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SudanTribune article : The crisis of ethnic identity and democracy in Ethiopia

SudanTribune article : The crisis of ethnic identity and democracy in Ethiopia
Rediscover your ethnicity…. You are an important ethnic group in the larger Bantu grouping. The nation is artificial, but ethnicity is natural.

After the fall of Mengistu’s Derg regime in May 1991, people of Ethiopia had great hopes that the peace will ultimately prevail. The bloody and torturous days experienced by the people of Ethiopia in the hands of Mengistu and his cronies were now gone; and the new government had to solve political, economic and social crises created by past regimes. In essence, the new regime had to come up with a new form of democratic political system that would accommodate the conflicting needs and interests of the people of Ethiopia in general. In doing so, the ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), embraced “Ethnic federalism” as a viable political experiment to accommodate ethnic differences.

This essay attempts to describe and analyze political events in Ethiopia since the coming of EPRDF to power in 1991 until present time. The major focus of this analysis will however examine and investigate the problems and prospects of EPRDF’s ethnicized politics of federalism. In the process, the fundamental ideas of ‘identity, history, and nation’ will highlight the present ethnic dimensions of state formation, ethnic leadership, party design and competition, and governance in Ethiopia.

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