Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation.

The meeting is said to be a continuation of organizational evaluation and members are expected to go through self-criticism.

As in the case of the 7th organizational Congress, Members of the ruling coalition Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), TPLF elites call them “sister organization”, are invited to attend the meeting in Addis Ababa.

TPLF purged three members, including the widow of the late Meles Zenawi, from the nine-member executive committee of the party in addition to removing Abay Woldu as Chairman of the party and president of the party’s ethnic base, Tigray region.

After the 7th organizational congress, which came weeks after central committee and executive committee meeting, it has been reported that Azeb Mesfin, who served as head of EFFORT investments for many years now, is removed.

Some in the opposition, with a claim for credible insider information, say that the infight within TPLF is irreconcilable. Yet, others are skeptical about the news of division within the TPLF and rather see it as one of the strategies of buying time and putting the organization in the limelight.

TPLF’s one-time strongman and ardent ethno-nationalist who is now working for the United Nations’ agency, Siye Abraha, is back in the country. And there are rumors that he met with his former comrades who served in the military, now among top investors in the country, regarding the situation in the country and within TPLF.

Although the party admitted sentiments of belligerence and domination after political resistance from two of EPRDF member parties, namely Oromo People’s Democratic Organization and Amhara National Democratic Movement, the party is slowing reverting back to heavy-handed policy, outright repression and vengeance apparently against the spirit apparent understanding that the ruling coalition reached after nearly three weeks of evaluative meeting.

Over the weekend, what appeared to be Federal defense forces unleashed massacre on youth who were celebrating Ethiopian Epiphany in Woldia city, north-central Ethiopia. The regional administration admitted that seven young men were killed and fifteen others wounded, some of them with a life-threatening injury, and claimed that the youth were chanting an anti-government slogan, which eyewitness accounts dismiss as untrue.

Residents believe that the killing was totally unprovoked and think that, as many political observers do, it is meant to be a retaliation for the death of Mekelle city fan in the city of Woldia sometime in December of 2017. Other critical observers and vocal critics of the TPLF tend to see new TPLF expansionist agenda in TPLF’s action in Woldida; they add that the city has been Tigraianized for many years now, perhaps the very reason that residents of Woldia attacked businesses that belong to Tigraians in the city.



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