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Showing posts from June 1, 2008

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 poli